Highlights
-Impetus for piracy will grow with worldwide economic downturn
-Latin American and West African groups demonstrating increased capabilities and determination
-International maritime community will seek improvements in anti-piracy initiatives
For the past year, most talk about piracy has focused on the coast of Somalia. With increased attacks in that region, including four on April 5th alone, this focus is understandable. Despite this attention, piracy in other parts of the world has also been on the rise. Deteriorating economic conditions in Latin America and West Africa have compelled individuals and groups in these places to take up, or increase, piracy. This upward trend in piracy will continue for the duration of the worldwide economic downturn. The international community will be faced with difficult choices on the deployment of increased anti-piracy missions in areas previously assessed as relatively secure.
Economics of Piracy
In periods of economic decline, individuals will often turn to means of survival normally avoided when the resources for livelihood are plentiful. The international economic crisis, and corresponding decline in the world’s rate of growth, is creating one of those periods.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank forecast worldwide economic growth to be zero to negative in 2009. This lack of growth equates to significant downturns in parts of the world without social safety nets, primarily the poorer parts of Latin America and Africa. (Source)
The International Maritime Bureau’s (IMB) Piracy Reporting Center reported increases in piracy in those regions called out in the World Bank report on countries most affected by the financial crisis. Individuals in these parts of the world will be hard-pressed in the near to medium-term to reconcile living needs with the ability to earn money. Therefore, they will be more inclined to participate in acts of piracy; already having witnessed the profitability such illegal actions can produce.
Growth And Capabilities
The fastest growing region for piracy is off of the coast of Peru. Poor locals have begun raiding vessels at anchor to rob crews of food and goods. The Pacific Coast of Latin America accounted for around 10 percent of all piracy incidents that occurred from January until the end of February 2009. The region accounted for 6 percent of all global piracy attacks during the same timeframe in 2008, and only 2 percent of all pirate attacks in 2007, according to the IMB.
Second in growth to Peruvian piracy is the coast of West Africa. The Niger Delta hotspot of piracy is now spreading west to the Ivory Coast and east to Cameroon. Militants and criminals are targeting offshore assets throughout the Gulf of Guinea. These targets include oil platforms, pipelines, and vessels of all sizes.
Increases in piracy in this region originally coincided with higher prices for oil, and are now fed by economic hardship of the region’s residents. Copy-cat attacks are now conducted by those who witness the success of others using piracy to create personal wealth.
Increases in piracy from Latin America to West Africa are taking place in conjunction with improved capabilities of those conducting these attacks. Initially using small boats to assault near-to-shore targets, pirates have graduated to larger vessel operations, sometimes using mother-ships to launch smaller boats; akin to the tactics used by Somali pirates. Improved weaponry has so far been absent from most Latin American and West African piracy, but trends from Somalia suggest hard lessons learned and greater financial rewards will lead to more sophisticated weapons and tactics.
Outlook
The April 2, 2009 G-20 meeting in London tangentially addressed one of the major drivers of increased piracy by allocating more money for poor and developing countries to cope with the economic downturn. These efforts alone will not be enough to compel those who see piracy as a way out of their poverty away from conducting illegal actions. The international maritime community will request assistance in the near term to deter piracy and defend shipping in the Gulf of Guinea and off the Pacific Coast of Latin America, along the lines of patrols underway off the coast of Somalia.
There is a low likelihood that the few countries with spare naval capacity will leap at the opportunity to counter piracy in two more areas of the world, even if the pirates in these parts are less capable than those near Somalia.
Piracy off of the coast of West Africa and Latin America will likely increase in the near to medium-term, with improved capabilities and tactics further hampering international trade, until the level of threat equals that off the coast of Somalia in 2008 or economic conditions pare away would-be pirates into other more lucrative and less dangerous financial pursuits.