2024 Meeting of the Green Criminology Working Group: ‘Environmental Crime, Crisis and Conflict'

On 11 September 2024 at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bucharest, the first ever Green Criminology Working Group of the European Society of Criminology was launched! This is a formal recognition of the fact that there is a strong network of scholars who have been focused on green harm and crime for well over a decade. As has become customary, the group arranged a pre-ESC conference event highlighting the research in this ever-growing field. The theme of this year’s event was ‘Environmental Crime, Crisis and Conflict’.

Panel 1: War, conflict and ecocide

The panel 'War, conflict and ecocide' featured two speakers. The first presentation ‘The Invisible Victims of Israel’s Genocide on Gaza: Crimes Against Animals and Nature’ by Rimona Afana, an independent researcher, outlined the harms to all beings that are currently happening in Gaza. The war creates pollution that will harm everyone for decades to come, including from the destruction of infrastructure that releases contaminants as has been documented in other war zones and the use of chemicals like glyphosate to destroy crops and fields. This kills many non-humans, increases greenhouse gas emissions thus contributing to climate change, and involves companies in various ways.

This was followed by ‘How international criminal law could be used to address large scale environmental destruction’ by Reinhold Gallmetzer, from the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. Even after seeing the dark side of humanity at the ICC, Reinhold attested climate change is the biggest threat. That is why in addition to his work at the ICC, he founded the Center for Climate Crime Analysis to support enforcement action. The legal framework, including the Rome Statute is largely anthropocentric, but there is significant evolution in the last years such as legal personhood. However, we can indirectly apply laws and the Rome Statute (i.e., crimes against humanity) to protect the environment as environmental harm equals human harm. We can’t wait to get the perfect legal tools, so we need to apply existing law - property, corruption, financial - in a factual context and continue to innovate how non-environmental law can be applied to the environment.

Panel 2: Local communities and environmental conflict

There were three speakers on Panel 2. George Iordachescu of Waageningen University and Research detailed the multifaceted nature of crisis in his presentation ‘Crime, crisis and conflicts in the Romanian forests’. He detailed how all the relevant actors, including animals, suffer harm from overexploitation of the forests and how this leads to multilevel conflicts between and among animals, residents, businesses and governments. Similarly, Wendy Chávez-Páez of the Bonn International Graduate School for Development Research, documented conflict between local communities and fisheries in her research ‘Coastal communities, industrial extractivism, artisanal fisheries and conflicts over natural resources in the Gulf of Guayaquil in Ecuador, Puerto Roma and Isla Costa Rica’. Like with logging, residents, businesses and governments clash when shrimp farming and fishing harm the environment and people’s livelihoods. This scenario is also evident in the mining sector. In ‘Business as usual: armed groups, local communities and environmental conflicts in Eastern Congo, Daan van Uhm of Utrecht University explained how rather than businesses, armed groups initiate the exploitation of natural resources. The involvement of armed groups adds an additional violent layer of conflict to the struggle to control and to protect the environment.

Panel 3: Historic hidden environmental crises

Panel 3 included the following investigations:‘Forever polluted. The global chemical contamination crisis by Lieselot Bisschop of Erasmus University Rotterdam, ‘Under our feet: the hidden waste crime around us’ by Tanya Wyatt of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and ‘Air Pollution, Pervasive Exposure, and the Social Processes Underpinning Harm Visibility’ by James Heydon of the University of Nottingham. Each study showed an initial lack of awareness of the nature and scale of harms posed by forever chemicals, waste, and air pollution which then transforms into denial and lack of political will as the evidence mounts as to the health and environmental harms these pollutants are causing. The result is an environment full of contaminants and little behaviors or legislative changes made to prevent further contamination and to clean up the existing crisis.

Panel 4: Implications for/of law enforcement

The final panel focused on ‘Implications for/of law enforcement’. A local prosecutor from the Office of the Prosecutor in Bucharest shared ‘A prosecutor’s experience with environmental crime, crises and conflicts in Romania’. Aurelian Constantin detailed the many offences in Romanian legislation that his office is tasked with prosecuting and the outcomes of some of those cases. Romania is the site of many forms of environmental crime, but illegal logging and waste dumping are the most frequent cases and there are so many that only the most serious ones with the strongest evidence make it into the court system. Valeria Vegh Weis of Buenos Aires University, the National Quilmes University and Universität Konstanz Zukunftskolleg presented ‘Southern Green Victimology: A look at the Cycle of Environmental Harms, resistance, and over-criminalization of Dissent in Argentina’. The trend around the world, but also in Argentina is the criminalization of protest, environmental activism, and dissent. There is a cycle of environmental harm, resistance, and criminalization. To counter law enforcement’s violent response to protest Argentine activists adapted by silent walking in the streets to try to not provoke a response in any way. Whilst the (mostly women) protestors are treated harshly, there is an under-criminalization of police violence and the mining companies, which have a state-corporate symbiosis.

The packed day closed with Nigel South, formerly of the University of Essex, who with his lecture ‘Constant crises: The environment as the silent victim of crime, conflicts and war’ summarized the themes of the day, but also painted the bleak picture that is the state of the environment that continues to be the silent victim of violent human society.