Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence: Environmental Crime, Human Security, and Justice [1st ed.] 9783030585600, 9783030585617

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Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence Environmental Crime, Human Security, and Justice Peter Stoett · Delon Alain Omrow

Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence

Peter Stoett · Delon Alain Omrow

Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence Environmental Crime, Human Security, and Justice

Peter Stoett Faculty of Social Science and Humanities Ontario Tech University Oshawa, ON, Canada

Delon Alain Omrow Faculty of Social Science and Humanities Ontario Tech University Oshawa, ON, Canada

ISBN 978-3-030-58560-0 ISBN 978-3-030-58561-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58561-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: mauritius images GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

One of the greatest threats to environmental and human security today is transnational ecoviolence and crime, which has become both a lucrative enterprise and a mode of life in many regions of the world. Taking an explicitly interdisciplinary approach, this text provides a comprehensive overview of transnational ecoviolence, moving away from the more traditional treatment of ecoviolence as the study of conflicts resulting from resource scarcity (though these are certainly involved as well). If we expand the conventional definition of crime to include both acts and structures of violence, future historians may well look back at the current era as the era of transnational ecoviolence and crime, when we failed to come to grips with its extent and to deal effectively with it on numerous jurisdictional levels. We use ecoviolence here as Laura Westra used it in an often overlooked volume she published in 2004; though it encompasses violence related to conflicts over natural resources (as Thomas HomerDixon and others have researched so well), it also includes violence against nature that is either illegal or, as some would say, damn well should be. We argue that we cannot seriously consider stopping ecoviolence without also promoting environmental (and climate) justice as well as human security. Environmental crime is linked intimately to, and could even be defined as, violence: violence against nature, violence against humans. The book engages in a conceptual discussion of this era-defining violence and offers case study material that illustrates the complexity of

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the issues. Clearly, we need robust and programmatic responses to egregious violence against nature and insults to environmental justice on a broad spectrum of scale, from small communities to the biosphere. Importantly, borrowing from the pioneering work of green criminologist Robert White, we should not view transnational environmental crime as a “southern” problem, since northern states and corporations are also heavily invested in the criminal projects that taken together threaten the ability of future generations to care for themselves. And a point we readily confess to belaboring throughout this book: it is essential to integrate the theme of climate justice in any contemporary treatment of transnational ecoviolence and crime, not merely for ethical reasons but for the strategic necessity of legitimizing efforts, often less than agreeable, to reduce ecoviolence itself. Surprisingly to some North Americans, perhaps, this is not a contentious point. From aiding the spread of invasive species and transmission of new diseases, to the rise in sea levels and disruptive extreme weather events, climate change is shaping the landscape for transnational ecoviolence today. If the prolific expansion of global trade opened new doors for environmental crime in the past century, climate change is opening them again today, evincing everything from climate mitigation fraud to land grabs disguised as community resettlement programs organized by coercive forces and criminal gangs. We dedicate a chapter in this book to climate crime, ranging from fraudsters selling fake carbon offsets to gullible consumers to what some would no doubt argue is the crime of the century, the deliberate spreading of misinformation on the reality and impacts of climate change by the fossil fuel industry and others with monetary stakes in a carbon-based global economy. But climate permeates all the issues discussed in the book. A second major factor in enabling the commission of transnational ecoviolence and crime today is the advent of modern technology: digitized and instantaneous communication across the globe is but one example. The systemic use of the dark net, for example, which has made child pornography readily available for viewing, has also permeated the illegal wildlife trade. However, as with climate change, there is another side to this constantly evolving coin. Technology can be used to fight transnational environmental crime in an unprecedented manner today: monitoring the Internet through algorithm, the use of high-resolution satellite and drone surveillance, the use of DNA sampling to identify species’ origins, and other techniques have all come into vogue. Are they all politically acceptable/feasible in liberal democracies? Are they further steps

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toward an AI-driven totalitarianism, or even the “green leviathan” loathed by those who fear dictatorship and authoritarianism arising from scarcity, or a corporatism driven by the tech industries themselves? The text also addresses the debate over defining ecocide and the establishment of international legal institutions that can effectively respond to transnational ecoviolence and crime today. Because it is so intimately linked to political violence, economic and physical displacement, and development opportunity costs, we believe that transnational ecoviolence must be viewed primarily as a human security issue (the term “human security” has a long and complicated lineage at this point, but as long as there are decision-making human beings, we will periodically circle back to discussions about its legitimacy and practicality). However, this makes fighting transnational ecoviolence, in a world still driven by the central concerns of national and corporate security, and even through relatively legitimate institutions such as INTERPOL, a very complex task that will be affected by geopolitics, nationalism, deregulatory impulses, authoritarian states, rebel factions and extremists, broader socio-economic patterns, and many other factors. This book is not intended as a primer in how to “fight” crime. It is not written, strictly, from a criminological viewpoint, but rather is intended to cover the politics behind (and in front of) formal and informal transnational ecoviolence, including the international political economy that drives it, and which stresses the legitimacy of efforts to combat both its pernicious effects and root causes. We are not claiming to have solved any of the problems we discuss in the book; our goal is to encourage further discussion and the application of possible solutions. But as we struggle through the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the zoonotic origins of which may have been linked to the illegal wildlife trade, and as indigenous people in Brazil, Canada, and elsewhere struggle to protect their land from further assault, and as we drain the oceans of marine life, and as climate change continues to threaten our very collective survival, this discussion is more pertinent than ever. Oshawa, Canada

Peter Stoett Delon Alain Omrow

Acknowledgments

The first thing to acknowledge is the immense patience of the editorial crew at Palgrave Macmillan, who tolerated two-year-long extensions required due to a change in Dr. Stoett’s employment circumstances as he moved from Director of the Loyola Sustainability Research Centre at Concordia University in Montreal to Dean of Social Science and Humanities at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, near Toronto; and then taking on a major assignment co-chairing the first international assessment on the spread and control of invasive alien species with the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). It has been an ongoing pleasure working with Anca Pusca and Rachel Moore at Palgrave, who have provided clear guidance and stuck with the project throughout all the curves in the road. Both authors are grateful to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), which sponsored a workshop held in January 2019 in Toronto that gathered experts from around the globe to discuss the challenge of transnational environmental crime; this resulted in a joint publication in Nature: Sustainability (Gore et al. 2019) and a commitment to look deeper into the conceptual and practical implications of the threats posed by the spheres of transnational ecoviolence discussed here. Many of those who attended the meeting have been primary sources of inspiration and information, including Sheldon Jordan, Director General, Wildlife Enforcement, at Environment and Climate Change Canada, and many authors cited in this book.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are very grateful for the extremely helpful comments of an anonymous reviewer, who put together a direct, detailed, and insightful review in amazingly short turnaround time. Special thanks also to freelance British-Tunisian journalist and co-founder of the West Africa Fisheries Journalism Training Project Mona Samari, who provided a succinct case study of illegal fishing off the coast of West Africa which we included in Chapter 4. Delon acknowledges with gratitude the support of Tas Rasool, whose warmth continues to encourage and inspire him in his intellectual pursuits. He is grateful to his nieces, Tianna and Naya, for giving him a renewed sense of hope for the future. He would like to extend a special thanks to Peter for inviting him to contribute to this book and is humbled to work with such a brilliant and prolific writer. He dedicates this book to the memory of his grandmother, Moongeah “Edith” Thakurdin née Ramesra, who passed away with inimitable grace in January 2019. Peter thanks the staff and especially Executive Assistant Kirstie Ayottte at the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at Ontario Tech University for coping with his unusual schedule. He is grateful to Delon for coming onboard and adding his intellectual acumen, writing skills, and creative energy to this project at just the right time. And he is especially grateful to his family, including Gianluca, Giuliana, and Alexandra; and the incomparable Cristina Romanelli, who is not just a partner in life but a constant source of knowledge and light, and whose work on the links between biodiversity and health has informed the world. He dedicates this book to the memory of his father, Frederik Stoett, who left us after a valiant struggle in February 2020; and to the future of his granddaughter, Everley Stoett Small, who joined us soon after. Toronto and Montreal May 2020

Reference Gore, M., P. Braszak, J. Brown, P. Cassey, R. Duffy, J. Fisher, J. Graham, R. Justo-Hanani, A. Kirkwood, E. Lunstrum, C. Machalaba, F. Masse, M. Manguiat, P. Stoett, T. Wyatt, and R. White. 2019. “Transnational Environmental Crime Threatens Sustainable Development.” Nature Sustainability 2(1): 784–786.

Contents

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Transnational Ecoviolence and Crime: Revisiting Environmental Justice and Human Security Introduction Defining Violence Agential and Structural Ecoviolence Environmental Justice and Human Security What Is Transnational Ecoviolence and Crime? Moving Forward: Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence Conclusion References

1 1 5 12 16 24 30 32 33

Ecoviolence Against Fauna: The Illegal Wildlife Trade Introduction The Contemporary IWT The Architects of Ecoviolence Global Responses to the IWT The Illegal Trade of Turtles The Illegal Trade of Pangolins The Illegal Trade of Hyacinth Macaws Syncretic Analysis: The Seed-Finch’s Song of Freedom Conclusion References

41 41 42 45 50 54 55 58 60 64 65

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73 73 75 80 81 84 86 95 96

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The Transnationalization of Hazardous Waste Introduction Conceptualizing Hazardous Waste Canada and the Global Waste Trade Waste Disposal in the United States Transnational Waste and the Eco-Mafia Syncretic Analysis: Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS) Conclusion References

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Transnational Oceanic Ecoviolence Introduction What Is IUU Fishing? Environmental Justice and Reduction Fisheries Human Security and Sea Slavery Syncretic Analysis: IUU on the West African Coast Conclusion References

103 103 107 109 113 116 121 122

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Floral Transnational Ecoviolence Introduction Conceptualizing Forest, Timber, and Plant Crime Dudleya Poaching and Trading The Transnationalization of the Ginseng Trade Human Security and Floral Transnational Ecoviolence in Peru Syncretic Analysis: Mexico’s “Avocado Republics” Conclusion References

127 127 129 138 139

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From Petty Fraud to Global Injustice: Climate Ecoviolence Introduction And Justice for All? Conceptualizing Climate Ecoviolence Chlorofluorocarbon Trade Perverse Consequences: Green Land Grabs and Conflict Minerals

141 143 148 149

155 155 159 163 172 174

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Human Security and Climate Change in Turkey Syncretic Analysis: The Wildfires in Australia Conclusion References

178 180 184 186

Responses to Transnational Ecoviolence and Crime Introduction States and Markets Militarized Responses The Protection of Environmental Activists High Tech Approaches International Efforts INTERPOL and NESTs Two Quick Examples: Predator and Wisdom International Courts, Real and Imagined Earth Jurisprudence Conclusion References

195 195 196 202 204 208 212 220 225 227 232 234 236

References

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Index

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 7.1

Selected spheres of transnational ecoviolence National environmental security taskforces (Source Higgins and White [2016], INTERPOL [2014])

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CHAPTER 1

Transnational Ecoviolence and Crime: Revisiting Environmental Justice and Human Security

Violence comes in many forms, including road traffic and industrial accidents, gender-based sexual abuse, sexual harassment against women, self-inflicted suicides, and violence due to organized crime. Like infectious diseases, many of these harmful behaviors are ‘socially contagious’ – transmitted through imitative behavior, promoted by the mass media, and perpetrated by transnational criminal networks. Gahr Store et al., 2003: 71 Combining financial and economic values, illegal logging, fishing, and wildlife trade has an estimated full global economic value of about $1 trillion to $2 trillion per year. More than 90 percent comes from the estimated value of ecosystem, regulating and cultural services that are not priced by the market. It is double or more the global risks of counterfeiting and piracy, which are estimated at $509 billion, or 3.3 percent of world trade in 2016. World Bank Group, 2019: 18

Introduction If there is a common theme across dimensions of social thought today, it is that great change is upon us; that the environment, which sustains us and grants us the ability to even think of enjoyable, wonderful futures, is in a form of peril that could only be eclipsed (perhaps) by the advent of full-scale thermo-nuclear war or a calamitous meteor impact. To be © The Author(s) 2021 P. Stoett and D. A. Omrow, Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58561-7_1

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clear, it’s not Earth itself that is at stake here. It’s the thin layer of life we call the biosphere and, more particularly, the species homo sapiens which, for better or worse, inhabits it. Climate change (and the heated political discourse on doing something about it) is the most visible manifestation of a broader crisis in the human-environment relationship, but biodiversity loss, massive natural resource consumption, the interlinked oceans crises, toxic pollution, ozone layer depletion, and many other concerns are all related, global in scope, local in destruction, and caused in some manner by human conduct (see Stoett 2019). The rapid spread of the zoonotic novel coronavirus COVID-19 in 2020 may have been linked to live wildlife markets in China that have been linked to the illegal wildlife trade (Yu 2020; Vidal 2020), and it’s widely accepted that habitat destruction and climate change will induce more newly emerging and reemerging infectious diseases in the future (see Morens and Fauci 2013; Daszak et al. 2001; and various IPCC reports). People have done this. No one hurls the lightning bolts that start forest fires, but we certainly helped dry out the forest surface so that it burns so quickly and bright. No one decides how often and when endangered species will mate and propagate, but we have certainly made their survival in the wild increasingly difficult, if not impossible. Human agency is at the causal heart of our ecological footprint and any attendant angst over our continued collective survival is well-deserved. Meanwhile, we continue to exploit not just the natural environment, but each other. One can plausibly argue that great advances in human dignity, freedom, and equality have been made since the days of feudalism and slave economies, but it is impossible to deny the continuation of a global political economy based on mass exploitation. We are in the midst of a massive act of violence against nature, and attendant crimes against humanity: the socio-legal structures that facilitate this bear scrutiny and must be reformed if we are to get off this path. This book is focused primarily on one particular aspect of this contextual challenge: the rise and expansion and fight against both formal (legislated) and informal (uncodified directly, but equally harmful) transnational environmental crime, which we broadly label transnational ecoviolence, and the human suffering that accompanies it. Typically, “ecoviolence” has referred to violence that results from conflicts over natural resources and/or resource scarcity (or abundance) amid growing population pressure, a theme explored by Thomas Homer-Dixon and others (Homer-Dixon and Blitt 1998; de Soysa 2002; Gleditsch and

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Urdal 2002); but we use the term to connote agential and structural violence, as discussed later in this chapter, which coterminously affects both nature and people, and which may or may not take place during conflict. Our use of the term is thus closer to Laura Westra’s employment of it in her often overlooked 2004 book Ecoviolence and the Law: Supranormative Foundations of Ecocrime (Westra 2004). We are emphatic about the linkage between environmental justice and human security: there are few forms of environmental crime that do not involve human suffering, exploitation, fraud, or some other wrong against individuals or communities. Treating ecoviolence otherwise—removing the element of human pain—is an empirical and, one can plausibly argue, strategic error. The reverse is often the case, as well: many crimes against humanity, and cases of severe economic exploitation including that of children, are accompanied by cumulative environmental harm, much as warfare is not only bad for the people it kills and maims, but it also destroys the trees, rivers, and wildlife that sustain them. Many forms of transnational ecoviolence are also linked historically to the imperialist projects that have themselves perpetrated extreme exploitation (also known as super-exploitation in some Marxist circles) in the periphery of the global economy (Smith 2016). This volume is rooted firmly in the premise that we must look at environmental harms as clusters of ecological, social, and economic damage; ecoviolence (whether it crosses borders in its transmission or not) is a threat to both environmental justice and human security. And it can also be seen as a violation of the inherent rights of nature (see Humphreys 2016; Maloney and Burdon 2014), if that conceptual lens is adapted. If nature has rights, and we openly think it should, then violations of those rights are a form of violence, just as violations of human rights are usually regarded as violent acts as well. When ecoviolence breaks laws and involves actors in more than one country, this is labeled formal transnational environmental crime; when it does not break any formal law but violates what we could consider to be the inherent rights of nature and the human rights to environmental justice and human security, this is labeled informal transnational environmental crime. In order to include both these variants, and to pay homage to the progressive development of an Earth Jurisprudence that assigns inherent rights to nature, we prefer to use the term transnational ecoviolence. This book is thus inspired by previous efforts in political science, human geography, international law, environmental science, criminology,

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and other disciplines; it is an inherently interdisciplinary exercise. We are not claiming novelty here, but are seeking to convey a new way of looking at things. Much of what has come to be known as “green criminology” is not altogether a new academic enterprise, though it continues to be treated as novel in some circles. An edited book published in 2007 integrated previously published work on the general theme (Beirne and South 2007). However it is mainly concerned with wedding “the movements in green environmentalism and in animal rights” (xiii). Boyd and Menzies edited a text on “toxic criminology” in 2002; Del Frate and Norberry edited one on environmental crime in 1993; Williams published an article on “an environmental victimology” in 1996. The term “greening of criminology” was used in a textbook published in 2004 (Carrabine et al. 2004), which generated some debate (see Halsey 2004); Robert White has been presenting a framework for studying green criminology in various guises since 2010, including an “eco-global criminology” (White 2011). As thematic subjects, environmental crime and green criminology are in themselves worthy pursuits, but their own interdisciplinary nature means that scholars from a vast array of other fields, including history, anthropology, sociology, political science, chemistry, geography, legal studies, biology, journalism, and many others, must contribute to their evolution (see Elliott and Schaedla 2016). We’ve tried to integrate various disciplines in the discussions and analyses that follow, and to supersede our own disciplinary callings in the process. At the same time, given the extent of the disasters unfolding before our eyes and the preponderance of failure in efforts to mitigate it, a critical perspective is highly warranted here. We live in an age characterized by the public anxieties discussed above, but the specific anxieties of wealth (or, more directly, the frets and concerns, both understandable and exaggerated, of the wealthy) continue to plague both established and emerging public discourses over security. Indeed, the privatization of security provision, and the adaptation to environmental change afforded only by wealth, are two of the key themes of this century (both of them began much earlier, of course). Everything from prison systems to neighborhood watches to pandemic responses have been privatized and militarized and made profitable in many parts of the world. Conservation, meanwhile, is increasingly subject to securitization as a response within the neoliberal framework that accepts and indeed promotes privatized and militarized protection as a market commodity. One of the bigger debates raging within the conservationist community is whether a heavily

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weaponized approach to “saving” nature is warranted under a consequentialist ethics given the extremity of the biodiversity crisis. We will return to this theme throughout this book, but it partly derives from a critical criminology popularized by Hillyard (2004) and others and has been picked up by many engaged in the green criminology enterprise (Wyatt 2013). It is just one aspect of the set of circumstances we face in what is widely labeled the anthropocene (see Dalby 2020). Transnational ecoviolence, as a concept, opens many doors to a broader understanding of criminal activity: beyond the individual, since entities such as corporations and governments are generally the chief culprits; beyond the legal, since even severe environmental harm is often quite lawful in character; beyond the tendency to avoid focusing on systemic corruption as a major factor in crime (much as political science struggles to deal with it as a sustained aspect of governance). But it does not, nor should it, deflect from what is arguably the central preoccupation of those concerned with crime, which is the reduction of harm, in this case to both to the environment, and to nature (distinguishing these is not simple, but one includes city skies and the other doesn’t). Hauck (2007), in a discussion of illegal fisheries in South Africa, makes this point clearly: “interestingly, in the green criminology literature, there seems to be little direct reference thus far to the discourse on human security, non-traditional security, or more specifically, environmental security….” Another way of putting this: the question of what constitutes violence, as a concept, remains central to an understanding of the politics (international, national, local) of environmental crime, when we take human security as one of our main concerns. We turn to a discussion of this question next.

