Green Crime

Global Risk Society

We are the threats, not nature.

Beck - Modern society = we can provide adequate resources, but a rise of technology has increased the the chance of a ‘manufactured risk’

• These tend to be environmentally impactful.

• eg. greenhouse gas emissions.

The Bhopal Disaster

2nd December 1984 in Bhopal, India:

• Pesticide plant started leaking cyanide gas:

• 1/2 million people exposed

• Over 20,000 died

• Around 120,000 still suffer effects (cancer, birth deformities, etc.)

15 years later - local groundwater had 6 million times more mercury than normal

No one has faced criminal court for this incident.

Green Criminology

Traditional Criminology:

Views crime as when a law is broken; if there is no law broken, then there is no crime.

• ‘An unauthorised act or omission that violates the law’ - Situ and Emmons (2010)

Green Criminology:

A type of transgressive criminology:

• States from the notion of harm rather than criminal law.

• White (2008) - proper subject of criminology is any action that harms the physical environment and/or the human and non-human animals within it, even if no law has been broken.

• This is also called zemiology - the study of harm.

• Link to Marxism - Crime of the powerful - ruling-class can shape and change the law to their needs.

Two views of harm

White (2008) - calls an anthropocentric/human-centred view of environmental harm - this view assumes humans have the right to dominate nature for their own ends and puts economic growth before the environment.

White contrasts this with an ecocentric view that sees humans and their environment as interdependent, so that environmental harm hurts humans also. This view sees both humans and the environment as liable to exploitation, particularly by global capitalism. In general, green criminology adopts the ecocentric view as the basis for judging environmental harm. 

South (2014): Types of Green Crime

Primary:

Air Pollution	6 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere every year and carbon emissions are growing 2% per annum. Walters (2013): 2x people now die from air pollution-induced breathing problems as 20 years ago.
Deforestation	1960-1990 - 1/5 of the world's tropical rainforest was destroyed. In the Amazon, forest has been cleared to rear beef cattle for export. In the Andes, the ‘war on drugs’ has led to pesticide spraying to kill coca and marijuana plants, but this has created a new green crime - destroying food crops, contaminating drinking water and causing illness. The criminals include the state and those who profit from forest destruction, such as logging companies and cattle ranchers.
Species Decline and Animal Abuse	50 species a day are becoming extinct, and 46% of mammals and 11% of bird species are at risk. 70-95% of Earth’s species live in the rainforests, which are under severe threat. There is trafficking in animals and animal parts. Meanwhile, old crimes such as dog-fights and badger-baiting are on the increase.
Water Pollution	1/2 a billion people lack access to clear drinking water and 25 million die annually from drinking contaminated water. Marine pollution threatens 58% of the world’s ocean reefs and 34% of its fish. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill caused massive harm to marine life and coasts. Criminals include businesses that dump toxic waste and governments that discharge untreated sewage into rivers and seas.

Secondary:

State Violence Against Oppositional Groups	States condemn terrorism, but they have been prepared to resort to similar illegal methods themselves eg. in 1985 - the French secret service blew up the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, New Zealand, killing one crew member. The vessel was there in an attempt to prevent a green crime, namely French nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.  As Day (1991) says ‘in every case where a government has committed itself to nuclear weapons or nuclear power, all those who oppose this policy are treated in some degree as enemies of the state’
Hazardous Waste and Organised Crime	Disposal of toxic waste from the chemical, nuclear and other industries is highly profitable. Due to the high costs of safe and legal disposal, businesses may seek to dispose of such waste illegally. For example, in Italy, eco-mafias profit from illegal dumping, much of it at sea. As Walters (2007) notes ‘the ocean floor has been a radioactive rubbish dump for decades’. Illegal dumping often has a globalised character. For example, Bridgland (2006) describes how after the tsunami of 2004, hundreds of barrels of radioactive waste that were illegally dumped by European companies, washed up on the shores of Somalia.
Environmental Discrimination	South (2014) describes the fact that poorer groups are worse affected by pollution. For example, Black communities in the USA often find their housing situated next to garbage dumps or polluting industries.

Evaluation of Green Criminology

• Recognises growing importance of environmental issues, and the need to address the harms and risks of environmental damage, both on humans and non-human animals.

Focusing on a much broader concept of harm, rather than law, makes it hard to define these boundaries of its field of study clearly.