Green Crime Flashcards
What is environmental crime or green crime
crimes that damage the environment. They can be committed by individuals, businesses and governments.
Who commits green crimes
Individuals
Government
Businesses
Environmental crimes committed by individuals
dumping of waste,
littering,
picking protected wild flowers,
badger baiting,
fox hunting,
dealing in endangered species.
Individual environmental crime is a recently recognised type of crime as a result of the actions of the Environment Agency and the increased concerns over global warming.
Environmental crimes committed by businesses (corporate environmental crime)
pollution and dumping of waste. there is a global illegal disposal of hazardous waste, e.g. waste considered too dangerous for disposal in MEDCs is shipped to LEDCs where there is no regulation on toxic waste.
E.g. of Corporate environmental crime
An example of corporate environmental crime is the Bhopal
disaster, India, 1984 where poisonous gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant. 20000
people were injured and 10000 may have died as a direct result of exposure to the fumes.
The parent company in the USA blamed the subsidiary company in India and escaped
prosecution after persuading the Indian government to accept a low settlement for all the
victims. This illustrates that environmental crimes cross national boundaries.
Environmental crimes committed by governments (state environmental crime)
pollution and dumping of waste material. This in particular refers to disposal of nuclear waste from
nuclear power plants.
Example of state environmental crime
An example of state environmental crime is the sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior. The French government was carrying out nuclear testing in the Pacific ocean. The Greenpeace ship was there to protest against the tests. It was sunk by the French secret service and this action was authorised by the French government.
Laws on environmental crime
awareness of green issues has led to the introduction of environmental legislation.
This leads individuals and corporations to seek
to break the environmental laws.
Global risk society
Even though, politically, the world is separated into nation-states, the Earth is a single eco-system so any threat to the environment is a threat on a global scale.
Beck refers to these threats as manufactured risks – dangers that are human-made and that we have never faced before such as global warming. Therefore, we live in a global risk society. For examples fires that have started in Canada have spread across to the north America.
How global risk society can lead to crime
in 2010, Russia experienced a heat wave caused by global warming which caused wild-fires that destroyed the grain fields. This caused a shortage of grain so Russia introduced a ban on exports and there was a global shortage of
grain which pushed up the price of grain. This cause rioting and looting in Mozambique, with some people dying, as the country relies on food imports and the price of bread went up 30% because of the rise in the price of grain.
Sociological approaches to environmental crime
Traditional criminology
Green criminology
Traditional criminology
Traditional criminology is concerned with environmental crimes as defined by national and international laws and regulations concerning the environment.
Situ and Emmons define environmental crimes as acts that violate the law.
Therefore, traditional criminology examines national laws to see if a crime has been committed against the environment.
+C of traditional criminology
The advantage of this approach is that it has a clearly
defined subject matter, i.e. the actions which are against the law that damage the environment such as fly tipping.
However, it has been criticised for accepting the official definitions of environmental crime which are often created by the powerful groups in society in their own interest. For example, large corporations (who cause the most environmental damage) have too much power in influencing challenges to environmental protection laws.
Green criminology
Green criminology takes a more radical approach to traditional criminology as it looks at any action that harms the environment, even if it is not criminal.
Its a form of transgressive criminology as it oversteps
(transgresses) the boundaries of traditional criminology to include the study of issues not defined as illegal by national or international laws.
Therefore, green criminology adopts a global perspective on crimes against the environment.
White argues that many of the worst environmental harms are not illegal because different countries have different laws so that the same action may be a crime in one country, but not in another.
Green criminology takes an……..
ecocentric view of environmental crimes. This
means that they see humans and the environment as interdependent so that anything that
harms the environment harms humans too.
