Green Criminology: Widespread Caring Means Justice for All

"Caring for nonhumans, for their own sake, does not preclude caring for humans. Humans are more than capable of caring for many more than one kind of thing. Reasoning to the contrary might also be used to support the belief that honoring one's ethnicity is fundamentally incompatible with racial equality. These considerations indicate that nothing is inherently misanthropic about being non-anthropocentric.” — John Vucetich et al. 2015, cited in Treves et al. 2019, Just Preservation

“...everything has a right to be recognized and revered. Trees have tree rights, insects have insect rights, rivers have river rights, and mountains have mountain rights.” —Thomas Berry, The Great Work

A few weeks ago, I discovered an incredibly thought-provoking book edited by Drs. Piers Beirne and Nigel South called Issues in Green Criminology: Confronting Harms Against Environments, Humanity, and Other Animals. I couldn't put it down once I began reading it. I'd never heard of "Green Criminology" and was astounded by the breadth and diversity of topics it includes.¹ I hope that some of what I write will motivate people to read this forward-looking book and pay close attention to just how inclusive and timely Green Criminology truly is.

Source: Willan Publishing

To get the ball rolling, Green Criminology is "the analysis of environmental harms from a criminological perspective or the application of criminological thought to environmental issues. As elsewhere in criminology, this means thinking about offences (what crimes or harms are inflicted on the environment, and how), offenders (who commits crimes against the environment, and why) and victims (who suffers as a result of environmental damage, and how), and also about responses to environmental crimes: policing, punishment and crime prevention. On a more theoretical level, green criminology is interested in the social, economic, and political conditions that lead to environmental crimes; on a philosophical level it is concerned with which types of harms should be considered as 'crimes' and therefore within the remit of a green criminology."

The opening quotation for Issues in Green Criminology nicely lays the groundwork for what the editors want to accomplish. NYU's distinguished professor Dale Jamieson writes:

The addiction to beef that is characteristic of people in the industrialised countries is not only a moral atrocity for animals but also causes health problems for consumers, reduces grain supplies for the poor, precipitates social divisions in developing countries, contributes to climate change, leads to the conversion of forests to pasture lands, is a causal factor in overgrazing, and is implicated in the destruction of native plants and animals. If there is one issue on which animal liberationists and environmentalists should speak with a single voice it is on this issue." —Morality's Progress, p. 46.

I added the last italicized sentence above because it relates to what I write below about compassionate conservation and the One Health initiative. The range of topics addressed in the book is staggering and it's well worth seeing the breadth of what the authors cover.² They delve into an incredibly broad range of topics that, at first glance, don't seem to be related, but, in fact, truly are.

The One Health Triad

Source: Thddbfk, Wikipedia, creative commons

Green criminology, One Health, and compassionate conservation share common goals: Where to from here?

It was, and remains, difficult for me to synthesize all that I read in this seminal book, but one message rang true, namely, that harms against environments, humans, and other animals are all interrelated, Two ways in which I was able to make sense of all of the information was to cash it out in terms of the rapidly growing global field of compassionate conservation, in which the interests of all stakeholders are taken into account, and the One Health approach, "a way of looking at the world that helps humans to see and acknowledge that humans, other species, and the natural environment are all related to one another.³ These three pillars of One Health are completely entwined—if we harm one of these three pillars, all three are harmed."

People often criticize those who work on behalf of nonhumans by asking something like, "How dare you work with nonhumans when so many humans need help?" I always say that the life of every individual matters, and in today's challenging world, the only way forward is to pay careful attention to the plight of nonhumans, humans, and their homes. I hope that one day nonhumans will be recognized as property owners. When they're granted the right to own their homes, rather than merely renting them from us on our terms and whims, it will be a game-changer for fostering coexistence in which they and we are partners, rather than adversaries.

I hope that as time moves on, more and more people globally will adopt this collaborative and multidisciplinary approach that characterizes Green Criminology, compassionate conservation, and the One Health approach, all of which stress how important it is to work locally, nationally, and globally. They also recognize that we humans are just one of the gang, all of whom must work together for a better future for all beings and their homes.

Adopting these eclectic transdisciplinary perspectives that converge on common themes—although these close relationships haven't previously been explicitly recognized as far as I can determine—surely will be a win-win for all if they are the unwavering wave of the future.