Green Criminology
We only have to work together for a better future, it is a long and painful task but we must do it for our children they are our future they deserve better
Green ?
In essence, green criminology provides a framework for understanding the complex relationship between human actions, environmental harm, and social justice, and for developing strategies to mitigate these harms Green criminology has developed into a criminological subfield with a substantial literature. That literature is so vast that a single review cannot do it justice. This article examines the definition of green crime, the historical development of green criminology, some major areas of green criminological research, and potential future developments. Unlike traditional criminology with its focus on human victims, green criminology recognizes that various living entities can be victims of the ways in which humans harm ecosystems. Green research thus explores crime, victimization, and justice from several theoretical positions that acknowledge these unique victims. Although green criminology contains several approaches, this review primarily focuses on political economic green criminology. The section titled The Definition, Overview, and Historical Development of Green Criminology identifies, but does not review in depth, other forms of green criminology.
Harms
Although green criminology is a subfield within criminology, there are several ways in which criminology and green criminology differ that are important. The primary differences include green criminology’s attention to exploring and explaining the ways in which humans harm the ecosystem. Ecosystem harms involve conceptualizing direct or primary harms to ecosystems as a form of victimization of the natural world that deserves criminological attention. Ecosystem harms, however, can also have secondary effects on species that live within an ecosystem. For example, water pollution not only damages a waterway as an ecosystem and impairs its normal operation, health, and life course, it also impacts the species that rely on the waterway as habitat or for the provision of environmental services such as drinking water. In taking up the study of these kinds of ecological harms, green criminology draws attention to a much broader array of victims than traditional forms of criminology have typically addressed. The study of green criminology treats ecosystems and components of ecosystems as living entities and includes addressing not only a diverse array of harms and crimes that affect humans but also how ecological harms affect nonhuman animal species. In doing so, the point is to draw attention to the ways in which human behaviors that harm ecosystems make each of these beings (e.g., humans, animals, ecosystems) the victims of human development. For green criminologists, the concept of victimization is much broader than it is for other criminologists. This is an outcome of the ecological view taken within green criminology and its recognition that ecosystems and nonhuman species are also living beings that can be harmed and victimized.
Crimes
Conceptualized in the above ecologically oriented manner, green crimes/harms include a wide range of human behaviors that generate environmental harms and produce ecological disorganization or the disruption of the normal organization and operation of the natural world. These ecologically destructive behaviors can include, for example, air, water, and land pollution, deforestation, and various forms of mining as well as the wildlife trade and illegal wildlife trafficking. Green crimes, however, can also include other harms against nonhuman species, including those that victimize human companion animals, farm animals, and laboratory animals. The study of green crime and injustice also draws attention to the larger problem of ecocide—the deliberate or negligent destruction or killing of nature—and its intersection with other social injurious behaviors such as genocide. Green criminological research has also examined harms/crimes related to food injustice and manipulation of crop or animal genetics that are changing the world around us, possibly in unforeseen ways. Each of these harmful human behaviors can include those that criminologists might typically assume to be ordinary behaviors that constitute conforming and nondeviant activities. Viewed uncritically, in other words, some of the behaviors associated with modern life seem normalized and ordinary and even required to carry out life in modern society. These behaviors could include, for instance, engaging in timber clear-cutting, mineral mining, oil exploration, or pollution of ecosystems. To be sure, these kinds of behaviors certainly have become routinized in the modern world. The fact that these behaviors are routine, however, does not mean they are not harmful or that there are not alternatives to the commission of these kinds of ecological harms.
Co-Orp
Green criminology includes the study of green harms, crime, law, and injustice; the causes of those crimes/harms; and the various species or living entities that are the victims of green crimes and harms. It was developed as an alternative to traditional criminology, which tends to focus on street crimes and criminals and street crime victims. Traditional criminological approaches exclude examining a broad range of behaviors that harm ecosystems and that produce harms to the spectrum of living beings that inhabit the Earth. For the green criminologists, unlike for most traditional criminologists, there are a variety of living beings/species/entities that deserve to be recognized as living and possessing inherent rights to life and freedom from being harmed. By recognizing ecosystems and nonhuman species as living entities with rights and interests, green criminology opens up the possibility of examining issues that do not fit within the scope of traditional criminology. In some respects, these issues are not unusual from a criminological perspective and can include areas of research similar to those found in traditional criminology such as the content and effectiveness of environmental laws, regulations, and their enforcement; the forces that structure the creation and enforcement of environmental regulations; and the policing of the environment. Also, like traditional criminology, green criminology pays attention to defining the nature of terms such as harm (i.e., green harm) and crime (i.e., green crime). Paying attention to these core definitional issues also promotes a critique of the traditional criminological definition of crime. Like traditional criminologists, green criminologists also examine the causes of green crimes and harms as well as the impact of green crimes and harms in both broad terms (i.e., globally) and situational contexts (i.e., regionally, locally). In doing so, green criminologists also demonstrate a concern with class and racial/ethnic inequality with regard to exposure to green crimes and in terms of legal protection
History
To limit the scope of the current review, we draw attention to the historical development of green criminology and review a few of the many areas of research in which green criminologists have engaged. As in traditional criminology, there are various ways to approach green criminology, and these cannot all be detailed. Therefore, we primarily focus on one form of green criminological theory and research: political economic green criminology (PEG-C). This is not to imply that there are no other varieties of green criminology or that PEG-C is necessarily the most important approach to green criminology. The PEG-C approach, however, is important for two reasons. First, this approach provided the foundation for the development of green criminology. Second, the PEG-C approach has also generated more empirical studies than other types of green criminology and, in this sense, continues the more traditional criminological focus on quantitative assessment
DEFINITION, OVERVIEW, AND HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF GREEN CRIMINOLOGY
Green criminology began as an extension of radical criminology and, like radical criminology, was grounded in political economic theory (Lynch 1990). Political economic green criminological (PEG-C) research continues today and has increasingly become attached to political economic theorizing and empirical studies in environmental sociology and ecological Marxism (e.g., Foster & Clark 2020, Jorgenson 2006) and is now more widely incorporated into those literatures (for criminological applications of these approaches, see Lynch et al. 2017b; for a political economic view of green theories of justice, see Lynch et al. 2019). The political economic approach to green crime and ecological destruction argues that green crimes and (in)justice are generated by the inherent structural organization of capitalism. Understanding the theoretical background behind that political economic view requires developing a familiarity with Marx’s theory of capitalism and various extensions of those works as they have been applied to environmental issues in environmental sociology (e.g., Foster 2000, Foster & Clark 2020, Foster et al. 2011, Saito 2017). In brief, political economic theory begins with the argument that the economic organization of society strongly influences the way the social and political structure is organized. In a capitalist society, the economic structure and hence the social and political structures are organized around unequal ownership of the means of production. Unequal ownership is restricted to a small portion of the population, and inequality is widely evident in society. Economic inequality, in other words, engendered broad-based economic, social, and political inequality. This inequality is also seen in terms of how resources from the ecosystem are owned and used. This structure affects the rights of people to own or access nature as well as how nature is to be legally interpreted. These observations have relevance to, for instance, understanding the interactions between capitalism and nature and how class ownership and nature intersect.