Transnational Environmental Crime Research Articles

A Quest for Malaysian Environmental Justice in Yang-May Ooi’s The Flame Tree

This study aims to investigate the environmental agenda in The Flame Tree, an English novel by Yang-May Ooi, a Malaysian-British author. The concepts of environmental justice and environmental racism are employed in the analysis. Through the main characters and incidents in the novel, Ooi suggests that Malaysian local people suffer greatly from a lack of environmental justice in their community as a result of the manipulation of a transnational corporation operated by a global capitalist, who commits crimes in different forms to win a mega project under the policy for the country’s modernization. This mega project eventually causes an environmental apocalypse and a tragedy for the local people who do not have an opportunity to participate in the decision-making process regarding this project. Based on environmental racism, the local Malaysian people endure disruptions from the project initiated by the British race, the former colonizers of Malaysia, who aim to reap its full benefit. Despite the end of British Imperialism, the power relation between the British and the Malaysians persists. This novel protests against transnational environmental crime which leaves detrimental effects on the Malaysian land and people.

The Impact of EU Criminal Law Policy on the Prevention of Transnational Environmental Crime

The Impact of EU Criminal Law Policy on the Prevention of Transnational Environmental Crime

기후온난화와 기후변화가 범죄양상에 미치는 영향과 초국가적 환경범죄의 등장

This article aims to study on the impact of global warming and climate change on the criminal patterns and the meaning of the transnational environmental crime. Nowadays human activities have caused global warming and climate change through the use of fossil fuel and this finally generates the environmental harm or environmental crime. Unlike the past, the recent environmental crime happens not in one country or region but in the international or global level. Recently owing to the development of traffic vehicles like airplane or ship or car, some crimes are committed across the nations: for example, illegal trade of timber, arms, animals or polluting substances, so the environmental crimes are committed across the nations or global level, therefore it is called as the transnational environmental crime. The transnational environmental crime(TEC) means the environmental crime which happens across the nations or global level, and it is not easy to estimate the size of the TEC, so a lot of criminal gangs or organized crime are connected with the TEC. For example, criminal gangs or organized crime deliver the waste or E-waste like cellular phones or computers to the poor country illegally, are concerned with the illegal dumping of polluting substances, do the illegal trafficking of timer or animals like tigers or rhinos. However, each nation or UN has not proper countermeasures to the TEC, so the size of TEC is growing over the years, and more kinds of TEC is created by the criminal gangs or organized crime. Therefore it is needed to make a proper means to prevent TEC in the global level.

AmazonCRIME: un conjunto de datos y punto de referencia de Inteligencia Artificial Geoespacial para la clasificación de áreas potenciales vinculadas a Crímenes Ambientales Transnacionales en la Selva Amazónica

In this article the challenge of detecting areas linked to transnational environmental crimes in the Amazon rainforest is addressed using Geospatial Intelligence data, open access Sentinel-2 imagery provided by the Copernicus programme, as well as the cloud processing capabilities of the Google Earth Engine platform. For this, a dataset consisting of 6 classes with a total of 30,000 labelled and geo-referenced 13-band multispectral images was generated, which is used to feed advanced Geospatial Artificial Intelligence models (deep convolutional neural networks) specialised in image classification tasks. With the dataset presented in this paper it is possible to obtain a classification overall accuracy of 96.56%. It is also demonstrated how the results obtained can be used in real applications to support decision making aimed at preventing Transnational Environmental Crimes in the Amazon rainforest. The AmazonCRIME Dataset is made publicly available in the repository: https://github.com/jp-geoAI/AmazonCRIME.git.

Theoretical foundations of the poaching study: problems of legal regulation

The paper is concerned with theoretical and practical aspects of the poaching phenomenon as national and transnational environmental crime. It critically examines Russian legislation on the use of biological resources in general and countering poaching in particular and presents a review of research con-ducted internationally and in Russia as well as statistical data provided by international organizations and state bodies of the Russian Federation. It also defines the concept of poaching and its legal characteristics, highlights key challenges to countering poaching both within Russia and at the transnational level. Particular emphasis is placed on poaching across the Russia-China border adjacent to the Far Eastern and Siberian Federal Districts which ac-count for the rarest flora and fauna species in Russia. The paper outlines challenges to regulating federal anti-poaching legislation and current pitfalls in combating illicit trafficking of species at the state level. It considers op-posing viewpoints of researchers engaged in this field, their strengths and weaknesses, and suggests possible solutions to the identified problems. The paper concludes that methods of combating poaching are still underdeveloped and require certain legislative improvements at the level of national legislation and international cooperation.л.