Defining Violence1 If we are linking human security and environmental crime, one of the most obvious overlaps is the existence or threat of violence. But what do we mean by “violence”? The focus on ecoviolence differentiates our present concerns from the much broader study of international relations, ecopolitics, environmental politics, political geography, or even political ecology. It obviously entails more than just violence against nature,

1 Parts of this section have been taken from Stoett (2012).

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but what analytic path does it take us down? Again, we are moving beyond the popular employment of the term “ecoviolence”, which refers mainly to armed conflicts that have resulted from population pressure and resource scarcity (Homer-Dixon and Britt 1998), though those situations are certainly violent, to the inclusion of environmental crimes, formal and informal. Why do we want to expand the term in this way, and what would a broader conception look like? We can begin with a short discussion of the root concept of violence itself. The word violence means many things to many people, of course. Violence is ugly, inflicted, a violation; it can be beautiful, choreographed, even emulated. It is unfortunate, disproportionate, random, personal, political, epistemic, structural, mechanical. Violence is pain, it is release; it is oppressive, it is liberating; it is shamed, it is commercialized. It is the core human reflex; it is the result of institutional cultural construction; it is unleashed rage or calculated sadism. Violence echoes in the collective soul, the murdered demanding revenge. Violence takes and frees slaves, and forces labor as well as progressive change. And yet a definition, or at least an employable typology, of ecoviolence is central to the task of understanding how it can affect those who are, as the African saying has it, caught on the grass between feuding elephants. We would simply refer to eco-conflict if all we implied was contestation, or the clash of interests, over natural resources. The use of the term violence certainly implies that some form of injury or violation of persons or norms has occurred, or could occur, as a result of factors present in the physical environment, beyond the mere existence of social conflict. The case studies generated by interdisciplinary analysts tend to assume that ecoviolence is the potential dependent variable, but they rarely actually discuss the meaning of the term itself. Such a discussion raises ancillary questions about the meaning of human conflict, humannature relations, structural oppression, human security, and a plethora of other factors which together constitute the conceptual landscape of ecoviolence. It will also raise the perplexing fact that the fight against ecoviolence can, in itself, be quite violent in nature, whether it is the dispossession of people dependent on natural resources for conservationist purposes, shoot-on-sight park ranger policies in response to poaching, or the use of coerced labor to extract the rare Earth minerals necessary for producing battery-operated vehicles (Church and Crawford 2018). Despite its centrality to the raison-d-etre of the human sciences, violence has been notoriously difficult to hunt down in definitional terms. (No surprise: most definitions, even the more widely cited within the

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social sciences, are openly vague, offering tantalizing avenues for further exploration.) For example, Audi defines violence as “the physical attack upon, or the vigorous physical abuse of, or vigorous physical struggle against, a person or animal; or the highly vigorous psychological abuse of, or the sharp, caustic psychological attack upon, a person or animal; or the highly vigorous, or incendiary, or malicious and vigorous, destruction or damaging of property or potential property”. However, he fully admits that this definition is “seriously vague” (1974: 49), though the inclusion of the term “animal” is welcome. Wolff conceptualizes violence as “the illegitimate or unauthorized use of force to effect decisions against the will or desire of others. Thus, murder is an act of violence, but capital punishment by a legitimate state is not; theft or extortion is violent, but the collection of taxes by a legitimate state is not ” (Wolff 1969: 606; italics in original). Wolff argues that it is wrong “to restrict the term ‘violence’ to uses of force that involve bodily interference or the direct infliction of physical injury” (ibid.) as this definition is too limited in scope and excludes a variety of non-physical actions that may still cause personal harm, but his emphasis on state legitimacy is curiously ethnocentric. Lee (1996) examines the literature related to definitions of violence and determines that, while there is a consensus among scholars that violence causes harm to people (though some would include non-humans), there is robust debate as to whether a definition of violence must include an act of physical force or not (and if it does not, then can human systemic impoverishment or poverty not be included in the definition?). Lee then distinguishes between positive rules (social and legal rules enforced by the state through its legitimate power) and “ideal” rules regarding morality and justice in society. As poverty is a violation of society’s “ideal” rules, Lee argues that it should be included in a definition of violence, as both direct personal violence and structural violence cause harm and are therefore equally immoral. Jackman combines vagueness with endless possibility: he defines violence as “actions that inflict, threaten, or cause injury. Actions may be corporal, written, or verbal. Injuries may be corporal, psychological, material, or social” (Jackman 2002: 405). Turpin and Kurtz argue against a minimalist definition of violence, since “[t]he tendency to see violence as the consequence of aberrant behavior committed by deviant individuals at the margins of society obscures the central roles violence plays at the very foundations of the social order and the fundamental dilemmas that humans face” (Turpin and Kurtz 1997: 207).

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Michel Foucault’s work in Discipline and Punish (1977) and elsewhere seeks out the complex relationships between a poststructural understanding of power, institutional, personal, and epistemic violence, and normalization (indeed the opening pages of Discipline and Punish may provide as good an antidote to Wolff’s barometer of state legitimacy as any in Western literature). Garver (1975) argues that, in human affairs at least, violence “is much more closely connected with the idea of violation than with the idea of force. What is fundamental about violence is that someone is violated”. However, this violation could be a permanent condition, made possible by structures of power (force), and not a one-time affair. Meanwhile, Bufacchi (2009) offers a succinct literature review of definitions of violence from philosophy and sociology texts and categorizes these definitions into two separate concepts: violence as an intentional act of excessive or destructive force (Bufacchi labels this the “Minimalist Conception of Violence” or MCV) and violence as a violation of rights (labeled the “Comprehensive Conception of Violence” or CCV). And then there is the “bio-psycho-social” approach: “[w]e can define disease, broadly enough to include violence, as any force or process at work within an organism or species that tends to cause the death of the organism, or, especially, the extinction of the species”. Extinction could certainly be seen as a supreme act of violence against nature. Gilligan refers to violence as “the infliction of physical injury on a human being by a human being, whether oneself or another, especially when the injury is lethal, but also when it is life-threatening, mutilating, or disabling; and whether it is caused by deliberate, conscious intention or by careless disregard and unconcern for the safety of one-self or others” (Gilligan 2004: 6). The latter part of this broad definition would certainly include the “externality costs” of pollution that often result from legal and illegal natural resource extraction and production activities. His usual succinct brilliance in hand, Charles Tilly provides three prevalent and competing views of the meaning of violence, as propensity-driven behavior, as instrumental interaction, and as cultural form: Treatments of violence as propensity-driven behavior locate its causes within the actor, calling attention to genetic, emotional, or cognitive peculiarities that incline a given individual, group, or category of persons, to damaging behavior more than others. Portrayals of violence as instrumental interaction characterize everything from petty assaults to all-out warfare as means (however inefficient and self-defeating) to power, wealth, prestige, or other ends. To call violence a cultural form – as in the claim that because

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of the frontier, slavery, or capitalist competition the United States has an exceptionally violent culture – argues that the ready availability of certain ideas, practices, models, and beliefs itself promotes violent action. (Tilly 2000: 3)

This ushers us toward the inevitable old chestnut in international relations (IR) theory, the agent-structure debate; the tricky question of intent is central to all three of these conceptions. Within the broader IR and development literature, the study of war (Waltz 1959) and the brutalities of imperialism(s) (Long and Schmidt 2005) have put violence on the center stage of world history; at the very least certain types of violence have received privileged attention as political thought and politics have evolved, a condition itself of epistemic violence recognized by feminist scholarship both within and outside of IR (Shephard 2009). Common sense would dictate that war and extreme exploitation cannot be nonviolent, but there is much less consensus about the ethical acceptability of such strategic or instrumental violence (means versus ends or consequentialist arguments) and how all this relates to nature and ecology. Even this brief discussion makes it clear that consensus would be impossible to achieve on this specific question. We face the additional question, however, of how all this relates to the environment, and to a political geography of violence. It should be clear at the outset that even the less direct terminology often employed, “environmentally induced conflict” is regarded by many as “fundamentally flawed, as it relies on preconceived causalities, intermingles ecocentric with anthropocentric philosophies, and neglects the motivations and subjective perceptions of local actors” (Hagmann 2005: 2). Yet it does direct our attention toward possible links between violence and environmental degradation, which is obviously an important association if we value either human life or nature (or both), so we had better have some sort of common understanding about what the former term means. We begin however with what we suggest it does not mean: there are still strong tendencies to conflate nature and violence as similar or mutually symbiotic concepts. On the one hand, it could be suggested that this simply reflects the violent nature—the predator-prey symbioses— of nature itself. This is a theme close to the hearts of instinctivists, or sociobiologists, and part of the broader discussion of the origins of war, territorial and interpersonal aggression and predation, and imperialism (see Waltz 1959, for a classic treatment on the origins of war at

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the individual, national, and international levels). Ecoviolence committed by human beings may simply be the order of things, and interventions (humanitarian or not) are therefore counter-productive in the long run, merely delaying the inevitable. Paul Robbins explains the logic of what he terms “crude Malthusianism”: “since famine and starvation were essential to controlling runaway human populations, such events are ‘natural’ and inevitable” (2020: 14). So too is our onslaught against nature as we struggle to survive as a species; if this onslaught results in our collective demise then that will be the best gift we can impart to nature. This perspective carries little promise for advancing human or environmental security, but, after a short leap guided by the lifeboat ethics of Garrett Hardin (1968) and company, does push us closer to a modern social Darwinism fixated on fantasies about population control. Invasive species, predatory killers, stalking lionesses, charging rams, blood-thirsty bats, flesh-tearing sharks: no shortage of film footage here, much of it genuine but much more orchestrated to accommodate the camera. The need to cull herds on occasion for the sake of future generations of genetic winners is a common theme in both biological and political terms. Ecoviolence is not a problem, inherently, and it is often a good thing, and not only because of its evolutionary inevitability; after all, if the specter of ecoviolence can add prescriptive urgency and pragmatic value to the promotion of environmental protection, it can help raise the awareness needed to save our own species from destroying the nest. While deliberately avoiding the hostile arena of debate over original sin, sociobiology, or psychoanalysis, we can argue that this perspective is, thankfully, the antithesis of the normative project which animates most research in the area of environmental crises and social conflict today. Though it may well be that “[w]e and the beasts are kin” (Seton 1898: 12; see also Noske 1997), the ethical questions raised by invasive species offer an interesting example of how futile a perspective which equates humans with them actually is: while they are certainly problematic for the indigenous species they overcrowd, overshadow, devour, or out-mate, this does not mean bio-invaders have anything but the best of intentions— survival. It is difficult to pin moral agency on them, but fairly impossible by most understanding to not pin it on humans. Adding to the metaphor, invasive species are often the result of either accidental or purposeful introductions by human beings, usually through trade and tourism, but also often through military activity (see Stoett 2007; this concern is amplified by ongoing climate change, widespread plastic pollution, disease transmission, land degradation, and other variables which can exacerbate

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the spread of IAS—Stoett and Vince 2019). On the contrary, we have a vested interest in protecting ourselves from microbial invasions and this extends to the protection of local ecosystems from exogenous bioassault. (Though many technical responses to bioinvasion can be ecocidal in nature, they are deemed by most observers to serve the greater good of conserving biodiversity.) We may revert to petri-dish ethics in relation to human population movements, but the array of moral ascriptions is hardly uniform. Moral agency remains both foundational and optically fundamental. More to the point perhaps, scarcity itself is not a trustworthy independent variable. As Conca and Wallace suggest, “…much of the eco-conflict literature has invoked ‘scarcity’ without paying attention to how social relations create the conditions for resource capture or other forms of social scarcity”. Conversely, “… the precise mechanisms by which resource wealth may induce or sustain violence remain disputed” (both quotes Conca and Wallace 2009: 488). Other studies have suggested there is limited explanatory power to what some label as “eco-scarcity theory”, but poverty and “dysfunctional institutions” remain central independent variables (Theisen 2008). Another widespread assumption, that conflict over natural resources is key to explaining the “new wars” (i.e., civil wars involving a broad range of stakeholders we want to distinguish from the decolonization phase), has also hit obstacles when subject to empirical analysis; Welsch (2008: 503), for example, found that resource conflict did matter, but that the “negative effect of agricultural resources on conflict probability is almost twice as large as the positive effect of mineral resources” (in other words, scarcity matters, but more in terms of agricultural productivity as a mitigating factor than mineral wars as a causal factor). To be fair to Homer-Dixon and others, they are well aware of the variations on the theme, and we are certainly not equating the scarcity research agenda with social Darwinism. Nor do we wish to enter an empirical debate at this stage but merely to accentuate the fact that, while humans are likely to fight over diminished life-sustaining resources, basing an entire subfield of scholarly enquiry on this easy presumption does not provide us with any prescriptive value other than the obvious need to avoid situations where life-sustaining resources are threatened with extinction (an imperative already dictated either by the quest for survival or humanitarian concern). We still need an overarching view of what constitutes violence and justice to give this analytic context and normative animation.

