Conservation Criminology

Abstract

Environmental crimes represent a significant global problem and range from the illegal dumping of e-waste and industrial-scale negligence to wildlife crime, such as the illegal taking of flora and fauna (poaching) and the illegal trade of wildlife products (e.g., ivory). Environmental crimes can have severe and long-lasting consequences by threatening sustainability and food supplies, contaminating ecosystems, and risking the health and well-being of natural environments, wildlife, and human communities. Given the profitability of environmental crimes, this form of offending has become attractive to organized crime syndicates, leading to corruption and the removal of valuable socioeconomic resources from vulnerable communities. Until the introduction of green criminology in recent decades, environmental crimes were considered to fall under the remit of the hard sciences. Conservation criminology is a branch of green criminology. Conservation criminology is a multidisciplinary framework that draws together theories, tools, and methodological approaches from criminology, natural-resource management, and decision sciences, to (1) understand the processes that lead to environmental risk and (2) devise plans to reduce and prevent risks by effectively targeting antecedent factors. A key aim of conservation criminology is to inform evidence-based conservation policy and practice through the use of robust quantitative and qualitative data analyses. Conservation criminology addresses limitations of the broader field of green criminology, specifically its focus of economic power as the main cause of environmental crime. Conservation criminology has a more defined focus than green criminology. Further, the interdisciplinary framework of conservation criminology supports a holistic understanding of the environmental crimes that considers natural and human risk factors alongside contextual, cultural, and economic influences. From a criminological perspective, conservation criminology draws heavily on crime opportunity theories, crime prevention techniques, and analytic and methodological tools developed in crime science. While crime science perspectives play a large role in the field, conservation criminology does not advocate a particular theoretical perspective. Other criminological perspectives, including enforcement legitimacy, procedural justice, and deterrence, have also been applied to understand environmental crime and inform policy and practice. Influences from natural-resource management include the use of prevention strategies based on the precautionary principle, such as protected areas and community-based conservation, as well as an understanding of the environment as a social-ecological system comprising interactions between human and natural systems. Finally, conservation criminology draws on risk assessment, management, and communication principles from the risk and decision sciences. While the field is still in its infancy, studies in conservation criminology have grown exponentially in the early 21st century. Environmental issues of interest include wildlife poaching, illegal fishing, illicit trade in wildlife products, waste and water management, logging, and industrial noncompliance. Studies in conservation criminology assess the extent of environmental crime problems, explore situational factors that facilitate and impede opportunities for environmental crime, and investigate strategies to prevent and respond to these problems.