Transnational Environmental Crimes

Transnational Environmental Crimes

Time for a Protocol on Transnational Environmental Crime?

Environmental law became global through the adoption of environmental treaties in the last quarter decade of the 20th century. Similarly, globalisation of criminal law accelerated when the Convention on Transnational Organised Crime 2000 (CTOC) deepened international legal cooperation between States to combat transnational crime. A protocol to the CTOC, complemented by voluntary guidelines and model legislation, could promote international harmonisation of laws against environmental crimes. This article argues that the time is right to bring together certain elements of international environmental and transnational criminal law.

Examining the Scale, Impacts of, and Response to, Illegal Logging in the Global Context

Globally, illegal logging has been one of the most profitable and fastest-growing types of transnational organized and environmental crime. Its black market has created a large domestic public outcry and generated a great deal of detrimental impacts on economic, social, environmental, and political security. However, illegal logging has been frequently overlooked by researchers, leading to limited understanding about the crime and the harmful consequences. Against this backdrop, by employing the secondary analysis method, this paper is designed to evaluate the scale of illegal logging, its diverse impacts, and international efforts to deal with this type of crime. It is found in this study that illegal logging remains extensive and increasingly sophisticated, transnational and organized across the world demonstrated by very high illicit profits, timber volumes and destroyed forest areas with inseparable links to other examples of major criminality, especially corruption. Although the crime generates abundant and detrimental economic, social, environmental, and political consequences, on the ground, the impact of global efforts to address the crime is dwarfed by its scale. Received 24th March 2020; Revised 17thAugust 2020; Accepted 26th September 2020

The Global Impact of Exercising Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Over Transnational Corporate Environmental Crimes in Extractive Industries

This article relates to contemporary topic, deals with subsoil use crimes and explores this as a subtype of environmental crimes committed by transnational corporations discussing the importance of choosing proper jurisdiction, and examines crimes in the field of subsoil use as a specific component of environmental crimes committed by transnational corporations involved in resource extraction and mining across the world. Their environmental harm, contribution to poverty and unfair utilization of resources is driven by greed and lure, and has long been heavily protected by legal jurisdictional cover-ups, which are now under scrutiny due to the globally evolving trend of exercising extraterritorial jurisdiction over certain torts committed by extractive industry operators. Appropriate criminological theories and studies of general and green criminology along with environmental justice are reviewed and reflected on. The author refers to unfair correlation of natural wealth and poverty, comes across the Brantinghamian definition of “crime” before turning to Sutherland’s conception of white-collar crime. The article also presents content analysis and case studies of the undergoing litigations, namely the case of Trafigura and Royal Dutch Shell.In concluding notes suggestions are offered for the future of environmental justice and the prevention of environmental crimes in extractive industries and mining.

Criminological Characteristics of Organized Environmental Crime in the Russian Federation

Throughout the world, modern environmental crime is characterized by the emergence of new forms of criminal behavior, improving ways of committing crimes and steadily increasing participation of organized criminal groups and communities in their commission. Nowadays, organized environmental crime along with environmental terrorism constitute a significant security threat. The distinctive features of organized environmental crime include: longevity and stability of a criminal organization, which in most cases effectively manages a complex of criminal activities from the organizational and economic point of view, and also has the ability to minimize the risks arising in this connection, long-term planning of activities, involving individuals and commercial structures, building criminal networks. Another characteristic feature is its focus on the market (including the illegal one). The organized groups often engage in criminal activities in various areas, committing environmental and economic and other types of crimes, while the corruption component is an integral feature of them. Organized transnational environmental crime carries out its activities in such key areas as illegal trade in rare and endangered species of wild fauna and flora and their derivatives, illegal logging and trade in illegal timber, illegal turnover of waste including illegal transportation, storage, discharge and burial, transboundary movement of hazardous waste, illegal fishing. Law enforcement and law enforcement agencies of various states pooling their efforts to curb ecologically criminal behavior, neutralizing all stages of the crime: planning, illegal extraction of resources, transportation, marketing, laundering of proceeds from crime play an important role in combating organized environmental crime. Eliminating the economic basis of the activities of criminal groups, reducing their profitability, is the key to success in combating it. Improvement of international legislation for development will create an integrated system of measures to counteract organized environmental crime at the level of individual states and ensure unification of national legislative systems in terms of terminology, compositions, and sanctions applied for the commission of environmental crimes by organized groups.