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Agential and Structural Ecoviolence The widely-referenced World Health Organization (WHO) definition of violence is emblematic of an agential position: “The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation” (WHO 2002). The keyword here, of course, is intentional. Structural understandings of mass atrocities often split on this point, since not all participants are intending the visible outcome of the event. Interpersonal violence “refers to violence between individuals, and is subdivided into family and intimate partner violence and community violence. The former category includes child maltreatment/abuse, intimate partner violence, and elder abuse, while the latter is broken down into acquaintance and stranger violence and includes youth violence, assault by strangers, violence related to property crimes, and violence in workplaces and other institutions” (WHO 2002: 5–6). Collective violence “refers to violence committed by larger groups of individuals and can be subdivided into social, political and economic violence” (WHO 2002: 5–6). According to Tilly, collective violence refers to episodic social interaction that a) immediately inflicts physical damage on persons and/or objects (“damage” includes forcible seizure over restraint or resistance) and b) results at least in part from coordination among persons who perform the damaging acts. At one edge, such a definition excludes strictly individual, private, impulsive, and/or accidental damage to persons or objects. At the other, it excludes long-term, incremental damage such as communication of infectious disease, cumulative wear and tear, exposure to toxic substances, and death hastened by neglect or social pressure. (Tilly 2000: 4)

There are at least three subtypes of agential ecoviolence (or purposeful infliction of harm) on ecosystems: ecocide, ecological sabotage, and the deliberate or neglectful harm of animals. The last falls within the category of psychopathic behavior and/or is a manifestation of the mass food industry which, while quite violent to some, is considered quite routinized and even beneficial to others. The animal rights literature is vast, challenging, and beyond the scope of this book, though it is implicit throughout that we are concerned with animal welfare (see Regan 1983);

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though this is not always accepted by analysts and activists alike, animal lives can be viewed as an implicit component of one of our key themes, environmental justice. Ecological sabotage refers largely to terrorist activity (conducted by individuals, states, or other actors) designed to harm or frighten human populations, but the term is often used to refer to the actions of radical ecologists who resort to the sabotage of property to protect the natural environment itself. There really isn’t much of this going on, despite numerous Hollywood depictions; far more likely is the murder of peaceful environmental activists and/or human rights activists in biodiversity hotspots such as the Amazon region. Violence against activists or resistors or protectors (the terms vary across regions) is revisited in Chapter 7 of this book, where we argue that governments must do more to protect these brave people from the violence associated with environmental crime—and in the case of some governments, including those of Western advanced capitalist societies, state oppression is the main threat they face. There is also another side of the proverbial coin when discussing ecological sabotage: climate sabotage. This form of sabotage is used to describe a nation’s inability to uphold its commitments to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, as evinced through certain countries’ egregious failure to ratify international agreements such as the Kyoto protocol and the Paris Accord, and the spread of misinformation on the drivers and impacts of climate change itself (an issue further explored in Chapter 6). It is such acts of sabotage which undermine the human security of citizens and unborn generations, placing all of humanity in the most perilous of circumstances. Maximalist and minimalist definitions of ecocide have been used widely in the literature (see Stoett 2000, for a discussion). The former includes everything from driving SUVs, flying to academic conferences, and eating dubiously farmed salmon. The latter refers exclusively to the deliberate destruction of nature as part of a military strategy aimed not at destroying nature, but at subjugating an enemy: classic agential violence (regardless of the “just war” question) in which ecosystems suffer, but the end result is of course the prolonged suffering of human populations, and thus an act of indirect collective violence is also committed. In between we have military preparation, which was an especially deleterious activity during the heights of the Cold War and remains a significant factor today, especially if we include incidentals such as greenhouse gas emissions resulting from military production and weapons shipments, problems related to

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stored toxic wastes, and others. Arguably, ecocide would be easier to define if we simply viewed it as any violation of the rights of nature, a theme we will return to in Chapter 7; there is a movement afoot to use ecocide and the main organizing principle behind international law, spearheaded by Polly Higgins, who led an active campaign in this direction, and others (Higgins 2010). Regardless of the difficulties inherent in translating this into a concrete legal regime, the publicity generated by Higgins’ tireless efforts was priceless. The study of ecocide spikes on occasion, reflecting events: the US Vietnamese war campaign emerged as a justice issue, and two decades later, photos of burning oil wells in Iraq following the US liberation of Kuwait were on many front pages. While most of the ecoviolence literature has focused on the Homer-Dixon route (also referred to as the Toronto School in some publications), or “whether and why environmental scarcity, abundance, or dependence might cause militarized conflict, less research has focused on the environmental impacts of violent conflict, war or military activities” (Khagram and Saleem 2006: 395). Post-conflict analysis has certainly provided empirical evidence of the environmental costs of war. In the early 2000s, the UNEP’s Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch identified numerous sources of concern in the 17 states it investigated, from depleted uranium weapons in Iraq and Bosnia and Herzegovina to hazardous wastes in Somalia to illegal forestry in Afghanistan (see Conca and Wallace 2009). There is also an established body of literature on the impact of the ecological costs of displacement resulting from warfare, including competition over local resources between refugees and host communities (Martin 2005). This includes the long-term psychological damage caused by displacement from traditional lands, which “harms the ecological self and therefore creates an internal sense of alienation” (Ramanathapillai 2008: 114), further blending the line between agential and structural violence. Which is where we are headed here: it is a fine line, indeed, between the agential and the structural, especially for social scientists looking at events/contexts from afar (less fine, no doubt, to those in the immediate grip of agential violence, but they would themselves be likely to refer to the injustice of the situation to contextualize it). One of the foremost theorists on structural violence, Johanne Galtung paints a “violence triangle” which consists of direct violence (an event), cultural violence (a

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permanent phenomenon, as it only changes as cultures change) and structural violence (a process, which fluctuates with power shifts) (1990: 294). He argues that “violence can start at any corner in the direct-structuralcultural violence triangle and is easily transmitted to the other corners” (208). Violence is defined as “avoidable insults to basic human needs, and more generally to life, lowering the real level of needs satisfaction below what is potentially possible” (Galtung 1990: 292). The keyword here may well be “avoidable”. Again, this raises justice-related questions, since we may not have a concept of justice if we assumed that injustice was unavoidable. Furthering the theme, Uvin argues “the concept of structural violence draws our attention to unequal life chances, usually caused by great inequality, injustice, discrimination and exclusion and needlessly limiting people’s physical, social and psychological well-being” (Uvin 1998: 105). And Coomaraswamy, quoting Govind Kelkar, in reference to genderbased violence: “A narrow definition of violence may define it as an act of criminal use of physical force. But this is an incomplete concept. Violence also includes exploitation, discrimination, unequal economic and social structures, the creation of an atmosphere of religiocultural and political violence. While violence against women is part of general violence found in the social structures such as class, caste, religion and ethnicity, and in the way the state controls people, it also encompasses aspects of structural violence and forms of control and coercion exercised through hierarchical and patriarchal gender relationships in the family and society” (1995: 21; quote is from Kelkar 1992). How else do we characterize illegal but ongoing and firmly entrenched cocoa production, clearly supported by numerous states involved in the supply chain, in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, which employs anywhere between 100,000 and 400,000 children under 18 in backbreaking work often labeled slave labor (Hinch 2019)? Adding to the complexity of the discussion, we note that it is often difficult to gauge complicity in the bigger picture of violence against nature. Many observers hold the World Wildlife Fund in high regard, given all it has done to share the message of conservation and promote specific projects acclaimed by celebrities and others. Yet its intimate relationship with many of the corporations that have contributed immeasurable damage to the environment raises interesting questions about agency and consequentialist ethics. As a stinging treatment of the WWF released originally in 2012 suggested, “a conspicuously high number of the WWF’s corporate cohorts have distinguished themselves in the areas of

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environmental pollution and the ruthless exploitation of natural resources: British Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, Marine Harvest, Shell, McDonald’s, Monsanto, Weyerhaeuser, Alcoa and the world’s largest palm oil company, Wilmar. The panda makes them look good” (Huismann 2014: 14). WWF has also done a great deal of good, particularly in terms of spreading awareness of conservation needs and issues and in protecting habitat; its collaboration with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime has produced some excellent analysis of the ecoviolence discussed in this book (see WWF and GIATOC 2015). Such is the complexity of the global governance of environmental security and justice. Audi argues that what Garver defines as “quiet institutional violence” (such as systemic social inequalities) should not be defined as violence since “it confuses the issue to use the emotively loaded word ‘violence’ when the grievance can be better described and treated under another name”, such as inequality, because “misnaming the disease can lead to the use of the wrong medicine – or none at all” (1974: 37– 38). Yet the meaning of violence itself is framed by dominant elites who control media outlets, educational systems, and life opportunities of vulnerable populations. Ridgeway and Jacques (2002) refer to the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, in this light: the uprising was portrayed as violent, but the poverty and marginalization which preceded it was not, since it was structural and not direct violence. Of course, widespread sympathy for the Zapitistas was perhaps evidence of the open recognition of the pernicious nature of structural violence in the first place, as well as its ecological impacts. Yet the support was only a major factor after the violent response to NAFTA’s demands became a mass media event. Surely the outrage over the ineffective response of Burma’s (Myanmar’s) military government to Cyclone Nigris in 2008, and the revealed helplessness of the Haitian government following the massive earthquake there in 2010, can serve as other prominent examples of how state oppression or ineptitude constitute conditions that exacerbate suffering and thus are inherently violent. State-sponsored Environmental destruction is no less violent in this regard.

Environmental Justice and Human Security Only by defining ecoviolence as environmental injustice that also threatens human security do we capture both the agential and structural violence, with or without direct intent, described above, while emphasizing the importance of links between humans and ecosystems,

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differentiated spatial and virtual communities, and universal needs and individual responsibilities. Of course, environmental justice has been defined in competing fashions as well (see Schlosberg 2007) but the crux of the concern here is that certain populations (or individuals) are more likely to be harmed by or suffer the risks associated with environmental problems than others, and this social question needs rectification if we are to deal effectively with those problems. In a concise survey of GIS-related efforts to provide empirical data on this barometer of fundamental inequality, Maantay defines environmental injustice as the “disproportionate exposure of communities of color and the poor to pollution, and its concomitant effects on health and environment, as well as the unequal environmental protection and environmental quality provided through laws, regulations, government programs, enforcements and policies” (2002: 161). Let us add violence to this equation: agential, when deliberate harm is caused to ecosystems, as well as structural, as when oppressed people suffer disproportionately when environmental conditions worsen by indirect change. Indeed all of Tilley’s categories of violence (propensity-driven, instrumental, and cultural) apply here. Le Billon (2001), for example, writes of the vulnerability resulting from resource dependence (rather than conventional notions of scarcity or abundance) and the opportunities it presents to those prone toward violent assertion of their superiority (including opportunities of armed insurgency). Most of the estimated 250 million children trapped in bonded labor toil on farms that lack both decent facilities for workers as well as environmental protection; the sea slavery described in Chapter 4 is almost always taking place on boats that are fishing illegally and unsustainabily. And as Patrick Hossay writes, the “extensive and brutal slave system that produces the charcoal that feeds Brazil’s steel industry makes clear the link between the devastation of human beings and the devastation of the environment. Rainforests aren’t the only thing being destroyed in Brazil; with the forests go the communities, traditions, and lives of countless impoverished people … People who once lived in harmony with the surrounding forest are forced through desperation and violence to destroy it” (Hossay 2006: 139–140). Indeed the plight of colonized indigenous peoples has been marked by both agential and structural violence on a global scale. Maantay’s definition is typical of the American environmental injustice movement, much of which has been focused on race as a (if not the) determinative factor (see also Rajan [2001] for a treatment of the

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concept in a global context with reference to the 1984 Bhopal, India industrial calamity). While it would be problematic to speak categorically of an environmental justice movement, and while racial inequality remains a central organizing concept, the last several decades have seen the rise of increased concern over the fairness implications of pollution, before and especially after the advent of what Ulrich Beck has famously referred to as the “risk society” where risk producers suffer less than risk victims, or those more vulnerable to its deleterious effects (1992). The pursuit of environmental justice is also associated with achieving intergenerational justice (Almond 1995; Haughton 1999) and interspecies justice (Hayward 1994; Low and Gleeson 1998), but it is mostly associated with “debates about distributional inequalities and the actions needed to address them” (Illsley 2002: 70). Definitions vary: environmental justice is considered “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, colour, national origin or income, with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies” (Bullard 1999: 7); more succinctly, it refers to the habituation of a “just distribution of environmental goods and bads among human populations” (Dobson 1998: 20; see also Dobson 2003). The parameters of environmental justice have been widened by scholars such as Bryant (1995), who suggests that environmental justice extends beyond environmental equity and the equitable application of environmental laws. Pellow (2002) expands the environmental justice framework by exploring the system-level structures of power responsible for acts of environmental racism. Paying particular attention to the historical context of environmental racism, the impact of stakeholders, and the role social stratification plays in environmental conflicts, Pellow’s work opens new terrain for exploring the globalization of hazardous waste and what is often referred to as bio-apartheid. Others have suggested that it is vital to view the loss of ethnic identity alongside the loss of biodiversity when approaching conservation-related decision-making, taking a “biocultural approach” (see Gavin et al. 2015). Taylor (2014) also weighs in on the discussion of environmental (in)justice, outlining that factors such as racial zoning; market dynamics of mobility; contemporary housing discrimination; and internal colonialism drive the siting of hazardous waste facilities near communities populated by people of color. A comprehensive review of the environmental literature by Zilney et al. (2006) uncovers prominent themes and issues for

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environmental justice scholars to grapple with: the spatial distribution of hazards, environmental discrimination, public health and risk, environmental law and policy, globalization and sustainability, and philosophies of justice. A move toward environmental justice would encompass international norms, behaviors, regulations, and policies that promote global sustainability and safe environments. This, we maintain, can only be achieved through global, democratic decision-making and the elimination of ecoviolence in communities across the planet. Much of the environmental justice literature links racism with differentiated environmental policy (Westra and Lawson 2001), while some borrows from feminist literature (Di Chiro 1992) and some is more driven by concerns with income and class. When taken as the critical examination of norms, it is fair to say that applying the concept to an international perspective that is enhanced by various critical theories of global politics is an obvious step, one already taken by many analysts concerned about the long-term impact of colonialism and imperialism, the cultural impact of market economies, the effects of various forms of discrimination on life opportunities, the environmental impact of globalization, the necessity of social networking innovations (on rhizomatic organizing see Schlosberg 1999) and a plethora of other questions. Political ecology may be added to this formula, since it seeks to understand, in Peluso and Watts’ words, “ways that specific resource environments (tropical forests or oil reserves) and environmental processes (deforestation, conservation, or resource amelioration) are constituted by, and in part constitute, the political economy of access to and control over resources” (2001: 5; parenthesis in original). The environmental justice approach is based largely on the conceptual acceptance of structural violence as both cause and outcome of inequality. This mirrors the “environmental conflict thesis” put forth by political ecologists, perhaps best summarized by Robbins, and reminds us of Homer-Dixon’s discussion of resource capture: Increasing scarcities produced through resource enclosure or appropriation by state authorities, private firms, of social elites accelerate conflict between groups (gender, class, or ethnicity). Similarly, environmental problems become ‘socialized’ when local groups secure control of collective resources at the expense of others by leveraging management interventions by development authorities, state agents, or private firms. So too, existing and long-term conflicts within and between communities are ‘ecologized’ by

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changes in conservation or resource development policy. (Robbins 2020: 19)

So we are to some extent back to human rights (social responsibility, equity, post-conflict justice, and other themes), and this concerns not only present rights (including entitlements and obligations), but must reflect past justice issues and possible future scenarios, which raises untidy questions about the applicability of reparations and intergenerational justice explored by international environmental ethicists such as Steve Vanderheiden (2008). Indeed, spurred by the climate change debate— where international and intergenerational dialogue is unavoidable—many authors are treating ecopolitics as an aspect of environmental justice, at the local to global levels (Boyle and Anderson 1998; Athanasiou and Baer 2002; Roberts and Parks 2007). Though some deep ecologists and animal welfarists remain critical of the anthropocentrism of international human rights law (see Redgwell 1998), it is fairly widely accepted that the right to a safe environment is a fundamental human right. As Dinah Shelton suggests, a human rights approach to environmental protection seeks “to ensure that the natural world does not deteriorate to the point where international guaranteed rights such as the rights to life, health, property, a family, a private life, culture, and safe drinking water are seriously impaired. Environmental protection is thus instrumental, not an end in itself” (2003: 1). However, one can position this in opposite terms, suggesting the “legal protection of human rights is an effective means to achieving the ends of conservation and environmental protection” (Anderson 1998: 3). Water is a prime example: access to clean water is often recognized as a human right of the first order, and its denial, whether through occupation, usurpation, or privatization, is at the root of an increasingly visible, if politically limited, water justice movement. Arguments have repeatedly surfaced, for example, for an international agreement that explicitly guarantees water as a universal human right in order to reduce looming water-related conflicts (see Davidson-Harden et al. 2007; Sultan and Loftus 2019). Obviously, access to natural resources is necessary for survival, and a conducive habitat should be the first order of the survival business; this theme is commonly employed in studies on the injustice of colonization/assimilation/displacement of indigenous peoples (Pallemaerts 1986), but can also apply to the links between multinational corporations

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and repressive governments for the purpose of resource extraction (most notably perhaps, oil—see Obiora 1999, and our chapter on hazardous waste in this volume), but also unemployed resource workers who have lost their livelihood due to overexploitation driven by global markets, indigenous peoples cheated of the benefits gained from exploitation of local genetic plant material, or children inadvertently poisoned by pesticides sprayed on banana plantations. In the age of the anthropocene, any serious thought about what it means to be human, and to have corresponding rights and obligations, cannot escape the basic fact that we have also redefined what it means to be natural (see Dalby 2020), and some recalibration of survival pathways is in order, but the inequity of risk and ecological harm is a self-evident travesty. As Val Plumwood (who preferred the term environmental classism to racism) writes, in a polity where the “socially privileged have the main or central role in social decision-making, decisions are likely to reflect their relatively high level of consequential, epistemic, and communicative remoteness from ecological harms” 2005: 621). We are equally concerned with environmental rights (including animal welfare) as factors proscribing certain types of human behavior, and prescribing obligations toward those most affected. As Steiner and colleagues suggest, “These claims may be based either upon the specific attribution of responsibility to the countries of the North for the carbon emissions which are responsible for global warming, or upon a human rights-based claim that the wealthy must assist those who are at risk of large-scale rights deprivation and are effectively unable to help themselves” (Steiner et al. 2007: 1454) such as tropical islanders displaced by rising sea levels. The failure to pursue environmental justice at an international level can only lead us further on the path toward a world defined by bioapartheid; a systemic physical separation of people who have suffered the deleterious impacts of the interlinked health threats related to climate change, infectious diseases, and even the malnourishment resultant from absolute poverty, from those with the means to escape these threats to human security, who are free to roam wherever their transnational capital and privatized security can take them. This may or may not involve the application of military power to maintain such separation; it may or may not overlap with religious war; it may or may not assume a visibly racial character. In some cases, such as the COVID-19 outbreak of 2019–2020, a pandemic affects people from all walks of life, in every country; but some

