Introduction
Many thanks to Elisa for her lecture which covers a wide range of relevant issues concerning the major global challenge of Climate change and ecological destruction, and subsequent inequalities, and thanks to the organisers of the Montesquieu lecture for giving me the opportunity to reflect on the lecture. Although I am based at Tilburg Law School, I am not a legal scholar but a criminologist. Therefore, I will reflect from the perspective of green criminology. First, I will briefly explain what green criminology is. Second, I discuss the criminological relevance of climate change and ecological destruction. Finally, I will reflect on how to move forward.
The emergence of green criminology
Green criminology emerged as a subdiscipline in the beginning of the 1990s and expanded the range of criminological studies. Originally, criminologists focused mainly on street crimes, such as theft, violence and drug crimes, committed by natural persons. The object of study was first expanded in the 1940s, by adding legal entities, usually large corporations that committed regulatory rather than criminal offenses.1 In the 1980s, this was again expanded by introducing the concept of state crime, in other words, crimes and harms caused by governments and other state actors.2 However, criminology until then mainly concerned humans. Green criminologists have added the impact on flora, fauna, and ecosystems.3 Although green criminologists may address green ‘street crimes’, for instance fly-tipping, they focus mostly on ‘crimes of the powerful’.4 Much of this work is rooted in ‘critical criminology’, and includes criminal offenses and regulatory violations enforced by administrative authorities but also ‘blameworthy harms’ caused by unregulated or non-criminalised conduct, such as fishing in the open oceans.5 Strong links also exist with subdisciplines such as cultural and rural criminology, as well as criminology of the Global South.6 Focusing on human rights is a necessary first step, but my question is whether we should not also not think about next steps: the rights of non-human animals, fauna and ecosystems? One example is giving legal personality to rivers as some countries have already done.7
Climate change and ecological destruction
Green criminologists have been struggling somewhat with climate change. Of course the problem is criminologically relevant, but it is also understood that climate change is largely caused by legitimate activities. The criminogenic effects are more often secondary, most notably irregular migration and ‘culture wars’, but also offenses committed as a result of climate change, such as water theft or food riots, whereas measures to curb the problem may create new criminal opportunities, such as fraud with carbon trading schemes.8 However, I have argued that it would be more fruitful for green criminology to focus on ecological destruction. Apart from loss of biodiversity, local ecosystems may suffer from pollution, for instance caused by illegal waste dumping, spills and other accidents, illegal extraction of gold, and illegal sand mining. Fossil fuels indeed contribute much to greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, cause inequalities, and geopolitical conflicts but the problem of ecological destruction does not disappear with phasing out fossil fuels. For example, mining of lithium and rare earths needed for energy transition, also have a highly negative impact on ecosystems, and have already given rise to new geopolitical tensions.9 Again, thinking about human rights only in the context of fossil fuels can be considered a first step, but more is needed.
Systemic factor: focus on economic growth
Criminologists generally acknowledge that criminalising harmful activities will have largely symbolic effects.10 Bringing perpetrators of environmental crimes to justice has proven to be problematic, because of complex and highly technical regulations, lack of personnel and means with law enforcement agencies, powerful offenders who hire the most expensive law firms, and the international character of many environmental offenses.11 The root cause of problems such as climate change and ecological destruction, however, is linked with an economic system relying on continuous growth. This is not limited to capitalism per se: ecological destruction was also a massive problem in the former Soviet Union, for example. At the same time, tackling environmental problems by looking for alternatives is problematic. Much is expected of green growth and eco-modernisation, in other words innovating ourselves out of the climate change problem, but as I already argued, this does not solve ecological destruction. Concepts such as prosperity without growth, de-growth, or post-growth call for developing a new definition of prosperity in terms of how resources are distributed, how people live and their degree of participation in the civil and political arena, their capacity to function, to make choices and control their outcomes.12 However, such concepts are often considered unfeasible, or even utopian, because implementation would require a massive change of the current economic model. I am therefore a bit sceptical about your assumption that the ‘phaseout [of fossil fuels] should be understood as a precondition for the emergence of a healthier economic model.’ The main problem, as you noted, is indeed massive inequalities, both within countries of the Global North as between the Global North and the Global South, which is not fundamentally reduced with saying goodbye to fossil fuels alone.
Notes
[1] Edwin Sutherland, ‘White-collar criminality’ (1940) 5(1) American Sociological Review 1; Edwin Sutherland, White Collar Crime (Dryden Press 1949).
[2] William Chambliss, ‘State- organized crime: The American Society of Criminology, 1988 Presidential Address’ (1989) 27(2) Criminology 183.
[3] James Sheptycki, ‘Is Green Criminology Paradigm Breaking? Some Reflections on Hydrocarbon and Resource Extraction, Crime and Criminological Thinking’ in Toine Spapens, Rob White and Wim Huisman (eds), Environmental Crime in Transnational Context (Routledge 2016).
[4] Barry Webb, Ben Marshall, Sarah Czarnomski and Nick Tilley, Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions (Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science 2006); Gregg Barak (ed), The Routledge International Handbook of the Crimes of the Powerful (Routledge 2015); Dawn Rothe and David Kauzlarich, Crimes of the Powerful (2nd edn, Routledge 2022).
[5] Rob White, ‘Transnational Environmental Harm and Eco-Global Criminology’ in Shlomo Giora Shoham, Paul Knepper and Martin Kett (eds), International Handbook of Criminology (CRC Press 2010); Robert Agnew, Toward a Unified Criminology (New York University Press 2011).
[6] Avi Brisman and Nigel South, Green Cultural Criminology: Constructions of Environmental Harm, Consumerism, and Resistance to Ecocide (Routledge 2014); Joseph Donnermeyer (ed), The Routledge International Handbook of Rural Criminology (Routledge 2016); Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg, John Scott and Máximo Sozzo (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South (Palgrave MacMillan 2018); David Goyes, Southern Green Criminology: A Science to end Ecological Discrimination (Emerald Publishing 2019).
[7] Erin O’Donnell, ‘Rivers as living beings: rights in law, but no rights to water?’ 29(4) Griffith Law Review 643. DOI: 10.1080/10383441.2020.1881304.
[8] Rob White, Climate Change Criminology (Bristol University Press 2018).
[9] Toine Spapens, ‘The Anthropocene and green criminology’ in Petrus van Duyne, Joanna Banach-Gutierrez, Georgios Antonopoulos, Klaus von Lampe, Paul Larsson and Jackie Harvey (eds), Green and Transnational Crime in Europe and Beyond: Synergies and Challenges (Routledge 2024).
[10] Cameron Holley and Clifford Shearing (eds), Criminology and the Anthropocene (Routledge 2018).
[11] Toine Spapens, De complexiteit van milieucriminaliteit (Boom Lemma uitgevers 2012).