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Tax havens and global environmental degradation
Abstract
The release of classified documents in the past years have offered a rare glimpse into the opaque world of tax havens and their role in the global economy. Although the political, economic and social implications related to these financial secrecy jurisdictions are known, their role in supporting economic activities with potentially detrimental environmental consequences have until now been largely ignored. Here, we combine quantitative analysis with case descriptions to elaborate and quantify the connections between tax havens and the environment, both in global fisheries and the Brazilian Amazon. We show that while only 4% of all registered fishing vessels are currently flagged in a tax haven, 70% of the known vessels implicated in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing are, or have been, flagged under a tax haven jurisdiction. We also find that between October 2000 and August 2011, 68% of all investigated foreign capital to nine focal companies in the soy and beef sectors in the Brazilian Amazon was transferred through one, or several, known tax havens. This represents as much as 90-100% of foreign capital for some companies investigated. We highlight key research challenges for the academic community that emerge from our findings and present a set of proposed actions for policy that would put tax havens on the global sustainability agenda.
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“whereas funds channeled through tax havens support most illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing ( 71 , 73 ), creating governance challenges.”
From Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change (2019) · cites this paper as [73]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Galaz, V., Crona, B., Dauriach, A., Jouffray, J.-B., Österblom, H., & Fichtner, J.
- Affiliations
- Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (SE)
- Stockholm Resilience Centre (SE)
- University of Amsterdam (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Galaz, Victor
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature Ecology & Evolution
- Published
- 2018-08-13
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 1352-1357
- ISSN
- 2397-334X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2883298128
- Cited by
- 149
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 38 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 5
- FWCI
- 15.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2018-08-17)
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature Ecology & Evolution (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Ocean Foundation
- Stiftelsen för Miljöstrategisk Forskning
- European Commission
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Accounting › Corporate Taxation and Avoidance
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
- Keywords
- tax havens, financial secrecy, environmental degradation, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, fisheries, Brazilian Amazon, beef industry, foreign capital flows, corporate sustainability, environmental policy
- MeSH terms
- Agriculture, Animals, Brazil, Conservation of Natural Resources, Taxes
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