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were nonetheless much better equipped to deal with the outcome than others. Which brings us back to the need to adopt a human security perspective in addition to that of environmental justice. Cao and Wyatt (2016) adroitly comb over the green criminology literature, recognizing challenges and gaps in the field—namely, the absence of tenable conceptual frameworks for contextualizing instruments of green victimization. The authors proceed by proposing a human security approach to advancing our understanding of green victimization. Developed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in the early 90s, human security emanates from the broader concept of “security” in the field of security studies. Spread out across a continuum of various definitions, the term has come to mean many things (see Stoett 2000). King and Murray (2001: 7) define security as “freedom from various risks”, while Baldwin (1997: 13) interprets “security” as “a low probability of damage to acquired values”. Others view human security as more of a paradigm and theory guiding the governance and enforcement of international norms (Newman 2010; Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy 2007). At the international level, the human security perspective aims to address the threats faced by marginalized peoples in our interconnected, globalized world (Dodds and Pippard 2012; Stoett 2000), earmarking human and financial resources for poverty alleviation initiatives (Kerr 2007). The compatibility between environmental justice and human security, then, should be clear because both are concerned with the green victimization of individuals from marginalized communities. The typology of green victimization though dimensions of human security presented in Table 1.1 requires multidisciplinary applications when researching transnational ecoviolence. In our globalized and interdependent world, the conceptual and ontological specifications of policing, (bio)security, domestic and national security, and community safety have at least partially dissolved, leaving the future of international crime control to the relatively vague confines of global governance and a largely privatized and commercialized multinational security provision industry. Thematically, much of the intellectual labor of linking security studies to environmental crime has already been done, especially by scholars such as Cao and Wyatt (2016), who have documented the seven security dimensions of green crimes. For the purposes of fighting transnational ecoviolence, human security policy must ensure that the individual’s biological integrity, as well as the resilience of their community and the ecosystems that support

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Table 1.1 A conceptual framework for examining green victimization and transnational ecoviolence through dimensions of human security, adapted from UNDP (1994) and Cao and Wyatt (2016) Dimensions

Aspects of victimization

Economic security

Loss of income and livelihoods derived from work, the public, environmental resources, or reliable social safety nets, opportunity costs due to lost tourism, lost ability to engage in funded carbon sequestration, etc.; loss of government revenue to corruption Loss of physical and economic access to basic foods; loss of biodiversity leading to simplification of diets and loss of “food sovereignty” (reliance on outside markets); possible collapse of ecosystem services due to large-scale environmental disturbances related to ecoviolence such as deforestation and mining, illegal fisheries Loss of protection from infectious or parasitic diseases, access to personal health care and protective public health regimes; direct threats to human health from agential and structural violence involving various sets of actors (states, cartels, corporations); loss of medicinal plants and knowledge; loss of medicinal plants; diseases spread through wildlife trade and climate change Loss of access to a healthy living environment, functional ecosystems, safety from natural disasters and access to basic resources such as water and land, loss to future generations of right to stable environment via climate change and other anthropogenic environmental changes Loss of physical safety due to agential and structural violence; increases in anxiety; inability to progress in personal development; gender discrimination and sexualized violence often accompanies organized crime; enslavement or forced labor and child labor in activities also constituting ecoviolence Loss of membership in a community with cultural identity and values, and safety from oppressive community practices and from ethnic conflict; threats to indigenous identity; loss of species with strong cultural affiliations Loss of freedom from state oppression and abuses of basic human rights; imprisonment and other forms of abject cruelty by the state, as well as propaganda efforts to encourage discrimination against certain groups, state-sponsored terrorism of environmental stewards and activists, state-cartel and state-corporate collusion in committing ecoviolence

Food security

Health security

Environmental security

Personal security

Community security

Political security

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it, is protected; this protection at the individual level is key to maintaining both national and global security (Newman 2010; Hampson 2008). Perhaps newfound concerns about health and environmental justice following a traumatic global event such as the COVID-19 pandemic will spur transformational thinking and steer citizens away from a reflexive turn to nationalism and authoritarianism. Perhaps. Yet similar arguments have been made about ecological crises throughout the past half-century. Previously, the advent of nuclear weapons was considered by many to be the technological change that would lead invariably to major alterations of the international system (see Herz 1959). The ecological crises may lead to a similar deconstruction of the rigidities of the state-based system, though there is a decidedly mixed bag of evidence of this transformation. While these were no doubt cases of grandly designed carts dragging reluctant horses, the idea that large-scale changes in natural and technological conditions can change social realities is as old as the study of history itself.

What Is Transnational Ecoviolence and Crime? In light of the discussion above on the meaning of ecoviolence, we can turn now to a general discussion about the identification of transnational ecoviolence, surely one of the most egregious forms of violence on the planet. Put bluntly, transnational ecoviolence involves actors (or agents) in two or more countries, and it hurts both nature (and, to those who accept the terminology, violates the inherent rights of nature), as well as human beings. Typically, transnational ecoviolence is not sporadic or spontaneous; it is agential, but driven by the structural political economy of global markets; it is deliberate and designed and generally profitable with low risk of punishment compared to other crimes and transgressions; and it is facilitated by the structural violence of inequity, racism, sustained conflict, and other forms of human insecurity. Most of the related literature deals with formal transnational environmental crime, so we discuss that first here (see also Stoett 2018). There is little doubt that the extent of formal transnational environmental crime, even if we are measuring it in conventional terms, is staggering. According to a 2014 United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) report, the international illegal wildlife trade is estimated at between 50 and 150 billion US dollars per year, and in 2013 alone 25,000 elephants were killed for ivory-related trade. Illegal fisheries are

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valued at between $10 and 23.5 billion and illegal logging at between $30 and 100 billion (or more) per year. These are frustratingly imprecise figures, but it is understandably difficult to accurately monitor clandestine and closely guarded operations by international criminal consortiums and/or corrupt governments. If we expand the term to include conventional behavior associated with environmental destruction, then the extent of transnational ecoviolence is simply unimaginable. Criminologist Robert White offers what is perhaps the most widely cited list of transnational environmental crimes: • Unauthorized acts or omissions that are against the law and therefore subject to criminal prosecution and criminal sanctions; • Crimes that involve some kind of cross-border transference and an international or global dimension; • Crimes related to pollution (of air, water and land) and crimes against wildlife (including illegal trade in ivory as well as live animals). However, White goes on to add transgressions that are harmful to humans, environments and non-human animals, regardless of legality per se; and environmental-related harms that are facilitated by the state, as well as corporations and other powerful actors, insofar as they have the capacity to shape official definitions of environmental crime in ways that allow or condone environmentally harmful practices. This considerably broadens the agenda and suggests that it can assume the mantle of universal law (see Charney 1993 for an earlier argument in this direction; and Westra 2004). More specifically, White lists: • illegal transport and dumping of toxic waste; • transportation of hazardous materials such as ozone-depleting substances; • the illegal traffic in real or purported radioactive or nuclear substances; • proliferation of ‘e’-waste generated by the disposal of tens of thousands of computers and other equipment; • the unsafe disposal of old ships and aeroplanes; • local and transborder pollution, that is either systematic (via location of factories) or related to accidents (e.g. chemical plant spills);

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• biopiracy in which Western companies are usurping ownership and control over plants developed using “traditional” methods and often involving indigenous peoples (note that the CBD’s Nagoya Protocol is intended to address this issue); • illegal fishing and logging. Interestingly, illegal logging is one of the most injurious crimes related to climate change at this stage. Crucial to White’s analysis is a palpable tension between what SituLiu and Emmons (2000) identify as the strict legalist perspective and the social legalist perspective. The former views crimes against the environment as “an unauthorized act or omission that violates the law and is therefore subject to criminal prosecution and criminal sanction” (SituLiu and Emmons 2000: 3). On the other hand, the social legalist perspective suggests certain acts may not violate the provisions of criminal law, but warrant the label of a “crime” because of their deleterious effects on the environment and human beings. The dominant systems for classifying crime privilege strict legalism, obscuring social legalist perspectives. This, of course, diverts attention from the social practices which, although legal, are equally environmentally disastrous and destructive to the environment. We return to this theme throughout the chapters to follow. Another pioneer in the field, Lorraine Elliott offers an even more detailed list of potential transnational environmental crimes and links it directly with social inequity in much of her brilliant work: the trafficking of illegally logged timber (sometimes called ‘stolen’ timber), the illegal trade in endangered and threatened species, the black market in ozone depleting substances and other prohibited or regulated chemicals, the transboundary dumping of toxic and hazardous waste, and illegal fishing. Other challenges such as carbon fraud and corruption with REDD projects (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) are also now included under this rather broad heading. (2011: 2; see also Elliott 2012a, b)

The push for criminology to engage in multidisciplinary praxis with environmental justice is imaginatively captured in Situ-Liu and Emmons’ text, Environmental Crime: The Criminal Justice System’s Role in Protecting the Environment (2000). The authors highlight the merit of explanatory models and classical criminological theories to explain and theorize environmental wrongdoing; criminology can enhance environmental justice

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by relying on models such as Opportunity (Frank and Lynch 1992), Goal Attainment (Gross 1978; Needleman and Needleman 1979; Vaughan 1982; Clinard and Yeager 1980), Legal Doctrine (Minister 1994; Lewis 1985; Herm 1991); and theories such as Anomie (Merton 1938); Differential Association (Sutherland and Cressey 1960); Cultural Transmission (Cressey 1969); and Social Control (Hirschi 1969). The authors, furthermore, provide tangible examples of environmental crimes which can be explained and theorized by adoption of a criminological lens. Such crimes include, but are not limited to: industrial pollution; toxic dumping; hazards in the workplace; nuclear testing; disposal of hazardous waste by the military; and environmental damage during wartime military operations (Situ-Liu and Emmons 2000). Laura Westra (2004) suggests that environmental crimes or “ecocrimes” can be conceptualized as a form of unprovoked aggression, and offers another list of incidents of ecoviolence, including: increased exposure to ultraviolet rays due to ozone thinning; direct impacts of climate change, including flooding and extreme temperatures; exposure to toxic wastes, and toxic/hazardous byproducts; chemical residues in food and food additives, including long-term low-level exposures; new or renewed infectious diseases; loss of biodiversity; increased presence of particulates; and diminishing supply of fresh water. She also suggests we can link ecocrimes with genocide (see also Shover and Routhe 2005) and has discussed the need to think of the right to health of future generations as well when calculating environmental harm (Westra 2008). Thus, there are a wide range of definitions and inclusions attached to the transnational environmental crime label, and if we add the climate justice agenda—which we will certainly do later in this book—we widen and deepen them further. Any agentially-driven assault on environmental security (often also termed biosecurity, though that raises some issues) could be seen as ecoviolence. And structural violence which primarily or secondarily threatens environmental security can be viewed as a contextual impediment to the avoidance or mitigation of environmental crime; the debate over whether those who enable, facilitate, and protect that context through active efforts or cognizant negligence are themselves criminals is an open one, which must be balanced with considerations of free speech and other rights. For example, given the harsh consequences of climate change, those actively engaged in climate change denialism might be considered to be aiding and abetting an inherently unjust process, but

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to formally charge them as criminals would certainly be an infringement on their civil liberties. Cao and Wyatt (2016) offer a typology of “green crime”, suggesting its definition differs according to the perspective taken from which it is viewed: legalist, socio-legal, ecocentric, and biocentric. Each perspective leads to different definitional foundations (from criminal laws to species justice) and, in turn, definitions of environmental crime. Drawing on the work of Situ-Liu and Emmons (2000), a legalist perspective would focus on the violation of criminal laws designed to protect the health and safety of people, the environment or both; the socio-legal perspective takes us to concerns with any illegal activity or formal rule-breaking, whatever form the rule might be; the ecocentric perspective casts light on acts that have identifiable environmental damage outcomes and originated in human action but that may or may not violate existing rules and environmental regulations; and the biocentric perspective draws our analytic attention to any intentional or negligent human activity that disrupts a biotic system. This is a concise ordering of the perspectives that can accompany the discussion of more specific criminal acts explicated above, but we would argue that it is more parsimonious to simply discuss the human security and environmental security implications (i.e., violence against either or both) that accompanies illegal or unjust activities. This is closer to the ecocentric perspective offered by Cao and Wyatt, since it includes activities that are not necessarily in violation of formal law; yet our focus on human security remains paramount. For example, any contemporary definition of ecoviolence must also include the onslaught of a new generation of “land grabs” being perpetrated across several continents, often with the profitable involvement of multinational agri-businesses, and resulting in the physical displacement of entire communities without adequate compensation (Margulis et al. 2014; Peluso and Lund 2014); even if these land grabs are not necessarily damaging ecosystems at the time of commission, they are certainly harming communities and setting the stage for future activities that could be environmentally deleterious. And yet they are, often, perfectly legal in the conventional sense of that term. While most of the case studies in this text can be located somewhere between the legalist and socio-legal perspectives, we are not disinclined to cross over into the ecocentric and, even, biocentric. Indeed, our main argument is that all of these types of human activity are acts of or manifestations of agential or structural ecoviolence, respectively; and we need

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to think in terms of the broad horizon of challenges they present to both environmental justice and human security. We argue that transnational ecoviolence is always multilayered, encompassing formal transgressions of national and municipal and, more rarely, international law, but also the structural ecoviolence discussed earlier in this chapter. It is not always the case that criminal activity can be attributed to any one individual, corporation, non-state actor such as rebel groups, or governments. Environmental crime is often a cluster crime situation where other types of criminal and/or unjust behavior is either rampant or is insidiously constant. It is a complex mix of structural drivers and opportunistic profiteers; human exploitation (and often superexploitation) is a standard accompaniment, not a rarity. To understand environmental crimes and ecoviolence, we need to utilize a political economy approach that seeks to unveil the economic motives driving the crime taking place (Lynch 2013a). Within the field of criminology, there have been numerous important developments in the application of political economy (Michalowski and Pearson 1990; Lynch et al. 1994; Kramer 2000; Rigakos and Papanicolaou 2003; Lynch 2013b). Lynch describes it as the search for explanations which unpack the “connection between the economic system and the social sphere, and highlights the influence of economic relations on social relations and institutions” (Lynch 2013a: 138). It can be used in various disciplines to document the economic influences and effects within social systems. More radical articulations of political economy include Marxian analyses of the class-based dimensions of exploitation in global economic and political systems. Despite the criticisms leveled against political economy—namely, that it is reductionist in its analysis of capitalism as a determinant of crime; and that it is anti-empirical and abstract—we contend that it can be used as a method for exploring the unequal class relations and the power dynamics involved in the global economy that both incentivize and facilitate (often through corruption) transnational ecoviolence, enabling us to lay bare the driving forces of harmful and violent behavior by national and international private and public actors; its usefulness lays in its potential to predict and explain criminal behavior as a result of macro-economic processes and structural circumstances. But it is not enough in itself, and we need to frame it within the joint concerns that animate this book: human security and environmental justice.

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Moving Forward: Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence Throughout this book, we will view spheres of transnational ecoviolence as embedded within the context of the twin imperatives of environmental justice and human security. We develop the spheres according to our own assessment of the major forms of ecoviolence that are occurring today, on land, in water, and against the climate. The twin focus on environmental justice and human security permits readers to acquaint themselves with a normative platform from which we can move on to concrete unapologetic policy prescriptions to remedy situations where chronic inequality or sudden catastrophe has ensured ongoing harm to vulnerable populations. While the more traditional ecoviolence literature typically leads to calls for greater state capacity to “manage” situations, environmental justice concerns typically advocate more fundamental shifts in power relations and access to natural resources to achieve intersectional and intergenerational justice. Though such calls can be unrealistic and even counter-productive if they challenge the entire status quo, if articulated in a measured manner they can be quite reasonable demands based on the enlightened self-interest of all stakeholders. Radical branches of the environmentalist movement might consider this a naive sacrilegious concession to the rich and greedy. But as political ecology continues its evolutionary curve toward mainstream social significance, and yet capitalism continues to prove its resilience despite economic crises, global pandemics, and technological change, it seems much more like the art of the possible. Each of the thematic chapters to follow will focus on what we term a “sphere of transnational ecoviolence” (see Fig. 1.1) and will adopt the framework outlined above: we introduce the issue-area, cover contemporary developments, then feature case studies emphasizing environmental justice and human security; we then offer a syncretic case study that brings these elements together. The book will proceed to examine several areas where transnational ecoviolence—defined as human activity that threatens environmental justice and human security, usually (but not always) in violation of formal law, across geopolitical borders —has thrived in recent decades. We unapologetically cut across the legalist and sociolegal, ecocentric and biocentric perspectives outlined by Cao and Wyatt (2016). None of the spheres raised here (and there of course others, most notably in the resource conflict area) are new areas of concern, but

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Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated ( IUU ) Fishing

Forest, Timber and Plant Crime

Hazardous Waste

Illegal Wildlife Trade

n Tra

snat ional

Ec iol

Transnational Ecoviolence

ence

Spher

f

ov

eo

Climate Crimes

Environmental Justice Issues

Human Security Concerns

- Spatial distribution of hazards - Environmental discrimination - Theory and methodology - Social movements and concern - Public health and risk - Environmental law and policy - Globalization and sustainability - Philosophies of justice

(Zilney et al., 2006)

- Economic security - Food security - Health security - Environmental security - Personal security - Community security - Political security

(Cao and Wyatt, 2016)

Fig. 1.1 Selected spheres of transnational ecoviolence

given the backdrop of crises—primarily: biodiversity, oceans, climate— in which they occur, there is a newfound urgency to provide solutions to these problems, reflecting the twin developments of destitution and desperation on the one hand and greed and structural inequality on the other. Throughout this book, our choice of case studies reflects a desire to think outside the conventional box of what constitutes transnational environmental crime; for example, the chapter on hazardous waste does

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not only look at trade covered by the Basel Convention, but at northern investments that have resulted in suffering associated with toxic pollution in southern states; and our chapter on illegal fisheries includes a brief description of the fishery reduction industry, which many consumers are not even aware exists. Five thematic chapters presenting the designated spheres of transnational ecoviolence are followed by a chapter on responses to transnational ecoviolence. The first is focused on the illegal wildlife trade and, in particular, the trade of endangered fauna. This might be the most well-known form of transnational environmental crime, but its origins and scope are often misunderstood. The second thematic chapter covers crimes against the land; more specifically, we look at one of the more egregious forms of transnational ecoviolence: the illegal transport and dumping of hazardous waste, and the devastating toll of international investments in leaky oil extraction activities. Chapter 4 deals with a topic which affects everyone on the planet regardless of where they live and what food they eat: crimes against the oceans are a staple of everyday life, but illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is literally draining the oceans (and of course many lakes) of biodiversity. Chapter 5 covers crimes against flora: surprisingly to most, illegal forestry is one of the more lucrative forms of transnational ecoviolence, and there is an illegal trade and destruction of plant life that is too often overlooked by media and analysts alike. Our final thematic chapter theme is “crimes against climate”, which encompasses not only fraudulent climate change mitigation and adaptation schemes, but the much broader notion of the chronic undervaluation of sincere climate policy by major polluters. We then close with a chapter on responses, which covers various international efforts to curtail and defeat transnational ecoviolence, using combinations of organizational coordination, technology, and social knowledge. We do not claim to offer any permanent solutions to these problems, but aim to provide a stimulating discussion about possibilities.

