In what ways does environmental crime cause harm on a mass scale?
Environmental crime affects all of society,
In recent years, there has been growing state and popular concern at local, regional, national, and international levels about environmental issues, and the impacts of specific types of environmental harm such as pollution, toxic waste, and illegal logging.
Environmental crime affects all of society. It can have detrimental consequences on the economies and security of a country. For individuals, local communities, and indigenous people, it may impact public health, livelihoods, and lower property values, as well as impacting on non? human species, nature itself, as well as future generations.
Green Criminology as a field operates as a tool for studying, analyzing, and dealing with environmental crimes and wider environmental harms that are often ignored by mainstream criminology. It provides for an inter-disciplinary, and multi-disciplinary, engagement and approach, which redefines criminology as not just being concerned with a crime or social harm falling within the remit of criminal justice systems.
Environmental crime and green criminology
Many incidents that cause environmental crime are extremely diverse and occur at both local and global levels, therefore finding a sufficient all-encompassing and generally agreed-upon definition of environmental crime has proven to be difficult. Victims of environmental harm are not widely recognised as victims of crime and thus are excluded from the traditional view of victimology; this means that there is little attempt to describe the actual perveances and consequences of environmental crime victimisation. Elaine and Robyn (2015), highlight that victimisation is complex in term of time, space, impact and who or what is victimised. Furthermore, victims may be few or many and victims may be non-human as well as human (Elaine and Robyn). This can be very problematic for traditional criminal law and can be one of the reasons why governments and enforcement communities struggle with the appropriate definition and response to environmental crime. However, Safes and Theodoratos (2017) suggest that a green criminology perspective is useful for conducting research on environmental crimes and harms because it is an open perspective and framework. Furthermore, utilising a green criminological perspective can also be particularly helpful when examining environmental crimes and harms in non-democratic regimes, where environmental laws and regulations are frequently ineffective, non-existent or altered to environmental harms (Safes and Theodoratos (2017).
Wildlife trade.
The scope of wildlife trade places significant impact on biodiversity loss, species loss, the introduction of invasive species and disease. Wildlife trade is an example of environmental crime activities, wildlife crime according to Garcia et al (2021), refer to the illegal harvesting use and trade of species, it is contrary to national law and includes offences that may not lead to strong penalties. Garcia et al (2021), further explains that the classification of activities in illegal trafficking and trade involve the transport and storage of large volumes of species, parts and derived products especially of endangered species, as well as their sale in local markets or commercial establishment. Rosen and Smith (2010), established that each year, billions of plants and animals derivative are traded to meet consumer demand for trophies, food, clothing, decorative items, pets, and traditional medicine. The united states alone had imported more than 1.48 billion live animals since 2000, mostly from wild populations in Southeast Asia (Rosen and Smith 2010). Similarly, a studied conducted by Garcia et al (2021), that analysed the effects of wildlife crime on native wild vertebrates of Oaxaca, southern Mexico from 2004 to 2018, found in the research that approximately 6000 species of wildlife are affected globally, with the estimated valued of illegal wildlife trafficking ranges from $7 to $23 billion USD annually.
However, due to this practice, it often results in mass harm of animals population, ecosystem such as well as lead to creation of airborne disease that harm both animals and the human population. Rosen and Smith (2010), reported into the illegal wildlife trade seizure from Traffic a wildlife trade monitoring network, the analysing seizure between the period of July 1996 to October 2000. Within this, Rose and Smith (2010), found between the period of July 1996 and October 2000 they were over 967 seizure that took place. They consisted massive quantities of ivory, tiger skins, live reptiles and other endangered wildlife and wildlife products. Furthermore, Rosen and Smith (2010), emphasised that most seizures originated in Southeast Asia and identified to be a hotspot for future emerging infectious diseases. The report found with the Traffic Bulletins, the was a case of pathogen, whereabout 76 smuggled cockatoos entering the UK from Singapore were infected with psittacosis (Rosen and Smith 2010). Rosen and Smith (2010), highlighted that psittacosis is a zoonotic respiratory infection that causes server pneumonia in humans and has case fatality rate of 10- 15 % if left. untreated.
Illegal Dumping
Water is crucial for the substances of life cycle and needs to be preserved and excluded from all sorts of pollution. Water pollution is an international phenomenon and one of the fundamental uses in many developing counties.
