Green Criminology - Comprehensive Study Notes

Definitions and Scope

  • Green crime definition: crimes committed against the environment; green criminology is an umbrella perspective describing ecological, environmental, or green harm related to speciesism and environmental injustice.
  • It is a transgressive criminology that emphasizes harms rather than only acts that are criminalized; laws protecting the environment are often underdeveloped, making some harmful acts technically legal yet of interest to green criminologists.
  • Green criminology asks how to capture the significance of harmful actions that are not criminal and notes that green harms and crime can be widespread and damaging, sometimes more so than street crime (as argued by Lynch et al., 2013).
  • Origin of the term: first used by Lynch in 1990 in The Greening of Criminology, advocating a move toward a more humane society grounded in environmentalism and a radical Marxist framework.
  • Radical roots persist: focus on green crimes by states, corporations, and organized networks; critique of capitalism, which can create victims among the poor and nations through pollution and toxic waste while the rich benefit from industrialisation and consumption.
  • Important caveat: green criminology today is broader than radical Marxism; not all researchers align with that framework.

Origins and Radical Roots

  • Lynch (1990) argued for a humanistic, environmentally conscious criminology aligned with radical Marxist perspectives.
  • Contemporary green criminology remains radical in its interest in state, corporate, and organized crime links to environmental harm.
  • Emphasis on how capitalism tends to produce victims among the poor and poorer nations via pollution and waste from industrial processes.
  • The field recognizes a broader audience beyond radical Marxists, incorporating diverse theoretical approaches.

Questions Green Criminologists Ask

  • Who or what generates environmental harm?
  • Why does environmental crime occur?
  • What is the depth and extent of environmental harm?
  • How should we respond to environmental harm?

Terminology and Typologies

  • Primary green crimes arise directly from destruction and degradation of the earth’s resources.
  • Four types of primary green crime:
    • crimes/harm of air and space
    • crimes/harm of the land (deforestation/land-theft)
    • crimes/harm against nonhuman species
    • crimes/harm of water
  • Secondary green harms/crimes arise from conditions following environmental damage or crisis (e.g., illegal markets for food, medicine, water) and from violations of rules regulating environmental harms.
  • Potter (2014) introduces tertiary green crimes: those committed by environmental victims or as a direct response to environmental victimisation, including forced migration due to environmental harm and crimes related to exposure to pollutants.

Types of Environmental Crime and Harm

  • Common focus areas include:
    • Climate change
    • Economy, consumption, and waste (four subtypes: state-corporate crime, organised crime, food crimes, e-waste)
    • Nonhuman animal abuse
    • Poaching, trafficking, and trading

Disagreements over the Concept of Green Crime

  • Traditional criminology defines green crime narrowly as any activity that breaches a law protecting the environment.
  • Green criminology argues for studying environmental harms even when no legislation exists or when laws are not broken; it adopts an ecocentric (environment-centered) approach and critiques anthropocentrism in traditional criminology.

Three Important Principles of Green Criminology (White, 2008)

  • Environmental rights and environmental justice underpin the field.
  • Ecocentric stance places the environment at the center rather than human domination over nature.
  • Inclusion of animal rights and species justice.
  • Green criminology is a transgressive form of criminology that emphasizes harm rather than strictly defined crime; it aligns with radical or critical criminology (Marxism, interactionism) and questions why some harmful acts (pollution) are not labeled as criminal while others are.

Problems with Green Criminology

  • The subject matter is not clearly defined; debates about where to draw the line on harming the environment and who should decide.
  • Key term: zemiology, the study of social harms; green criminology is zemiological in focus.

The Late Modern Perspective on Green Crime – Ulrich Beck (Risk Society)

  • Becomes part of the risk society: modern industrial societies create new, largely manufactured risks due to technology.
  • New risks (e.g., nuclear waste) are of a different order than earlier historical risks; nuclear power produces long-lived, highly toxic waste lasting thousands of years.
  • Environmental problems are truly global; smog is described as democratic, suggesting that traditional social divisions may be less relevant for environmental impact.
  • Beck highlights the need for innovative political responses but does not offer concrete solutions to tackling green crime in a postmodern age.

A Marxist Perspective on Green Crime

  • Industrial capitalism is identified as the primary driver of environmental harms.
  • Governments often pursue economic growth through production and consumption, enabling pollution and extraction; global environmental agreements are unlikely under capitalism unless it is substantially reined in or eradicated.
  • Marxists argue that environmental harms reinforce existing social divisions, with the poor bearing the brunt of pollution and pollution-related harms.
  • A central focus is identifying the victims of green crime, highlighting that pollution impacts the poorest in society most acutely.

Controlling Environmental Crime

  • Traditional courts have often trivialised environmental crimes; calls for specialist environmental courts.
  • Proposals include an International Environmental Court or Environmental Security Council.
  • Earth jurisprudence is advocated, recognizing legally enforceable rights for nature and other-than-human beings (including rights for animals, trees, rivers).

An International Law of Ecocide

  • Stop Ecocide Foundation promotes an international law of ecocide.
  • Ecocide defined as unlawful or wanton acts with knowledge of a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term environmental damage.
  • Growing international support; International Criminal Court consults on inserting ecocide as a fifth crime in the Rome Statute.

Compliance Versus Deterrence

  • Two basic models of controlling environmental crime:
    • Compliance (carrot): encouraging conformity through incentives for sustainable behavior.
    • Deterrence (stick): enforcement and punishment.
  • Restorative Justice lies between these approaches, envisioning processes where polluters hear from communities affected by pollution.
  • There are relatively few studies on how law enforcement agencies prevent or prosecute environmental crimes.

Power and Environmental Crime

  • Power dynamics shape responses to environmental crime.
  • Powerful offenders may reject criminal definitions that could apply to them and attempt to shift costs to others when found guilty.
  • Example: Thames Water fined over £100extmillion{£100 ext{ million}} in 2024 for pumping untreated sewage into UK rivers; the company could offset costs by raising water bills.
  • Corporate interests also seek to dilute environmental protections and redefine public understanding of what counts as green.

Political Economy and the Treadmill of Production

  • Lynch and Stretesky (2014) argue that neoliberal treadmill of production drives many environmental problems: intense consumerism leads to resource extraction and ecological disorganization.
  • O’Brien (2011) notes that over-exploitation of natural resources in Africa and Asia contributes to desertification, economic migration, and conflict, framing these as outcomes of consumerist pressures.

Victimisation and Green Criminology

  • Class and race inequalities influence the siting of waste facilities and the distribution of pollution burdens.
  • Environmental discrimination is evident in the United States, with Bullard (1990) documenting how Black communities bear disproportionate waste exposure, rooted in white racism.
  • Environmental harms tend to be greater in less developed countries; Indigenous peoples are often victims and leaders in environmental protection movements.
  • Local resistance movements in the Global South aim to defend environments from Western corporate extraction.
  • Hundreds of Indigenous people have died protecting nature in recent years; Global Witness recorded at least 177177 lethal attacks against environmental defenders in 20222022, with many more killings annually, particularly in less developed regions.