Conclusion Ultimately, the root causes of both formal and informal transnational ecoviolence—poverty, despair, greed, ignorance—must be overcome if we are to deal with its impacts. Raising awareness about this particular form of violence is therefore central, and we hope this volume helps achieve this task. The pandemic that struck the world community in 2020

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revealed the divisions, inequities, fragilities, and interconnectedness of the global political and economic system. If ecoviolence is a permanent feature of this social landscape, then we can expect more of the same. Working against it will reveal fissures and weaknesses, challenging the notion that the human species can overcome its most egregious assaults against nature and itself. Yet this is not the time for disengagement from these momentous and mountainous tasks. Unprecedented knowledge of the consequences of human actions—and of structural and agential violence—now exists; complex networks have evolved to meet the subsequent challenges. It is time to intensify the quest to install human security and environmental justice as the cornerstones of a new world.

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Smith, J. 2016. Imperialism in the 21st Century: Globalization, SuperExploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis. New York: Monthly Review Press. Steiner, H., P. Aston, and R. Goodman. 2007. International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Morals, 3rd edition. Oxford University Press. Stoett, P.J. 2000. Human and Global Security: An Exploration of Terms. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Stoett, P. 2007. “Counter-Bioinvasion: Conceptual and Governance Challenges.” Environmental Politics 16(3): 433–452. Stoett, P. 2012. “What Are We Really Looking For? From Eco-violence to Environmental Justice.” In M. Schnurr and L. Swatik, eds., Environmental Change, Natural Resources and Social Conflict: Rethinking Environmental Security in Theory and Practice (pp. 15–32). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Stoett, P. 2018. “Transnational Environmental Crime.” In A. Swain, ed., The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Conflict and Peacebuilding (pp. 29– 41). London: Routledge. Stoett, P. 2019. Global Ecopolitics: Crisis, Governance, and Justice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Stoett, P., and J. Vince. 2019. “The Plastic-Climate Nexus: Linking Science, Policy, and Justice.” In P. Harris, ed., Climate Change and Ocean Governance: Politics and Policy for Threatened Seas (pp. 345–361). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sultan, F., and A. Loftus, eds. 2019. Water Politics: Governance, Justice, and the Right to Water. London: Routledge. Sutherland, E.H., and D.R. Cressey. 1960. “A Theory of Differential Association.” In F.T. Cullen and R. Agnew, eds., Criminological Theory: Past to Present (pp. 122–125). Los Angeles: Roxbury Company. Tadjbakhsh, S., and A.M. Chenoy. 2007. Human Security: Concepts and Implications. Oxon: Routledge. Taylor, D. 2014. Racism, Industrial Pollution and Residential Mobility. New York: NYU Press. Tilly, C. 2000. “Processes and Mechanisms of Democratization.” Sociological Theory 18(1): 1–16. Theisen, O.M. 2008. “Blood and Soil? Resource Scarcity and Internal Armed Conflict Revisited.” Journal of Peace Research 45: 801–818. Turpin, J., and Kurtz, L. 1997. The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. UNDP. 1994. Human Development Report 1994. New York: United Nations Development Program. Uvin, P. 1998. Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda. Connecticut: Kumarian Press.

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Vanderheiden, S. 2008. Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory of Climate Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vaughan, D. 1982. “Toward Understanding Unlawful Organizational Behaviour.” Michigan Law Review 80(1): 1377–1402. Vidal, J. 2020. “Destruction of Habitat and Loss of Biodiversity are Creating the Perfect Conditions for Diseases Like Covid-19 to Emerge.” Ensia, March 17. Available at: https://ensia.com/features/covid-19-coronavirus-biodivers ity-planetary-health-zoonoses/#comment-349689. Waltz, K. 1959. Man, the State, and War. New York: Columbia University Press, Welsch, H. 2008. “Resource Abundance and Internal Armed Conflict: Types of Natural Resources and the Incidence of ‘New Wars.” Ecological Economics 67: 503–513. Westra, L. 2004. Ecoviolence and the Law: Supranormative Foundations of Ecocrime. Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers. Westra, L. 2008. Environmental Justice and the Rights of Unborn and Future Generations: Law, Environmental Harm, and the Right to Life. London: Earthscan. Westra, L., and B. Lawson, eds. 2001. Faces of Environmental Racism, 2nd edition. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. White, R. 2011. Transnational Environmental Crime: Toward an Eco-Global Criminology. London: Routledge. WHO (World Health Organization). 2002. World Report on Violence and Health: Summary. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/42512. Wolff, R. 1969. “On Violence.” The Journal of Philosophy 66(19): 601–616. World Bank Group. 2019. Illegal Logging, Fishing, and Wildlife Trade: The Costs and How to Combat It. http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/482771571323 560234/WBGReport1017Digital.pdf. WWF and Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (WWF and GIATOC). 2015. Tightening the Net: Toward a Global Legal Framework on Transnational Organized Environmental Crime (Joint publication). https://www.unodc.org/documents/congress/background-inform ation/NGO/GIATOC-Blackfish/GIATOC_-_Tightening_the_Net.pdf. Wyatt, T. 2013. Wildlife Trafficking: A Deconstruction of the Crime, the Victims, and the Offenders. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Yu, W. 2020. “Coronavirus: Revenge of the Pangolins?” The New York Times, March 5. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/opinion/corona virus-china-pangolins.html. Zedner, L. 2009. Security. London: Routledge-Cavendish. Zilney, L.A., D. McGurrin, and S. Zahran. 2006. “Environmental Justice and the Role of Criminology: An Analytical Review of 33 Years of Environmental Justice Research.” Criminal Justice Review 31(1): 47–62.

CHAPTER 2

Ecoviolence Against Fauna: The Illegal Wildlife Trade

The value of an illegal live gyrfalcon? An estimated $360,000. The value of a kilo of heroin, the most expensive narcotic by weight? About $135,050 … wildlife crime is big business. From “The Illegal Wildlife Trade is a Biodiversity Apocalypse”. Anthony, 2017

Introduction In this chapter, we explore the transnationalization of the illegal wildlife trade (IWT), examining how such crimes engender ecoviolence and harm on a global scale. A sound understanding of the political economy of IWT aids our theorization of this crime from both the environmental justice and human security perspectives, which in turn are theoretically and pragmatically adept at identifying the drivers, pressures, sources, and impacts of IWT, opening new vistas of green criminological inquiry. Research into the transnationalization of IWT addresses environmental injustice against rare and iconic species and the people who rely on them for food and employment; the interconnectedness between the global demand for such species and the socio-economic drivers of animal smuggling and trafficking; and potential threats to ecosystems and human health, such as the spread of invasive alien species and newly emerging infectious diseases. IWT can be located within a larger constellation of themes such as speciesism, international relations and law, environmental politics, political geography, and ecology. The ecoviolence unleashed through © The Author(s) 2021 P. Stoett and D. A. Omrow, Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58561-7_2

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IWT conforms to the choreographed cadence of high profit margins and an accelerated rate of consumption in expanding markets; the ecoviolence associated with IWT is a direct result of socio-cultural constructions of the economic value of rare and endangered species. The trade of rare species has probably occurred since they were first discovered, and it was not until the establishment of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN, previously known as the World Conservation Union) in the late 1940s that the trade began to be taken seriously (see Sollund 2019; Schneider 2012); the subsequent adoption of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) in the early 1970s was a recognition of the damage the trade was doing to species populations and ecosystems. IWT, of late, has garnered the attention of green criminologists due to its rise within globalized and expanded markets—especially as a result of the World Wide Web and the digitalization of animal trafficking (Sollund 2017, 2019; Eliason 1999; Pires 2012; Warchol 2004; Wellsmith 2011). The procurement of rare and endangered species has become a pastime for corporate barons, actors, and the sons of heads of state; yet its impact is felt largely at a very local level, where entire communities lose access to precious resources, cultural referents, development opportunities, and other important survival and growth necessities. As with other forms of ecoviolence examined in this book, there are intimate ties between wildlife trafficking, money laundering, and other crimes. The desire to acquire—to possess artifacts that are derived from endangered species, whether for supposed medicinal purposes, as financial investments, as unique food experiences, or as simple vainglorious trophies—drives the trade as strongly as it is driving coveted species into oblivion. It can also lead to the spread of zoonotic infectious diseases: for example, early evidence (in April 2020) suggests the calamitous pandemic of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 may have spread from China after human contact with illegally imported Malayan pangolins (Andersen et al. 2020; it seems likely that bats were involved at some point, as well). We are just beginning to understand the full impact of this transnational ecoviolence.

The Contemporary IWT Though often overlooked and overshadowed by the human misery caused by human trafficking, drug, and weapons smuggling (Parce and Woodiwiss 1993), there has been an unprecedented uptick in the illegal

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wildlife trade in the past 40 years, hampering decades of conservation efforts across the globe. Wildlife crime has become an issue of paramount importance among nation-states, intergovernmental organizations, NGOs and other members of civil society alike, leading to repeated calls for the global community to take action against the complex and dangerous international networks that are often involved. Defining IWT, however, is no easy feat because the act of trafficking and smuggling wildlife across borders affects not only terrestrial and marine animals, but plants, the environment, communities’ livelihoods, food security, national security, and, of course, sustainable development (IUCN 2016; Dickson 2008; Brashares et al. 2014). Phelps et al. (2016) summarize some of IWT’s defining characteristics—namely, the harvest, trade and exploitation of wild, biological specimens through activities encompassing the contravention of environmental regulations and government legislation, the violation of rules governing private/community resource-holder rights, and the non-observance of international agreements such as CITES. Valued at approximately $7 billion to $23 billion annually, IWT is an extremely profitable transnational crime, trailing only behind the trade of drugs, humans, and arms (Lehmacher 2016).1 It is also referred to as a predicate offense, according to the 2018 London Conference on Illegal Wildlife. Predicate offenses are those activities which are part of bigger criminal operations, such as money laundering. Whether it is international wildlife trafficking, smuggling, or poaching, the global decline of wildlife species is in part a direct result of networked criminals trying to avail themselves of a lucrative international pet market and collectors who equate the ownership of certain animal species with socio-economic and cultural status (Sollund 2011; Pires and Clarke 2011; Herbig 2010). Aside from the socio-economic and cultural demand-side drivers of IWT, there are far more nuanced and complex explanations for its transnationalization—namely, the resource needs of many impoverished communities which require access to wildlife for protein, leather goods, medicinal ingredients, and other necessities. IWT, it bears emphasizing, does not take place in a vacuum. In fact, 80 countries have recognized wildlife trafficking as a type of organized crime which demands political support from all governments, because IWT produces ramifications such as corruption, stagnated economic growth, and the flow of money into the black market—all of which affect the political and economic security of states (Meers 2018).

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In the digital age, organized criminal networks are becoming resilient and adaptable to law enforcement activities, forcing policing agencies to take heed of the importance of social media in intelligence development. Platforms such as Facebook are being used to arrange the illegal sale of endangered species. The Royal Society (2018) has predicted that wildlife trafficking will follow similar trends in the illicit market of narcotics and terrorism, employing encrypted online communications and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (see also Felbab-Brown for similarities between the global narcotics and wildlife trades). A pressing concern related to the digitalization of IWT is the use of certain countries as nodes in the complex web of internet-based trafficking. The web and the “dark web” or “darknet” make IWT and its perpetrators extremely difficult for authorities to track, monitor, and shut down. This is because such sites are easily created, removed, or altered by simple modifications to web addresses. No doubt, criminal networks using websites typically do not conveniently provide identifying information such as their location or source, producing levels of anonymity in the illicit trafficking of flora and fauna (Environmental Investigation Agency 2016). One of the mounting challenges faced by law enforcement agencies is the identification and investigation of what is referred to as “portal sites”—that is, a network site that refers prospective purchasers of exotic and rare wildlife to one online “anchor” site, which is the platform that facilitates the trafficking of various species. The digitalization of wildlife crime is a relatively new phenomenon and opens limitless vistas of academic inquiry and research into how strategic cross-sector approaches to governance can enforce the tenets of CITES. Many lessons can be learned from the digitalization of wildlife crime and international responses to such criminality. We are already witnessing interdisciplinary approaches to enforcement, as evidenced through the collaboration between the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) and the development of the Guidelines on Methods and Procedures for Ivory Sampling and Laboratory Analysis to combat transnational trafficking along the IWT value chain. Such pioneering approaches to law enforcement include social media monitoring, online undercover surveillance, and other approaches to gathering intelligence on persons of interest (Xiao et al. 2017).

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The Architects of Ecoviolence The perpetrators of IWT are usually classified as “poachers”, “perpetrators”, and “criminals”, obfuscating the quotidian acts of the wildlife trade by those who harvest, trade, and use animals (Duffy 2014; Bennett 2011; Pires 2012; Douglas and Alie 2014; Duffy 2016). The sheer diversity of these actors makes their detection by law enforcement all the more challenging; for example, those involved in IWT are very active among local market chains, engaging in various scales of operation and intensities of harvest. On the other end of the spectrum, there are more sophisticated actors with greater levels of technological investment, sources of funding, economic self-reliance, and overall knowledge of the logistics of the global wildlife trade (Muth and Bowe 1998; Wyatt 2009; South and Wyatt 2011; Duffy et al. 2015). Finally, IWT is further problematized by the heterogeneity of the products derived from wildlife species. For example, there are confusing overlaps between farmed/wild-collected specimens and biological organisms gathered within/outside of official quotas; and non-human animals traded domestically/internationally open a entire terrain of legal, non-legal, and quasi-legal norms which blur the lines between the illegal and legal wildlife trades. Nevertheless, there is one common motif underlying global animal trafficking rings—the exercise of violence and harm against non-human animals. These architects of ecoviolence, as it were, are concisely summarized by Phelps et al. (2016). The authors argue that there are three distinct roles that actors adopt when engaging in IWT: the role of the harvester, intermediary, and consumer. The role of the wildlife harvester is compartmentalized into eight broad categories: subsistence harvesters, commercial harvesters, opportunist harvesters, local guides, rule abusers, by-catch harvesters, recreational harvesters, and reactionary harvesters. Subsistence harvesters procure wildlife animals for household and non-commercial use (Golden et al. 2013), while commercial harvesters collect wildlife resources solely for trade. This category of harvesters employs advanced technology, relying on sophisticated networks for the capture of non-human animals. What is more, there is evidence that some commercial harvesters draw upon the support of criminal syndicates and the political elite in order to successfully harvest coveted wildlife resources (Wyatt 2009; Bennett 2011). Opportunist harvesters, on the other hand, refer to those who, by chance encounters with certain wildlife species, engage in IWT, while

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local guides are simply residents who are employed to guide non-resident harvesters (Schneider empathized the role of community-based traders in her analysis of the IWT—see Schneider 2012). The rule abusers are those who deliberately ignore quotas, boundaries, and restrictions on technology when harvesting wildlife species. It bears emphasizing that this category often overlaps with the local guides due to their working knowledge of harvesting regulations and, more importantly, their ability to exploit these regulations (Radjawali 2011). By-catch and recreational harvesters are those who engage in unintentional harvesting and harvesting for enjoyment, respectively. This category of harvesters should not be underestimated because despite their lack of coordination and sophistication, like commercial harvesters, the number of by-catch and recreational harvesters is increasing due to the appeal of capturing iconic and charismatic wildlife species (Milliken 2014). Finally, reactionary harvesters are actors engaging in animal harvesting due to discontent with conservation policies they feel are inhibiting their livelihoods. Vira et al. (2014) note that some local communities in Africa have engaged in reactionary harvesting as an act of protestation against policies which curtail their cultural rights to hunt and trade certain animals. The next role within IWT market chains is the intermediary, which comprises seven disparate, albeit interconnected, categories: logisticians, specialized smugglers, government colluders, third parties, processors, launderers, and vendors. Logisticians draw upon their hands-on experience and knowledge of the logistics involved in ordering and transporting wildlife resources. The logisticians, moreover, are extremely hard to identify because they may either be directly involved in the trade of animals, or indirectly facilitate the trade at a distance, maintaining a level of anonymity (Wyatt 2009). Specialized smugglers, in a similar vein, possess the skills required to facilitate the transboundary movement of animals, drawing upon specialist networks to minimize detection from law enforcement agencies by bribing government agents (Vira et al. 2014). There is much overlap between this category and that of government colluders insofar as government agents may end up working as specialized smugglers, given their esoteric knowledge working as park rangers, conservation officers, police officers, and others. These individuals engage in IWT for either social or personal gain, advancing the reach of centralized and highly organized networks (Pires 2012). In a completely unrelated vein, third-party intermediaries are often pulled into the IWT unbeknownst to them, as in the case of external

