Researching Transnational Environmental Harm: Toward an Eco‐Global Criminology

Abstract

The study of transnational environmental harm demands appreciation of specific methodological and conceptual issues that impinge upon the data collection process. Some of these issues include the ethics and politics of 'outsiders' researching other people's territory, the differential availability and types of data in different jurisdictions, the ways in which state denial and corporate resistance impede the research process, and the importance of utilising a wide range of data sources as a means to substantiate claims about harms and the causes of harms. The paper presents an exploration of methodological issues in the study of harms that are global, cross-national, and/or localised, but which are intrinsically transnational in nature regardless of scale and scope. By understanding the challenges presented to those working in this area, we are also able to identify directions for future methodological development.

Of Theory and Meaning in Green Criminology

“…As green criminologists continue to investigate and study 'those harms against humanity, against the environment (including space) and against non-human animals committed both by powerful institutions (for example, governments, transnational corporations, military apparatuses) and also by ordinary people' (Beirne and South 2007: xiii), we can play a role in how we respond to those harms through existing appendages of and new features within the criminal justice system (see, for example, White 2009White , 2011. In so doing, however, we need to be conscious of and sensitive to Halsey's (2004: 839) warning that 'criminalizing a behaviour is a very poor way of reducing its occurrence'.…”

La criminalité environnementale transnationale : aux grands maux, les grands remèdes ?

“…En 1995, lorsque les Nations Unies ont élaboré la liste de 18 crimes transnationaux, la CET y était incluse (UNODC, 1995 (Gosling, 2013). À cela s'ajoutent les mouvements transnationaux des industries polluantes des pays déve-loppés vers les pays pauvres, ainsi que la surpêche illégale dans des océans (White, 2011).…”

Corruption and the Securitisation of Nature

“…One result of the regimes and routines that sustain contemporary social life is the systematic transformation of nature, as species decline and ecosystems are radically altered (White 2011b). The moral universe (for example, the primacy of individualism and anthropocentrism) and material space (that is, the comparative economic prosperity of advanced capitalist countries) within which these trends occur is one that is generally supportive of this sort of natural resource exploitation.…”

“…Indeed, the history of the modern world is based precisely upon resource colonisation, a phenomenon that has had an adverse impact on many different Indigenous peoples in places such as South America, North America and Australasia, as well as the native inhabitants of Africa, Asia and beyond (White 2011b). Across the planet, the prior ownership rights, interests and knowledge of Indigenous inhabitants were treated as irrelevant by the European invaders.…”