R. A. Sollund, The Crimes of Wildlife Trafficking: Issues of Justice, Legality and Morality

Rimona Afana

doi:10.13169/statecrime.10.2.0335

Abstract

None

Highlights

Guiding Ragnhild Sollund’s engagement with wildlife trafficking (WLT) are several significant distinctions or contrasts recurrent throughout the book: her seeing animals as free-born sovereigns vs. personal property or common good, which is alas still the norm in most societies; her concern for the suffering of animals as sentient individuals and not just as species and ecosystems worthy of conservation efforts; her embracing a critical victimology angle vs. traditional criminological approaches: animal victims become the centrepiece of research, not the offenders, the judicial system or process; her emphasis on the chasm between crimes and harms: criminalization remains narrow and skewed by anthropocentrism, legal trafficking is not necessarily ethical, her concern for harms against free-born animals, not just crimes
Two case studies anchor the analysis: Norway, mostly a destination country when it comes to wildlife trafficking, and Colombia, which due to its biodiversity is mostly a source country
As Sollund documents, contrary to its purported role, CITES reduces nature and conservation to an anthropocentric, utilitarian perspective, in practice CITES allows the perpetuation of harms to nonhumans

Summary

Introduction

Guiding Ragnhild Sollund’s engagement with wildlife trafficking (WLT) are several significant distinctions or contrasts recurrent throughout the book: her seeing animals as free-born sovereigns vs. personal property or common good, which is alas still the norm in most societies; her concern for the suffering of animals as sentient individuals and not just as species and ecosystems worthy (or not) of conservation efforts; her embracing a critical victimology angle vs. traditional criminological approaches: animal victims become the centrepiece of research, not the offenders, the judicial system or process; her emphasis on the chasm between crimes and harms: criminalization remains narrow and skewed by anthropocentrism, legal trafficking is not necessarily ethical, her concern for harms against free-born animals, not just crimes.

Results

Conclusion