Environmental development and sustainability: notes on a criminal policy for the environment
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| Formato: | Recurso digital |
| Lenguaje: | inglés |
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Zenodo
2025
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| _version_ | 1866901130000203776 |
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| author | Batista, Gustavo |
| author_facet | Batista, Gustavo |
| contents | <p><span lang="EN-US">In terms of Criminal Policy, discussing risk control that allows preventing environmental damage is a complex task and requires recognition of the limits imposed, especially in the West, on liberal criminal law to deal with a problem that is central to today's world.</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">Environmental protection encompasses three perspectives of possibilities regarding legal protection: reparatory, public ordering and punitive. One could glimpse in European legislation for the Protection of Forests and the resources found therein, produced in the 18th and 19th centuries, original antecedents of contemporary legal-environmental protection. However, these norms aimed more at protecting environmental resources as belonging to the heritage or property of the royal treasury or an aristocratic lordship than, strictly speaking, at protecting the environment as an autonomous and exclusive value. We highlight, among several examples, the regulation given to English forests by the Waltham Black Law, as a model aimed at excluding the possession and ecological relations maintained by the “peoples of the forests” in favor of the idea of protecting the royal heritage (THOMPSON, 1997). As a consequence of this, the English forestry regulations of the early 18th century ended up stimulating the exodus from the forests to the urban environment and contributing to the formation of cheap labor exploited by the later ascendant industrial capitalism, as well as the resulting destruction of the very forests that it was supposedly intended to protect.</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">The fact is that the environment is a diffuse interest that deserves attention so that environmental damage does not become irreversible, harming present and future generations. On the one hand, it is not possible to interpret the environmental issue from a private and patrimonial perspective, but it is necessary to discuss ecological relations as essential to the preservation of the existence of the Planet in its diversity of species and biomes. Therefore, preventing damage and reducing the impact on the environment by human action are indispensable points for a proposal for legal protection of environmental assets. The problem is that the law alone, without promoting the strengthening of environmental protection institutions, education for environmental preservation and channels for implementing the intended ecological protection, becomes insufficient to avoid the environmental tragedy so often prophesied over the last few years. This is the last territory of dispute between Economic Power and State Power that will result in the possibility or not of survival of a large portion of humanity.</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">Criminal protection of the environment must take into account the risk inherent in economic enterprises, the potential for widespread victimization (comprehensive and indeterminate) of ecological damage, and the consequences, almost always irreversible, of the environmental degradation caused. In general, environmental crime is an activity of a habitual or permanent nature and carried out in a strategic and organized manner in favor of a profit-making and capitalist company. It can involve practices of criminal associations involved in operations to seize and traffic environmental resources, as well as “white-collar” crimes that are carried out specifically within the scope of the development of business activities. Finally, it is necessary to perceive the intersection and cooperation between the various models of crime, reinforcing common actions of destruction of the environment. The very culture maintained in a capitalist civilization is predatory and encourages patterns of consumption and “technological and productive modernization” that are incompatible with environmental preservation.</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">In this text, we are interested in developing the characteristics of this “capitalist environmental crime” in a comprehensive manner, from its approach as corporate crimes, and observing the aspects related to “white-collar crimes” that underlie repressive and symbolic political-criminal discourses. It is also necessary to address the relevance and scope of the liability of legal entities for this analysis. Finally, we discuss the effectiveness of the punitive response to environmental damage and the alternative parameters of response and accountability that become more efficient for sustainable environmental protection. The problem we propose is: Is the so-called Environmental Criminal Law capable of fulfilling the objectives of responding to the criminality of pollution and environmental degradation practiced by capitalist companies that operate locally and globally?</span></p> |
| format | Recurso digital |
| id | zenodo_https___doi_org_10_5281_zenodo_15615830 |
| institution | Zenodo |
| language | eng |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publisher | Zenodo |
| record_format | zenodo |
| spellingShingle | Environmental development and sustainability: notes on a criminal policy for the environment Batista, Gustavo <p><span lang="EN-US">In terms of Criminal Policy, discussing risk control that allows preventing environmental damage is a complex task and requires recognition of the limits imposed, especially in the West, on liberal criminal law to deal with a problem that is central to today's world.</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">Environmental protection encompasses three perspectives of possibilities regarding legal protection: reparatory, public ordering and punitive. One could glimpse in European legislation for the Protection of Forests and the resources found therein, produced in the 18th and 19th centuries, original antecedents of contemporary legal-environmental protection. However, these norms aimed more at protecting environmental resources as belonging to the heritage or property of the royal treasury or an aristocratic lordship than, strictly speaking, at protecting the environment as an autonomous and exclusive value. We highlight, among several examples, the regulation given to English forests by the Waltham Black Law, as a model aimed at excluding the possession and ecological relations maintained by the “peoples of the forests” in favor of the idea of protecting the royal heritage (THOMPSON, 1997). As a consequence of this, the English forestry regulations of the early 18th century ended up stimulating the exodus from the forests to the urban environment and contributing to the formation of cheap labor exploited by the later ascendant industrial capitalism, as well as the resulting destruction of the very forests that it was supposedly intended to protect.</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">The fact is that the environment is a diffuse interest that deserves attention so that environmental damage does not become irreversible, harming present and future generations. On the one hand, it is not possible to interpret the environmental issue from a private and patrimonial perspective, but it is necessary to discuss ecological relations as essential to the preservation of the existence of the Planet in its diversity of species and biomes. Therefore, preventing damage and reducing the impact on the environment by human action are indispensable points for a proposal for legal protection of environmental assets. The problem is that the law alone, without promoting the strengthening of environmental protection institutions, education for environmental preservation and channels for implementing the intended ecological protection, becomes insufficient to avoid the environmental tragedy so often prophesied over the last few years. This is the last territory of dispute between Economic Power and State Power that will result in the possibility or not of survival of a large portion of humanity.</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">Criminal protection of the environment must take into account the risk inherent in economic enterprises, the potential for widespread victimization (comprehensive and indeterminate) of ecological damage, and the consequences, almost always irreversible, of the environmental degradation caused. In general, environmental crime is an activity of a habitual or permanent nature and carried out in a strategic and organized manner in favor of a profit-making and capitalist company. It can involve practices of criminal associations involved in operations to seize and traffic environmental resources, as well as “white-collar” crimes that are carried out specifically within the scope of the development of business activities. Finally, it is necessary to perceive the intersection and cooperation between the various models of crime, reinforcing common actions of destruction of the environment. The very culture maintained in a capitalist civilization is predatory and encourages patterns of consumption and “technological and productive modernization” that are incompatible with environmental preservation.</span></p> <p><span lang="EN-US">In this text, we are interested in developing the characteristics of this “capitalist environmental crime” in a comprehensive manner, from its approach as corporate crimes, and observing the aspects related to “white-collar crimes” that underlie repressive and symbolic political-criminal discourses. It is also necessary to address the relevance and scope of the liability of legal entities for this analysis. Finally, we discuss the effectiveness of the punitive response to environmental damage and the alternative parameters of response and accountability that become more efficient for sustainable environmental protection. The problem we propose is: Is the so-called Environmental Criminal Law capable of fulfilling the objectives of responding to the criminality of pollution and environmental degradation practiced by capitalist companies that operate locally and globally?</span></p> |
| title | Environmental development and sustainability: notes on a criminal policy for the environment |
| url | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15615830 |