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transportation service providers. It is the logisticians, specialized smugglers, and perhaps even government colluders that arrange the transport of animals through third-party trucking and air transport companies (Vira et al. 2014). There is considerable overlap between the roles of processors and launderers because both intermediaries manipulate wildlife animals in order to integrate certain species into mainstream supply chains. Consider, for example, processors that alter the physical appearance of animals by cleaning, butchering, and skinning them so that they can conform to the appearance of legally traded wildlife. Such operations are vital to evading inspection by customs and conservation officers. Launderers, similarly, engage in these activities to add illegally traded animals into mainstream, legal supply chains (Brooks et al. 2010). Finally, vendors are those involved in the sale of wildlife resources to consumers, either through public markets or online platforms, which have grown exponentially due to the digitalization of the IWT (Shepherd et al. 2012). The final role within IWT market chains is played by the consumer, and consumption is comprised of ten categories: medicinal, ornamental, cultural, gift, investment, recreational, animal food, construction material, fuel, and food, all sold to consumers who are often purchasing products from distant regions of the earth. Medicinal consumers exploit animals for medicinal. Laird et al. (2010) reveal that charismatic and iconic species in Asia are sold and traded for their medicinal functions. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) draws upon antiquated writings of ancient healers that recorded the human body’s reaction to various elements. Now in vogue, TCM is sometimes regarded as a valuable counterpart to Western, sciencebased medical treatments. Actman (2016) suggests that TCM is driving certain wildlife species to extinction, as the poaching and illegal trade of certain animals such as pangolins has increased across borders. Medicinal consumers have created an unprecedented demand for this ant-eating creature’s scales because of its propensity to remedy arthritis. Ornamental consumers have developed an insatiable appetite for wildlife resources such as ivory carvings, rhino horns, shark fins, and tiger pelt decorations, which serve as revenue sources for transnational criminal networks. Such wildlife resources, moreover, can also be highly important cultural objects, signifying high-value gifts and investments among collectors, creating a demand for certain non-human animal species (De Angelis 2012).

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Cultural and gift consumers purchase animals through mainstream market chains because the act of harvesting particular species is a recreational or cultural pastime, linked to traditional practices, beliefs, and values. Grigoryan (2014) explains that in countries like Armenia, ownership of rare lions, tigers, and bears is emerging as a recreational activity for the wealthy and powerful, demonstrating social standing. Similarly, rare and iconic endangered species are gifted to politicians in an attempt to curry favor with powerful bureaucrats. Gift consumers and investment consumers both engage in IWT for the long-term gains of animal trafficking. Certain high-valued taxa serve as a considerable financial investment for traders and buyers in illegal market chains, especially for endangered species that face imminent extinction. Recreational consumers engage in IWT because they demonstrate a propensity for hunting exotic animals, while animal food consumers prefer using illegally traded animal species as bait and food to feed other, domesticated animals (Naylor et al. 2000). Construction material and fuel consumers view animal species as resources to be exploited for anthropocentric needs, while food consumers have a particular affinity for certain taxa because they meet basic nutritional requirements, or serve as luxury food items (Wyatt 2013). The typology of IWT actors developed by Phelps et al. (2016) gives us tremendous insight into the dynamic and intricate nature of these market chains. We propose that each category outlined by the authors is, therefore, an architect of anthropogenic violence against non-human animals. Sollund (2017), inspired by White (2009, 2011), explores how IWT undermines several types of justice. For instance, ecological justice, the notion that human beings are merely one part of a larger ecosystem which should be protected because of its inherent value, is threatened by IWT and the anthropocentric and speciesist mentality. Such a misguided mentality facilitates, for example, the theft of wildlife resources belonging to a certain ecosystem: this is a breach of ecological justice because both the animal species and the ecosystem to which the species belongs are negatively impacted. The same can be said of environmental justice, which refers to the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regarding the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies (EPA 2018). In this context, environmental justice is violated by IWT because it undermines certain communities’ rights to the meaningful involvement in the implementation and enforcement of regulations covering the trade of wildlife animals.

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Finally, species justice, which refers to the intrinsic right of non-human animals to be free from any type of suffering and abuse, is also distorted by IWT. Aside from White’s justice-based approach to analyzing environmental crime, Sollund (2017) suggests that the trade in non-human species is simply immoral, given the harm and abuse inflicted on wildlife animals. This choreographed ecoviolence is shaped by the contours of speciesist and anthropocentric ideologies, justifying the domination of non-human animals. During trafficking and smuggling, animals endure physical pain, neglect, and malnutrition. Certain species, such as orangutans, experience psychological stress when separated from their parents and entered into illicit market chains to be sold as exotic pets. This degree of violence alters the neurological development of infant orangutans (Sollund 2017). In a similar vein, the booming illicit trade of lions in South Africa is equally violent in its operations: Schelling (2015) reveals that baby cubs are kidnapped from their captive mothers and hurled into the oppressive “canned hunting industry”—an enterprise dedicated to breeding lions so they can be added to staged lion hunts. The effects of the unnatural separation of infant cubs from their mothers can be devastating, leading to life-threatening nutritional deficiencies such as undeveloped bone; difficulty walking; and damaged teeth. This violence is cultural and institutionalized, permeating the very regulatory bodies created to regulate the illegal trade of wildlife animals. CITES, for example, has been excoriated by animal rights activists for perpetuating the trade, and abuse, of non-human animals. Sollund (2017) also joins this chorus of discontent over the anthropocentric leanings of CITES, arguing that the multilateral treaty legitimates the abduction, trafficking of non-human animals, and theriocide—that is, the killing of non-human animals by humans. Sollund (2017: 86) explains: Nonhumans are consistently regarded as ‘natural resources’ which can be ‘harvested’ for human benefit. To overexploit them, though, is unacceptable, principally because this will eventually harm humans, and can even, when CITES is incorporated in national legislation, be against the law, or at least against regulations… Whether illegal or not, the abduction and theriocide of nonhumans that CITES indirectly encourages has tremendous consequences in terms of individual (and species) suffering.

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Such comments undergird the anthropocentrism built into treaties such as CITES—in other words, the transboundary movement of animals is legal only when it benefits the livelihoods of human beings, a clear inversion of ecological and species justice. Clearly, then, questions of morality and ethics abound when discussing the purpose of international instruments such as CITES and, generally, why some animal species are legally kept as pets, while others are not; the delineation between legally traded and illegally traded wildlife is entirely capricious in nature, legitimizing the suffering of certain animals in captivity (Agnew 1998; Maher and Pierspoint 2011; Flynn 2011). Sollund (2017) eloquently argues for the advancement of individual rights and species-specific rights for non-human animals. While individual rights refer to one animal’s right to exercise specific needs, individual rights are also connected to species-specific rights which encompass the specific needs of a particular species—to dig, crawl, fly, migrate, procreate, and search for food, for example. Violations of both an animal’s individual rights and speciesspecific rights occur when animals are abducted from their habitats, forced to breed in captivity, and deprived of their freedom by being forced into expansive IWT market chains.

Global Responses to the IWT Since the architects of the violence associated with the international IWT operate across borders, comprising extensive networks of buyers and sellers, efforts to stem their work must be global in scope. As mentioned briefly above, CITES is a multilateral environmental agreement among nations designed to regulate the international trade of wildlife specimens. Originating as a resolution adopted in 1963 during a meeting among members from 80 countries at the World Conservation Union, the Convention entered into force in 1975, gaining traction among other nations and speaking to the importance of regulating the transboundary movement of wildlife resources. As of 2020, there are 183 contracting parties under CITES, and it is legally binding on its members, presenting a framework for each party’s conduct through the administration of respective legislation. Successful regulation of wildlife trade, it is maintained, relies heavily upon the cooperation between governments and law enforcement personnel to enforce national laws, bringing national legislation up to international standards (see Duffy 2013 for a discussion of the North-South dimension of the Convention). The treaty’s system of

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wildlife regulation is also based on the issuance of permits and certificates by national authorities with respect to the cross-border movement of wildlife specimens. CITES’ permit system has evolved since its inception, applying to a three-tiered classification, which provides disparate levels of protection to listed species (Brown and Swails 2005). While CITES attempts to regulate the wildlife trade globally, there are places in the world where we see a more pronounced threat of IWT, often referred to as “wildlife trade hotspots” and including China’s international borders; Africa and Southeast Asia’s trade hubs; the European Union’s eastern borders; Mexico’s illicit market; certain regions of the Caribbean; and the Solomon Islands (World Wildlife Fund 2019). All of these so-called hotspots are linked by advances in global transportation. For example, North America maintains a central role in the international wildlife market, serving as both consumer and supplier of wildlife resources. Canada, Mexico, and the United States have been identified as conduits for smuggled and trafficked animals. In fact, wildlife trade among the three countries is monitored by the North American Wildlife Enforcement Group (NAWEG) and the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), both of which aim to enforce CITES by preventing the illegal trade of wildlife resources and environmental conflicts. Such bodies exemplify the international capacity building and information sharing instruments required to stem the tide of IWT. Lehmacher (2016) suggests that the transportation and logistics sector plays a vital role in identifying the risks to wildlife species along the global supply chain. The threat is so perilous that a multitude of global organizations have attempted to exercise strategic, cross-sector approaches to eliminating IWT. Consider, for example, the collaboration between TRAFFIC and the World Customs Organization (WCO) in 2015. The former is a non-governmental organization dedicated to governing the trade of wild animals in the context of biodiversity, conservation, and sustainable development, while the latter is an intergovernmental organization that oversees the creation of international conventions addressing commodity classification, supply chain security, and international trade facilitation. Working collaboratively with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), TRAFFIC and the WCO facilitated a workshop on methods to deter transnational wildlife smuggling operations. The workshop was extremely successful, encouraging countries like China to pledge a zero tolerance toward IWT, drawing on the support of

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a handful of logistics and transportation companies. The events of 2015 were a watershed moment for the governance of IWT: the Declaration of the United for Wildlife International Taskforce on the Transportation of Illegal Wildlife Products was signed by approximately 40 corporations, agencies, and organizations, and the following year the International Air Transport Association (IATA) adopted a resolution dedicated to eliminating IWT (Lehmacher 2016). Drawing upon the public fervor over and following of CITES negotiations, this global initiative has spawned policy debates over the most effective types of conservation interventions: increased enforcement; the provision of alternative livelihoods; marketbased and incentive-oriented approaches (Biggs et al. 2013; Sutherland et al. 2014; Duffy 2013, 2014; Halley and Shearing 2016; Ayling 2013; Bennett 2015). The 2018 London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade formulated a global commitment to addressing IWT, calling for political support from national and international entities. Specifically, the conference led to a declaration which recommends creating a legal framework reminiscent of the one used to address other transnational organized crimes. What is more, there were recommendations that law enforcement agencies collaborate more, overseeing investigations which are “money-oriented” in order to stop the financial flows of IWT among source, transit, and destination countries. Certain proactive measures were highlighted during the conference, calling on countries and nongovernmental organizations to govern wildlife management through the creation of sustainable livelihoods for the communities hit hardest by poaching, animal trafficking, and smuggling (Meers 2018). Other concrete recommendations include: reducing institutional barriers to law enforcement cooperation; increasing resources to tackle illicit financial flows and governmental corruption; using innovative, financial investigation techniques; approaching IWT as predicated offenses; and buttressing anti-corruption and anti-money-laundering activities. The declaration also provides tangible suggestions on natural resource management—namely, habitat conservation and the maintenance of ecological integrity. Most importantly, however, it highlights the importance of including indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) in the fight against IWT. Drawing upon the 2016 meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES in Limbe, Cameroon, the declaration makes a strong case for the inclusion of IPLCs in the fight against the illegal, transboundary movement of wildlife resources. IWT, for example, engenders disproportionate effects on IPLCs in Cameroon

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by corroding natural, human, and social capital stocks. Such corrosion inhibits local communities’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—in particular, SDGs 1, 8, 15, 16, and 17. IWT also affects the countries’ national budgets because the financial flows resulting from IWT negatively impact the revenue stream of local and national governments. Finally, IWT hinders the national financing of social or development programs, further marginalizing IPLCs. Vandome and Vines’s (2018) research on IWT in Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe highlights the potential of including IPLCs in the fight against IWT. One such example is Zimbabwe’s Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE), an initiative promoting local ownership of protected areas. Most importantly, this initiative was one of the first in Africa to involve IPLCs in tackling IWT. The decision to include IPLCs is merely one example of utilizing an environmental justice framework, as animal trafficking disproportionately affects local communities that rely on animals for maintaining ecosystems. Consider, for example, how IWT negatively affects Angola by preventing the African country from developing a vibrant tourism industry; similarly, IWT undermines human security among vulnerable IPLCs, leading to abject poverty and structural dislocation. These are merely a few examples of how IWT affects African and indigenous communities in Latin America, North America, Asia and elsewhere. IPLCs also bear the brunt of top-down, militarized responses to IWT, especially when such communities are stigmatized and criminalized for using wildlife resources. Hubschle (2017) notes that militarization campaigns against IWT often lead to IPLCs feeling threatened by the presence of law enforcement and military officials, exacerbating social conflict between communities and agents of the state. Such tensions often lead to the oppressive exploitation of indigenous peoples—many of whom are forced into IWT by powerful criminal networks because of their special skills and knowledge regarding rare and iconic species. It is only through the inclusion of IPLCs, then, that environmental justice will be achieved, empowering and incentivizing these groups to engage in sustainable, conservation efforts (“The role of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in combating illegal wildlife trade”, 2016). This is precisely where a political economy of IWT would aid a more nuanced understanding of the environmental justice and human security dimensions of criminality activity.

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For our purposes, the use of political economy in theorizing and explaining IWT makes logical and pragmatic sense: socio-economic, structural conditions influence the illegal trade of wildlife. Specifically, political economy attempts to explain the behavior of the various actors involved in IWT market chains, relating such behaviors to structural circumstances pertaining to economic conditions, relations, and processes. In other words, links between volatile economic systems and the social sphere are unpacked through a political economy lens—specifically, the interconnectedness of economic relations, social relations, and institutions. Let us briefly apply political economy to a case study before we explore the environmental justice and human security dimensions of IWT.

The Illegal Trade of Turtles According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, more than 4000 native turtles were illegally traded in 2018. The specimens, valued at approximately $200,000 on the black market, were part of a sophisticated trafficking ring that was responsible for the distribution of these animals to reptile dealers located in Asia. Elassar (2019) reveals that the wholesale cost for individual specimens is approximately $300, while the retail cost can be upward of $10,000 each in Asia. Customs officials discovered illegally smuggled freshwater turtles being exported from South Carolina and New Jersey to Hong Kong (Rohrlich 2019). Canada’s Border Services seized 117 turtles and tortoises at the Windsor-Detroit border crossings in 2018, illuminating the global demand for these animals. The most coveted turtles are the rare eastern box turtles; the ringed map turtles; the three-toed box turtles; and diamondback terrapins. These specimens are valued at approximately $800 each and conservationists are deeply concerned about the growing threat of turtle poaching. In Ontario, Canada, the reduction of certain turtle species negatively impacts marine ecosystems that are vital to the survival of aquatic species. We are witnessing similar impacts across the globe, as the illicit black market for turtles and tortoises is becoming a global phenomenon: in 2019, Filipino customs officials seized more than 1500 exotic turtles and tortoises at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, while 3300 pig-nosed turtles were smuggled into Malaysia. In both cases, the creatures were smuggled originally from Hong Kong, as a direct result of burgeoning trafficking networks

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operating within Asia. Livni (2018) explains that the lucrative black market for turtles and tortoises is expanding because of ornamental, medicinal, and food consumers in Asia, most of which procure these animals as exotic pets; a source of traditional medicine; and a delicacy during cultural feasts. In fact, turtle meat is considered to be an aphrodisiac in certain Asian countries, while turtle bones are crushed into a powder for their supposed healing properties. How do we begin to explain the aforementioned behavior of poachers, smugglers, and traffickers? Mancini et al. (2011) suggest that the most prevalent drivers of turtle trafficking include direct economic benefits; the absence of effective law enforcement; and, most importantly, strong family tradition. Guillén et al. (2007) also contend that poverty and limited income-generating activities serve as drivers of the illegal trade of turtles. With difficult economic realities bearing down on local villagers, IWT serves as a reliable source of income and/or income augmentation. Madrigal-Ballestero and Jurado (2017) observe that a dearth of productive assets, unstable sources of income and economic opportunities, generally, incentivizes various harvesters and intermediaries to engage in IWT market chains. It is little wonder that the majority of criminal trafficking networks include Hong Kong as a destination country. Aun (2009) maintains that turtles serve a religious and symbolic function in Buddhism, as the Chinese believe that if one finds a turtle and delivers it to a temple, they will be rewarded with good fortune and longevity. What is more, the release of turtles into certain rivers, referred to fangsheng or “the release of life”, reinforces Buddhist thought and the path to a “better rebirth”. Such social practices and religious beliefs, in conjunction with limited income-generating activities and the volatility of the labor market, create the perfect storm for the transboundary movement of non-human animals. But the political economy of IWT is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg when theorizing transnational environmental crime. Let us turn our attention to how an environmental justice and human security framework can be invoked to elucidate the varied dimensions of IWT.