Transnational environmental crime threatens sustainable development

Transnational environmental crime has become the largest financial driver of social conflict, with severe implications for peace and security. Sustainable-development frameworks need to overtly recognize and mitigate the risks posed by transnational environmental crime to environmental security.

Problem-oriented policing of transnational environmental crimes: a social harms approach

ABSTRACTSince the publication of Herman Goldstein’s seminal article on Problem-oriented Policing (POP) in 1979, criminologists have attempted to apply its proactive methodology, with a large body of police work concentrating on how operational policing can benefit from the methodologies of POP, and specifically how events are recognised, approached and resolved as policing problems. Even then, most of these works ascribe a non-existing ontological value to events, supposing a bad actor against whom the good actor intervenes. This atomised, state-centrist notion of criminality has been discredited by social harms theory, which emphasises a reading of crime that reaches beyond the bureaucratic abilities of state criminal justice agencies. This article is aimed at illustrating how both POP and a social harms approach to crime can enrich each other, especially with regard to environmental crimes.

Towards extra-jurisdictional environmental management in combating transnational environmental crimes in Malaysia from a legal aspect

Environmental deterioration in Southeast Asia region can be attributed to illegal logging and timber smuggling which contributes to deforestation, wildlife smuggling, black-market transactions in ozone-depleting substances and dumping of other forms of hazardous wastes and chemical, illegal open burning incidents that can lead to air pollution contributing to transnational impacts. Controlling activities that are taking place within one State resulting to environmental impacts in another State is not uncommon in environmental issues and thus, such activities are construed as environmental crimes at times. Hence, any illegal activities within another jurisdiction must be addressed efficiently as the conduct of such activities are becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex partly due to the nature of transnational activities that operate beyond national boundaries. This article will discuss transnational environmental crime in Malaysia and Southeast Asia region and assess the application of adopting extra-jurisdictional approach to combat transnational environmental crime by drawing the example from Singapore’s experience of passing the Transboundary Haze Pollution Act 2014 to tackle challenges of haze pollution that are caused by activities in another State. The finding of this article suggests that extra-jurisdictional legislation is a common management tool in international law based on the international principle of territorial sovereign applies to conduct of a State within its territory. There seemed to be an exception that stems from a principle known as ‘objective territoriality principle’ under international law that allows another State to make claims against another State that commits environmental crime resulting to transnational impacts. The efficiency of extra-jurisdictional approach will be analysed based on Malaysia’s experiences in tackling transnational environmental crimes by reviewing domestic policies, local legislations and relevant international agreements to ensure that environmental protection is sustained.

Cooperation on Transnational Environmental Crime: Institutional Complexity Matters

There have been clear calls for enhanced international cooperation to meet the environmental, economic and criminal challenges of transnational environmental crime (TEC), defined here to include illegal wildlife trade, timber trafficking and the black market in ozone‐depleting substances. In the absence of an overarching international or transnational environmental crime legal framework, institutional settings are characterized by regime density and complexity amid a growing number of actors across related but distinct institutional settings. Scholars of international cooperation have worried that this kind of complexity leads to legal indeterminacy, normative ambiguity and regulatory uncertainty that will make cooperation more difficult. In the TEC sphere, these propositions remain under‐researched and untested. This article sketches the contours of a study that would bring some conceptual and empirical clarity to these issues. In doing so, it outlines the constitutive elements of the TEC regime complex and the nature of institutional interplay between and among those elements.

