Steve Trent

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Steve Trent is a British environmentalist and human rights campaigner. He co-founded the Environmental Justice Foundation in 2000, an organisation he continues to lead today. Trent guides and oversees EJF's work in the UK (charity 1088128) and in multiple other locations, including Belgium, France, Germany, Ghana, Indonesia, Liberia, Senegal and Thailand.

Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)[edit]

Trent was EIA's Campaigns Director and Deputy Executive Director between 1990 and 2000, managing the campaigns and fundraising teams while leading international advocacy initiatives. These included the organisation’s work to combat deforestation and species declines, to curtail and end the use of ozone-depleting substances, and species-specific campaigns including rhino and orangutan conservation.

Trent gave evidence^[1] to the House of Commons Select Committee on Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs in EIA's advocacy around the Montreal Protocol (aiming to end the depletion of the ozone layer). EIA’s investigations exposed the scale of illegal trade in CFCs, - which represented 20% of global CFC trade by the late 1990s - and to push for improved enforcement and licensing requirements. The Montreal Protocol has phased out 99% of all Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS)^[2], restoring the vital protection the ozone layer provides.

WildAid[edit]

Trent was co-founder of the US-based conservation organisation, WildAid, and served as its president for over a decade, while leading WildAid's wildlife conservation advocacy in China and India^[3].

He led WildAid's work to halt the illegal wildlife trade and consumption of wildlife products in China and India, using the phrasing ‘When the buying stops, the killing can too’^[4]. In China, Trent managed a programme that targeted key elite decision-makers and opinion-formers including government officials, media organisations, business leaders, celebrities and wealthy urban consumers, signing an agreement with the state-sponsored media - the first foreign organisation to do so, reaching up to one billion people each week in China^[5]. This campaign was also recognised by China Philanthropist Magazine in 2022^[6].

In India, Trent led the team to increase local support for conservation efforts, especially in Corbett National Park. The campaign reached 500 million people per week in India, and used high-level advocacy, including meeting with the President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Pati, and enlisting some of the country's biggest stars – from the A-list of Bollywood to international cricket players^[7].

Environmental Justice Foundation[edit]

Trent co-founded the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) in 2000 and is its global CEO^[8]. Steve leads EJF’s campaigns and programmes to address environmental injustice - where the degradation or loss of the natural world directly impacts fundamental human rights^[9].

Trent devised and led EJF’s activist programme that provides essential equipment, training and support to environmental defenders in the Global South, including Cambodia, Indonesia and Brazil. EJF has conducted field investigations into environmental and human rights abuses in more than 20 countries over the past two decades, including examining seafood slavery in West Africa^[10] and Thailand^[11] and extensive illegal fishing in China's distant-water fleet^[12], the latter of which was cited in discussions on China's fleet in the European Parliament^[13]. Trent leads newer EJF campaigns, for example campaigning in the media against deep-sea mining^[14].

Starting in 2001, Trent led a global campaign on the manufacture and use of the hazardous chemical pesticide endosulfan^[15]. A short briefing entitled End of the Road for Endosulfan was cited in the European Union's 2008 proposal to include endosulfan in the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which was passed in 2011, effectively leading to a global ban^[16].

Following earlier projects exposing the damaging impacts of shrimp trawling, and illegal fishing in the Mediterranean, in 2005, Trent launched EJF’s Oceans campaign with investigations into illegal fishing in West Africa. In 2010, the European Union’s Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing Regulation came into force: since 2010, EJF has provided data on potential infractions informing the EU’s decisions on ‘carding’ nations that are failing to take adequate action to curb IUU fishing^[17]. EJF combines investigations, remote vessel monitoring and community surveillance to provide irrefutable evidence of illegal fishing alongside detailed technical, policy and legal recommendations to curb IUU. Trent has a particular role in high-level advocacy with senior officials, including working with the Government of the Republic of Korea and the Royal Thai Government on fisheries reforms to end illegal fishing and slavery at sea^[18].

A 2013 EJF investigation in Thailand uncovered widespread slave labour in the country’s seafood sector, exposing this in the report and film Sold to the Sea^[19]. The investigation led to the arrest of a key suspect and marked the start of substantial policy reforms bringing progressive change to the country’s fisheries.

Under Trent’s direction, EJF launched a campaign highlighting the deplorable human and environmental impacts of cotton production in the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan. The issue was covered on BBC Newsnight in 2006 and immediately led major retailers Marks and Spencer and Tesco to drop Uzbek cotton due to the prevalence of child labour in their supply chains^[20]. The Uzbek Government signed conventions on child labour in 2008 as a direct result of this campaigning. EJF’s work catalysed an international multi-stakeholder boycott of Uzbek cotton supported by multiple fashion brands, labour unions and NGOs^[21].

Trent launched the EJF campaign to protect climate refugees^[22]. He presented evidence to the European Parliament in 2008 about the need to introduce legal protections for those displaced by climate change, arguing that current international legal frameworks supporting refugees do not protect those displaced by climate change.^[23] This was followed by further reports, films and exhibitions^[24], including at the National Theatre in London and the European Parliament in Brussels in 2018, asserting that failing to protect climate refugees is contrary to the principles of climate justice.

As CEO and Co-Founder of EJF, Trent appears at multiple high-level events hosted by the United Nations, the European Union and the Our Ocean campaign group^[25].

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