The Illegal Trade of Pangolins Though evidence is inconclusive, the possible linkage between the illegal trade in pangolin meat and scales in China and the zoonotic novel coronavirus COVID-19, which spread around the world with terrifying speed in February and March of 2020, has thrown the pangolin, already known

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as a highly endangered species, into a sharp spotlight (see Yu 2020; Andersen et al. 2020). Taxonomically speaking, pangolins are mammals of the Pholidota classification. As of 2020, there are eight species of pangolins spread across the globe. The Indian pangolin, Philippine pangolin, Sunda pangolin, and Chinese pangolin can be found in Asia, while the black-bellied pangolin, white-bellied pangolin, giant ground pangolin, and Temminck’s ground pangolin are located in Africa. These magnificent creatures have been hunted by Nigeria and Cameroon’s indigenous peoples for centuries, but the socio-cultural fabric of these local communities has been torn asunder by the growing consumer demand of these animals, especially from Asia. According to the Environmental Investigation Agency (2016), there has been an increase in the amount of pangolins trafficked from Africa and Asia, resulting in pangolins being added to Appendix I at the Conference of the Parties to CITES in South Africa in September 2016. Referring back to the typology of key actors along the IWT market chains presented by Phelps et al. (2016), we begin to see the main drivers of the illegal pangolin trade—namely, medicinal, ornamental, and food consumers. For example, pangolin fetuses, scales, and blood are used in Chinese medicine, while stuffed pangolins are sold as souvenirs and their scales transformed into high-fashion jewelry (Zhang 2018). Food consumers in Africa, on the other hand, revere pangolin meat as a delicacy, and its possession elevates one’s socio-economic status within the community. Seizure data compiled by the Environmental Investigation Agency from 2000 to 2016 reveals that pangolins are one of the most vulnerable species to IWT, with approximately one million pangolins being illegally traded within Asia in the last decade (Environmental Investigation Agency 2016). A research paper published by TRAFFIC and the IUCN in 2016 entitled “The Global Trafficking of Pangolins: A comprehensive summary of seizures and trafficking routes from 2010-2015” reveals that a staggering 67 countries were involved in IWT market chains (Heinrich et al. 2017). The cross-border seizure data, furthermore, reveals that between 2010 and 2015, law enforcement agencies confiscated 120 tons of whole pangolins, parts and scales. In November 2017, China recorded the seizure of 11.9 tons of pangolin scales—the largest recorded pangolin seizure to date (Zhang 2018). What can be gleaned from the data is that those involved in the smuggling and trafficking of pangolins utilized 27 global trade routes, with Berlin being identified as a major transit hub

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for the transportation of pangolins from Africa to Asia. The adaptability of criminal networks, more importantly, is highlighted in the publication, identifying the highly mobile nature of smuggling routes: intermediaries strategically choose between well-known trading routes and new routes to evade and confuse law enforcement agents. How, exactly, does the concept of environmental justice aid our understanding of the global trade of pangolins? Vandome and Vines (2018) argue that the economic value of African ecosystems is underrecognized because of the lacunae in the literature on transnational IWT. As mentioned above, IPLCs in African countries have, until quite recently, been excluded from efforts to combat IWT. This seems to be the case when looking at the illegal pangolin trade between Africa and Asia. Similar to the transnationalization of plant crime discussed in Chapter 5, the growth of the middle class, and its insatiable appetite for rare and iconic animal specimens, seems to be one of the major drivers of the pangolin trade. This has led to the emergence of Nigerian syndicates working in tandem with Asian criminal networks to export pangolins out of the country (Sunday 2019). Confronted with rampant bribery and increased corruption, IPLCs in Nigeria have witnessed their territorial lands transform into transit hubs for smugglers. This is a clear violation of environmental justice because African local economies maintain their vitality and strength from natural capital stocks, and the IWT inhibits inclusive growth and sustainable development (Vandome and Vines 2018). Despite the Declaration of the United for Wildlife International Taskforce on the Transportation of Illegal Wildlife Products’ promise to include IPLCs in global initiatives to tackle IWT, countless communities in Nigeria express concern that their voices are still being silenced in larger conversations regarding conservation of the country’s pangolins. Concomitantly, topdown, fortress style conservation practices take precedence over local knowledge, preventing Nigeria’s IPLCs from weighing in on important decision-making processes regarding the illegal trade of pangolins. The exclusion of Nigeria’s IPLCs from such decisions affects the country’s ecosystems and biodiversity, forcing these communities to bear the economic cost of IWT. Their exclusion also affects their tourism industry, as IWT deters various actors from investing in Nigeria which, in turn, impacts government revenues and the livelihoods of IPLCs. Environmental justice, then, serves as a useful framework for explaining how

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IPLCs’ rights are undermined through the proliferation of the illegal pangolin trade.

The Illegal Trade of Hyacinth Macaws Colloquially referred to as the “king of parrots”, the hyacinth macaw is a fulgent bird hailing from central and eastern South America. The species was added to the CITES Appendices—specifically, Appendix 1, which lists those species that are the most endangered due to imminent threats of extinction. CITES, in turn, prohibits the international trade of these specimens, except for exceptional (non-commercial) circumstances such as scientific research (Schneider 2012). The fetishization of this incredible creature has led to its unfortunate decline across the globe. Hruby (2019) maintains that during the last two decades of the twentieth century the number of hyacinth macaws fell from 10,000 to a mere 1500 due to the global pet trade, with the approximate cost of one parrot ranging from $5000 to $10,000 for a male and $15,000 for a female. Conservation efforts in Brazil at the dawn of the twentieth century have attempted to reverse the decline of the macaws, boasting a repopulation of about 4300 mature birds in the year 2000, but egg smuggling seems to be an intractable problem, as harvesters and intermediaries tend to have more luck smuggling eggs across porous borders. Austrian authorities have been conducting an investigation since 2016, confiscating illegally traded parrots and eggs, especially those belonging to the hyacinth macaw. Referred to as the “egg smuggling mafia”, criminal networks in Europe have turned certain countries in the continent into hubs for egg smuggling. European harvesters and intermediaries possess sophisticated technology for the breeding, rearing, and laundering of hyacinth macaws, satiating the appetite of ornamental consumers in Europe. In fact, between 2003 and 2015, customs officers have confiscated more than 358 bird eggs, most of which belonged to hyacinth macaws destined for Portugal, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic (Hruby 2019). A human security approach has much to offer when examining the dynamic and nuanced dimensions of the illegal trade of hyacinth macaws and their coveted eggs. Beginning with economic and food security, defined as the guarantee of a basic income, and physical and economic access to basic food (UNDP 1994); It is clear that the trafficking of hyacinth macaws could, very well, threaten the livelihoods,

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employment, and food resources of many Brazilians. For example, the poverty isolated in remote communities in the country is only exacerbated by parrot and egg poaching, which leads to nest destruction and habitat loss. These human-induced ecological interruptions disturb the foraging and hunting behaviors of animals which, in turn, affect the economic and food security of Brazilian villagers impacted by the illegal trade of hyacinth macaws. The opportunity costs of lost tourism revenue are difficult to quantify, a common theme in the calculation of IWT costs; along with other hidden costs, they contribute to the World Bank Group (2019) recent estimate that the true costs of environmental crime range from one to two trillion US dollars per year. Health security, defined as protection from infectious or parasitic diseases and access to personal health care (UNDP 1994), is also undermined by the trafficking of hyacinth macaws because the illicit trade of certain species can lead to pandemics such as varieties of influenza (Cantu et al. 2007). Health security is also linked to personal security and community security, defined as peoples’ physical and mental safety from violence and safety from oppressive practices and ethnic conflict, respectively (UNDP 1994). Pires and Clarke (2011) reveal that parrot poachers fall into two distinct categories: “professional” trappers and “opportunistic” villagers. The abject poverty in which many Brazilian villagers find themselves forces them to seek financially rewarding careers as poachers. This, according to Hruby (2019), often leads to violent conflicts with “professional” trappers who have already carved out a niche for themselves in the IWT market chain. Suffice to say, tensions between these two groups have risen in light of the global demand for hyacinth macaws and their eggs. Environmental security, which is referred to as access to a healthy living environment and basic resources such as water and land (UNDP 1994), is also threatened by parrot poaching in South America. The extent of poaching in certain “hotspots” across the globe can lead to biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation (Berkunsky et al. 2017). Tella and Hiraldo (2014) maintain that IWT leads to the decline of certain indigenous species because invasive alien species end up competing with local animals for food and space, again, placing pressure on habitats. Moreover, parrot poachers can, unintentionally, alter the demographic and genetic structure of hyacinth macaws by overexploiting the species through the selective hunting of male parrots. This, in turn, reduces the long-term viability of male parrots (Milner-Gulland et al. 2003; Berkunsky et al.

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2017). Parrot poaching can introduce new diseases into ecosystems and, ultimately, food chains relied upon by various non-human animals. The transmission of diseases into wild populations could potentially affect the environment and human health. Finally, as Gascon et al. (2015) reveal, all species perform vital roles within the ecosystem and the loss of the hyacinth macaw could lead to significant disruptions in ecosystem function such as “empty forest syndrome”, characterized by barren forests, seed dispersal and predation (Redford 1992). The final dimension of security outlined in the human security framework is political security, defined as freedom from state oppression and human rights violations. While not much evidence-based research has been conducted on how parrot poaching undermines a country’s political security, we can speculate how the illegal trade of the hyacinth macaw may affect Brazilians’ political security, especially if we consider the typology of IWT actors presented by Phelps et al. (2016). We can, for example, reflect on how intermediaries such as government colluders may threaten political security, oppressing local villagers who rely on hyacinth macaws for sustaining their environment. Based on the global demand for this particular species of parrot, many criminal networks could, potentially, quash the political and civil liberties of Brazilian civilians for economic gain.

Syncretic Analysis: The Seed-Finch’s Song of Freedom In order to demonstrate the productiveness of pursuing a syncretic analysis of IWT, we will present a harrowing story of the illegally traded Seed-Finches of Guyana. The illegal trade of Guyana’s Chestnut-bellied (Sporophila angolensis) and Large-billed (Sporophila crassirostris) SeedFinches has garnered the attention of those interested in the intersections of IWT, conservation, and security (Stack 2018). Guyana’s illegal trade of wildlife has served as a clarion call for the development of adequate export laws, quotas, and regulations. In 2018, customs officials at John F. Kennedy International Airport discovered approximately 200 of the songbirds hidden in the luggage of smugglers who brought them illegally into the United States. The illegal wildlife trade of Guyana’s Seed-Finches warrants an analysis from an environmental justice and human security perspective, especially after the President of the Tourism and Hospitality Association’s 2019

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address to the international community for a ban on wildlife trade, smuggling, and commercial hunting in Guyana’s hinterlands. The President’s address is an attempt to preserve Guyana’s flora and fauna. Anthropocentric interference with the country’s biodiversity has nearly led to the Seed-Finch’s extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has also identified how wildlife crime has grown into the fourth-largest branch of illegal international trade in the past half-decade; the illegal trade of Guyana’s Seed-Finches is a part of the black market in animals. Additionally, CITES has categorized Guyana as a country of “possible concern” and has recommended that the country (i) establishes and implements a field reporting system to record the origin of harvested birds, (ii) establishes a population monitoring system, and (iii) maintains traditionally practiced trapping and export seasons (UNEP-WCMC 2018). The predominant driver of Seed-Finch smuggling, according to Stack (2018), is what is colloquially referred to as “bird racing” among Caribbean diasporas in Queens, New York. As part of an underground singing concert during which gamblers place bets on the birds’ chirping skills, “bird racing” has grown in popularity within certain suburbs across Queens. This is a rather fascinating case study because of its socio-cultural dimensions: “bird racing” is an activity taken up by members of Caribbean diasporas who try to maintain a connection to their home country and their cultural practices. According to a United States Fish and Wildlife Service investigation nicknamed Operation G-Bird, Seed-Finches can sell for up to $10,000, and informal competitions have accelerated the smuggling of these birds. This serves as a lucrative enterprise for smugglers in Guyana trying to eke out a living in a country that has an unemployment rate of 40 percent and one of the highest emigration rates in the world, with over 55 percent of Guyana’s citizens residing in other countries (Lano 2017). Such bleak economic conditions incentivize local harvesters to engage in IWT market chains. By exploring the structural imperfections of Guyana’s labor market, we can contextualize the political economy of IWT: approximately two-thirds of Guyana’s citizens live in poverty, with the majority working as agricultural workers in rural areas. In fact, Guyana receives more international aid per capita than 85 percent of the world and yet it remains one of the poorest countries in the Americas. This can be attributed to the legacy

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of structural adjustment policies enacted as early as the 1980s; the proliferation of transnational extractive industries; “green” conditionalities for international loans for protected areas; and the presence of international loggers, and gold and mining companies—most of whom gain access to the country’s bountiful resources via large land concessions (Hennessy 2005). Such dire economic conditions give rise to clandestine groups attempting to smuggle Seed-Finches into the United States, earning up to $10,000 for each bird, depending on its pedigree and track record (Rueb 2015). The links between global economic relations and social relations are further revealed by the socio-cultural dimension of Seed-Finch trafficking; as stated above, Caribbean diasporas in Queens, New York, host “bird racing” contests in an attempt to reconnect with their cultural practices, while turning a profit during these “races” and other contests featuring Seed-Finches. Bird mules in the United States, for example, can make approximately $15,000 for a single flight, depending on how many birds they can transport (Rueb 2015). Environmental justice lends a unique insight into the illegal trade of Guyana’s Seed-Finches, especially when exploring the violation of certain indigenous communities’ rights. IWT in Guyana is rampant and the trafficking of these rare birds undermines the rights of communities to participate in the governance of their wildlife resources. This is because low-income and indigenous communities are prevented from participating in decision-making processes that affect the protection and conservation of the Seed-Finch, opening a vacuum for the harvesters, intermediaries, and consumers to exploit the country’s biodiversity. Environmental justice, in this context, also speaks to the importance of including IPLCs in the fight against the Seed-Finch trade. For example, serious strides have been made in the realm of conservation in Guyana: the country launched its very first community-owned conservation area (C.O.C.A.) at the dawn of the twenty-first century with the Wai Wai, one of the country’s indigenous peoples. Collaborating with Conservation International, the Government of Guyana, Conservation InternationalGuyana (CIG), and the Wai Wai signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) outlining a plan for the sustainable use of the Konashen’s wildlife resources. Such initiatives speak to the importance of environmental justice in the context of the illicit trade of Seed-Finches, expanding our understanding of the transnationalization of IWT.

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Finally, human security can be applied to the global trafficking of exotic birds, highlighting the security dimensions. From this perspective, we can review how the UNDP’s seven elements of security are threatened and undermined by the transboundary movement of Guyana’s Seed-Finches. Economic and food security, both of which address guarantees of a basic income, and physical and economic access to basic food (UNDP 1994), can be subverted by IWT because the overharvesting and subsequent theft and trafficking of both the Chestnut-bellied and Largebilled Seed-Finches hinder local, indigenous economies. Heavily relied upon wildlife resources run the risk of being depleted and overexploited through IWT and indigenous communities bear the brunt of this practice, which hinders their socio-economic development. The same can be said of food security, as the theft of certain species of birds may disrupt beautifully elaborate ecosystems and food chains which, indirectly, affect human beings’ access to certain food items in the densely forested jungles of Guyana’s hinterlands. Health security is also, potentially, undermined by Seed-Finch trafficking rings as a nation’s protection from infectious or parasitic diseases is compromised. IWT could pose a threat to American agriculture and the broader economy through the possible introduction of animal diseases like Bird Flu. The 2015 outbreak of Bird Flu in the United States, for example, caused $850 million in damages; not enough research has been conducted on whether or not Seed-Finches may end up being an example of an invasive alien species in the United States (Stack 2018). Personal security and community security are other dimensions to consider here, as they both refer to peoples’ physical and mental safety from violence and safety from oppressive practices and ethnic conflict, respectively (UNDP 1994). The high demand of Seed-Finches in the United States has fuelled heightened rivalry between local harvesters and intermediaries in Guyana, all of which resort to violent acts in order to gain access to these coveted birds. With the potential to make $15,000 as a bird mule per trip to the United States, impoverished members of communities are literally fighting each other for opportunities to supplement their meager incomes (Rueb 2015). Environmental security is, undoubtedly, affected by Seed-Finch trafficking because certain communities’ access to a healthy living environment and basic resources such as water and land are severely threatened by harvesters and intermediaries. Guyana has witnessed habitat destruction and drastic changes in the demographic and genetic structure of

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these birds as a result of IWT; according to Stack (2018), more demand is placed on male Seed-Finches and this could lead to a reduction in their long-term viability and overexploitation. Somewhat related to violations of health security, environmental security is also undermined by the potential of Guyana’s exotic birds introducing new diseases into American ecosystems and, ultimately, food chains relied upon by various non-human animals. The final dimension of security which requires our attention when discussing the global trade of Seed-Finches is political security. Referred to as freedom from state oppression and human rights violations, political security is tenuous in Guyana. Revisiting the typology of IWT actors presented by Phelps et al. (2016), we can surely identify intermediaries such as government colluders working in tandem with local smugglers. Rueb (2015) notes that bribery is rampant in Guyana’s airports, as smugglers entice government and airport officials with the avails of their smuggling operations. This may only be a tip of the proverbial iceberg, exposing how extensive IWT market chains are in Guyana.