Australian Law to Combat Illegal Logging in Indonesia: A Gossamer Chain for Transnational Enforcement of Environmental Law

Two countries’ combined crime‐fighting ability might be greater than the sum of their individual capacities where their capabilities complement each other. This article investigates transnational coordination against environmental crime. Australian utilization of mutual legal assistance and anti‐money laundering mechanisms to prosecute offences related to illegal logging in Indonesia are examined as a case study. In theory, interrupting the transfer of proceeds of environmental crime across national borders enhances transnational law enforcement. The case study demonstrates that difficult legal obstacles can obstruct practical cooperation between neighbouring countries combating transnational environmental crime in the timber sector. Therefore, international harmonization of environmental crime laws is needed.

Handbook of Transnational Environmental Crime, edited by LorraineElliott and William H.Schaedla, published by Edward Elgar, 2016, 552 pp., £135, hardcover.

Handbook of Transnational Environmental Crime, edited by LorraineElliott and William H.Schaedla, published by Edward Elgar, 2016, 552 pp., £135, hardcover.

The Role of eu Agencies in Fighting Transnational Environmental Crime: New Challenges for Eurojust and Europol

The last decades have witnessed a growing emphasis on the relationship between environmental law and criminal law. Legislation aimed at tackling environmental crime has been adopted at national,eu, and international level and has been gradually evolving over time. These developments notwithstanding, the current legal framework faces a number of challenges in tackling the largely inter-related phenomena of transnational, organised and economic environmental crime. This study of Valsamis Mitsilegas and Fabio Giuffrida addresses these challenges by focusing on the role of the European Union- and more specifically its criminal justice agencies (Europol and Eurojust)- in tackling transnational environmental crime. The study analyses the role of Eurojust and Europol in supporting and coordinating the competent national authorities dealing with investigations and/or prosecutions on transnational environmental crime, and it shows that, for the time being, the full potential of these agencies is not adequately fulfilled with regard to fighting this phenomenon effectively.

Governance of the Illegal Trade in E‐waste and Tropical Timber: Case Studies on Transnational Environmental Crime, Green Criminology Series, by LieselotBisschop. Surrey, UK; Burlington, VT, USA: Ashgate, 2015, 220 pp. (including appendix, references, and index), ISBN 978‐1‐4724‐1540‐0, hardback, $109.95.

Governance of the Illegal Trade in E‐waste and Tropical Timber: Case Studies on Transnational Environmental Crime, Green Criminology Series, by LieselotBisschop. Surrey, UK; Burlington, VT, USA: Ashgate, 2015, 220 pp. (including appendix, references, and index), ISBN 978‐1‐4724‐1540‐0, hardback, $109.95.

Intelligence-led policing and transnational environmental crime: A process evaluation

Transnational environmental crime (TEC) threatens human health and the natural environment. Its complexity also poses a challenge for regulation and enforcement. In the current paper, we present a process evaluation of one attempt to use innovations in policing to improve TEC enforcement. Specifically, we assess the implementation of intelligence-led policing (ILP) in the Environment Agency’s Securing Compliant Waste Exports Project. We find that the team was able to fully implement the UK National Intelligence Model to address illegal exports of hazardous waste, including combining regulatory and enforcement data to generate actionable intelligence. Future research should examine the implementation of ILP in other contexts and to address other forms of TEC to evaluate the generalizability of these results.

Environmental policy challenge crime in Republic Serbia and its impact on environmental safety

Environmental law and ecological security representing nearly two related fields that have a scientific discipline in our legal security framework introduced in the first decade of this century. Despite this fact, the legal norms that regulate the protection and safety of the environment have been studied in the framework of other disciplines, and their etymology suggests that environmental regulations have existed in the ninth century, first as a prohibitive provision 'is prohibited'. It is known that environmental law to a certain extent based on criminal law norms and the norms of a protective object with the environment - Ekos. The fact of regulation of a large number of offenses in this field indicates the significance of the criminal policy which is in the field of environmental law and environmental security provides criminal protection. In this paper, in addition to general introductory remarks on environmental law, environmental safety and environmental tort, consider the area of combating environmental crime, the share of primary and secondary subjects of criminal procedural and international cooperation, particularly in combating transnational environmental crime. In the end, considering the environmental impact of crime on ecological security, clarifying the possible forms of threats and extent of the reaction.