Conclusion The ecoviolence and harms associated with IWT are globalizing and showing little sign of abating. While carefully coordinated steps to address underground trafficking networks are in full swing, criminal networks are always a few steps ahead, innovating and expanding their modus operandi. IWT must be seen from a perspective informed by consideration of the implications of (in)justice, anthropocentrism, and speciesism. In general, it is high time we view non-human animals as sentient beings—beings which possess inherent value and worth. There are many moral, ethical, and, of course, sustainability-related reasons to end animal exploitation and combatting IWT is a step in the right direction. In this chapter, we presented a conceptualization of IWT, unpacking the myriad drivers of this transnational activity; we proceeded by exploring the various actors involved in the IWT market chain and explored some of the global responses to the trafficking of wildlife resources. We then briefly described the illegal international trade in turtles, pangolins, and hyacinth macaws. Finally, we presented a syncretic analysis of a provocative case study: the smuggling of Guyana’s Seed-Finches into the United States. We discuss various responses to the IWT and other environmental crimes in Chapter 7, but it is clear that it will continue to flourish

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if market demands do not decline. Raising awareness—including the poignant reminder that “extinction is forever”—is just part of the task. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread and people began to associate its origins with the wildlife trade in China (though this is yet to be proven in the definitive), there were calls to ban wildlife trade altogether. This would hardly solve the problem: it would just drive the IWT further, even increasing its popularity, and making monitoring the trade even more difficult, and it would unfairly punish those who engagae in sustainable trade. But the battle against IWT must be taken more seriously by governments in particular. Many people engaged in the trade are not fully aware of their small roles within it. Government corruption is also a major factor, since underpaid customs agents and others along the supply chain can often be bribed or coerced into negligence; but in many cases, it is more a matter of lacking the skills necessary to identify illegal shipments, and the willingness to prosecute IWT offenders, who are often treated as minor criminals in national courts. We see similar patterns in the transnational hazardous waste trade and turn to this topic in the next chapter.

Note 1. As with other forms of organized crime, it is impossible to obtain accurate figures about net value. This is the case for all of the transnational environmental crimes discussed in this book. Economists are able to make broad estimations only, given the covert nature of the trade and fluctuations in market prices. And a monetary value alone could not possibly capture the true costs of environmental crimes.

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Laird, S.A., R.J. McLain, and R. Wynberg. 2010. Wild Product Governance: Finding Policies That Work for Non-timber Forest Products. London, UK: Earthscan. Lano, C. 2017, September 17. “Why Is Guyana Poor?” Retrieved from https:// borgenproject.org/why-is-guyana-poor/. Lehmacher, W. 2016, September 28. “Wildlife Crime: A $23 Billion Trade That’s Destroying Our Planet.” Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/ 2016/09/fighting-illegal-wildlife-and-forest-trade/. Livni, E. 2018, December 25. “A Market for Tiny Turtles Triggered an International Criminal Smuggling Scheme.” Retrieved from https://qz. com/1506925/a-market-for-tiny-turtles-triggered-an-international-criminalsmuggling-scheme/. Madrigal-Ballestero, R., and D. Jurado. 2017. “Economic Incentives, Perceptions and Compliance with Marine Turtle Egg Harvesting Regulation in Nicaragua.” Conservation and Society 15(1): 74–86. Maher, J., and H. Pierspoint. 2011. “Friends, Status Symbols and Weapons: The Use of Dogs by Youth Groups and Youth Gangs.” Crime, Law and Social Change 55(5): 405–420. Mancini, A., J. Senko, R. Borquez-Reyes, J.G. Poo, J. Seminoff and V. Koch. 2011. “To Poach or Not to Poach an Endangered Species: Elucidating the Economic and Social Drivers Behind Illegal Sea Turtle Hunting in Baja California Sur, Mexico.” Human Ecology 39(1): 743–756. Meers, J. 2018, October 25. “Illegal Wildlife Trade Is Organized Crime, 80 Countries Declare.” Retrieved from https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/8806illegal-wildlife-Trade-is-organized-crime-80-countries-declare. Milliken, T. 2014. Illegal Trade in Ivory and Rhino Horn: An Assessment Report to Improve Law Enforcement Under the WILDLIFE Traps Project. Cambridge: TRAFFIC. Milner-Gulland, E., and E.L. Bennet (and the SCB 2002 Annual Conference Wild Meat Group). 2003. “Wild Meat: The Bigger Picture.” Trends Ecology Evolution Journal 18(1): 351–357. Muth, R.M., and J.R. Bowe. 1998. “Illegal Harvest of Renewable Natural Resources in North America: Toward a Typology of the Motivation of Poaching.” Society and Natural Resources 11(1): 9–24. Naylor, R.L., R.J. Goldburg, J.H. Primavera, N. Kautsky, M.C.M. Beveridge, J. Clay, C. Folke, J. Lubchenco, H. Mooney, and M. Troell. 2000. “Effect of Aquaculture on World Fish Supplies.” Nature 405(6790): 1017–1024 [online]. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10890435. Parce, F., and M. Woodiwiss, eds. 1993. Global Crime Connections: Dynamics and Control. London: Macmillan.

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Phelps, J., D. Biggs, and E.L. Webb. 2016. “Tools and Terms for Understanding Illegal Wildlife Trade.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 186(1): 479–489. Pires, S. 2012. “The Illegal Parrot Trade: A Literature Review.” Global Criminology 13(1): 176–190. Pires, S., and R. Clarke. 2011. “Are Parrots CRAVED? An Analysis of Parrot Poaching in Mexico.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 49(1): 122–146. Radjawali, I. 2011. “Social Networks and the Live Reef Food Fish Trade: Examining Sustainability.” Journal of Indonesian Social Sciences and Humanities 4(1): 67–102. Redford, K. 1992. “The Empty Forest.” Bioscience 42(6): 412–422. Rohrlich, J. 2019, August 12. “Undercover Sting Takes Down International Endangered Turtle Smuggler.” Retrieved from https://qz.com/1686015/ Undercover-sting-takes-Down-endangered-Turtle-smuggler/. Rueb, E. 2015. “Tiny Birds, Big Drama: Inside the World of the Birdmen of Queens.” New York Times, July 31. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/ 02/nyregion/tiny-birds-Big-drama-Inside-the-world-of-the-birdmen-of-que ens.html. Schelling, A. 2015, October 5. “Hunters Say Trophy Hunting Helps Animals: Here’s Why They’re Wrong.” Retrieved from https://www.thedodo.com/ does-Hunting-help-Conservation-1389284014.html. Schneider, J. 2012. Sold Into Extinction: The Global Trade in Endangered Species. Santa Barbara: Praeger. Shepherd, C.R., C.J. Stengel, and V. Nijman, V. 2012. The Export of and Reexport of CITES-Listed Birds from the Solomon Islands. Cambridge: TRAFFIC. Sollund, R. 2011. “Expressions of Speciesism: The Effects of Keeping Companion Animals on Animal Abuse, Animal Trafficking and Species Decline.” Crime, Law and Social Change 55(5): 437–451. Sollund, R. 2017. “The Animal Other: Legal and Illegal Theriocide.” In M. Hall, J. Maher, and A. Nurse, eds., Greening Criminology in the 21st Century: Contemporary Debates and Future Directions in the Study of Environmental Harm (pp. 79–100). Abingdon: Routledge. Sollund, R. 2019. The Crimes of Wildlife Trafficking: Issues of Justice, Legality and Morality. London: Routledge. South, N., and T. Wyatt. 2011. “Comparing Illicit Trades in Wildlife and Drugs: An Exploratory Study.” Deviant Behavior 32(1): 538–561. Stack, L. 2018, December 11. “Smuggled Finches, Bound for Singing Contests, Keep Arriving in New York.” Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/ 2018/12/12.

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Sunday, O. 2019. “Nigeria Finds Itself at the Heart of the Illegal Pangolin Trade.” Retrieved from https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/nig eria-finds-itself-at-the-heartofthe-illegal-pangolin-trade. Sutherland, W., R. Aveling, T.M. Brooks, et al. 2014. “A Horizon Scan of Global Conservation Issues for 2014.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 29(1): 15–22. Tella, J., and F. Hiraldo. 2014. “Illegal and Legal Parrot Trade Shows a LongTerm, Cross-Cultural Preference for the Most Attractive Species Increasing Their Risk of Extinction.” Department of Conservation Biology 9(9): 1–9. The Royal Society. 2018. Science: Tackling the Illegal Wildlife Trade. London: The Royal Society. TRAFFIC. 2016, July 11. “The Role of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in Combating Illegal Wildlife Trade.” Retrieved from https://www.tra ffic.org/news/the-role-of-indigenous-peoples-and-local-communities-in-com bating-illegal-wildlife-trade/. UNDP. 1994. Human Development Report 1994. New York: United Nations Development Program. UNEP-WCMC. 2018. Report on Species/Country Combinations Selected for Review by the Animals Committee following CoP17 . Cambridge: UNEPWCMC. Vandome, C., and A. Vines. 2018. Tackling Illegal Wildlife Trade in Africa: Economic Incentives and Approaches. London: Chatham House. Vira, V., T. Ewing, and J. Miller. 2014. “Out of Africa: Mapping the Global Trade in Illicit Elephant Ivory.” Retrieved from http://medial.snbcnews. com/i/MSNBC/sections/news/outofafrica_Report.pdf. Warchol, G. 2004. “The Transnational Illegal Wildlife Trade.” Criminal Justice Studies 17(1): 57–73. Wellsmith, M. 2011. “Wildlife Crime: The Problem of Enforcement.” European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 17: 125–148. White, R., ed. 2009. Environmental Crime: A Reader. Devon: Willan Publishing. White, R. 2011. Transnational Environmental Crime: Toward an Eco-Global Criminology. London: Routledge. World Bank Group. 2019. Illegal Logging, Fishing, and Wildlife Trade: The Costs and How to Combat It. http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/482771571323 560234/WBGReport1017Digital.pdf. World Wildlife Fund. 2019. Life on the Frontline 2019: A Global Survey of the Working Conditions of Rangers. Washington, DC: World Wildlife Fund. Wyatt, T. 2009. “Exploring the Organization of Russia’s Far East Illegal Wildlife Trade: Two Case Studies of the Illegal Fur and Illegal Falcon Trades.” Global Criminology 10(1): 144–154. Wyatt, T. 2013. Wildlife Trafficking: A Deconstruction of the Crime, the Victims, and the Offenders. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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CHAPTER 3

The Transnationalization of Hazardous Waste

…if states and corporations are not planning to reduce toxic inputs into production … A logical approach would be to export these wastes to global South communities [thus ensuring] the more visible dimensions of pollution are now “out of sight, out of mind”. Pellow, 2009: 33

Introduction Make no mistake about it: waste is a global commodity today, constantly in production, and often circling the globe as people try to profit from its disposal, though it is rarely on the minds of policymakers or those engaged in forming related international law (Barsalou and Picard 2018; Baird et al. 2014; Clapp 2002). Much of this waste can easily be classified as hazardous, and the people who are most likely to be exposed to it are victims of environmental injustice (often quite racial in character); this “toxic waste colonialism” (Pratt 2011) reflects both global inequities and the international risk society (Beck 1992). In this chapter, we discuss the conceptual difficulties of defining hazardous waste and suggest that some of the most harmful cases of transnational hazardous waste-related ecoviolence do not involve the actual transport of waste itself, but rather the international investment in resource extraction that results in threats to the environmental justice and human security of indigenous peoples and other communities.

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The conceptual complexity of “hazardous waste” is striking because of its physical nature and its normalization under the market forces of neoliberal capitalism. The generation and transboundary movement of much hazardous waste could well evade legal scrutiny under the blanket of market forces. This raises the distinction made in Chapter 1 between the strict legalist and the social legalist perspective, and begs the question: When is the transportation of hazardous waste treated as a crime? Adopting a social legalist perspective, we suggest that the illegal disposal and treatment of hazardous waste by companies and organizations is, indeed, a violent criminal act undertaken by companies to exploit governance gaps within and among nation-states and intergovernmental organizations. The current global governance system is beset by the growing crisis of hazardous waste and its pernicious effects on human health, ecosystems, and biodiversity. The existing global security mechanisms are simply incapable of keeping up with the behavior of corporations that engage in the illegal disposal of hazardous waste to avoid proper disposal at permitted landfills or facilities and concomitant disposal fees. These companies, it bears emphasizing, are not necessarily faceless entities we never come across during our quotidian consumption practices. In this chapter, we put questions of environmental justice and human security at the forefront of analysis, critiquing the political economy of the ecoviolence associated with corporate behavior, the eco-mafia, and investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS—settlements often invoked during free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties between parties in the global market, enforcing the prioritization of corporate rights over the rights of national governments to protect public interest). Organized crime of one stripe or the others has made the hazardous waste trade a staple in Italy, the United States, and elsewhere (see Block and Scarpitti 1985) but the exhausted stereotype of dubious criminals and mafia-esque organizations transporting hazardous waste under the cloak of darkness has given way to a new type of transnational ecoviolence. Today, global investors and multinational corporations can privately enforce public treaties, essentially suing governments for not fulfilling conditions as per free trade agreements treaties, and perpetuating the production of toxic waste in the process; it is part of the social world that accompanies the illegal and legal exploitation of natural resources (Boekhout van Solinge 2014).

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Linking environmental justice and human security to the proliferation of hazardous waste promotes an exploration of the choreographed ecoviolence detailed in other sections of this book. This choreography occurs under the rhythmic cadence of “business as usual” tactics, bilateral and multilateral agreements between private and public actors perpetuating processes of environmental degradation on a global scale, blurring the line between agential and structural violence, forcing us to reflect on the direct-structural-cultural violence associated with hazardous waste. Eloquently referred to as the “violence triangle” by Galtung (1990), this metaphor can be used to understand how the global movement and production of hazardous waste constitute not only an event, but a permanent and violent phenomenon of globalization. If we consider, for a moment, how the generation, and unequal distribution, of hazardous waste threatens basic human rights and needs, lowering people’s life chances, we surely wouldn’t hesitate using the conceptual frame of ecoviolence to describe this phenomenon. Downey and Willigen (2005), for example, reveal that industrial pollution and hazardous waste not only impact human health, but also psychological well-being. Exploring the sociology of mental health and environmental inequality, the authors demonstrate that industrial pollution and hazardous waste lead to feelings of communal disorder and personal powerlessness among low-income and racialized communities. This is only one example of the varied dimensions of violence of which Galtung (1990) and Uvin (2001) speak. In our attempt to capture both the agential and structural violence of the generation and transboundary movement of hazardous waste, we can begin to see the need for a strategically interdisciplinary approach to studying global environmental justice as the central ethical frontier for students of ecological thought and international relations theory.

Conceptualizing Hazardous Waste Defining hazardous waste is no easy task, given the governing principles of national, international, and transnational environmental law, and space constraints preclude a lengthy discussion. Nevertheless, we will present an overview of what constitutes hazardous waste, drawing upon key institutional definitions; we proceed under the assertion that investment in activities that produce hazardous waste abroad constitutes a form of transnational ecoviolence—from the environmental justice and human

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security perspectives, it is not just trade in hazardous waste across borders that is at issue here. Hazardous waste is potentially dangerous to human health and the environment. This type of waste comes in many forms: liquids, solids, and contained gases. Equally harmful, these types of waste can be the by-product of manufacturing processes, unused commercial products, and a host of other industrial activities. For the purposes of regulation, hazardous waste usually exhibits the following characteristics: ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity, and toxicity. Ignitability refers to those substances which can create fires due to spontaneous combustion. Examples of ignitable items include waste oil and used solvents. Corrosivity, on the other hand, is a property of certain types of waste which are acids, producing acidic or alkaline solutions. Reactive types of hazardous waste are extremely unstable, even under normal conditions. Reactivity results in substances being highly volatile and explosive, tending to release noxious fumes, gases, and vapors. Finally, toxicity is a characteristic of selected waste which is harmful, or even fatal, when ingested. What makes these waste products all the more dangerous is their propensity to pollute groundwater, travelling far distances from the source of production (Environmental Protection Agency 2019). The World Bank also defines hazardous waste by considering the following dimensions: (i) hazardous characteristics, (ii) toxic components, (iii) types of materials, (iv) the processes responsible for the generation of hazards, and (v) the waste streams from which they originate. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal provides the most comprehensive definition of hazardous waste. The Convention outlines categories of waste streams: - Y1, Clinical wastes from medical care in hospitals, medical centers, and clinics; - Y2, Wastes from the production and preparation of pharmaceutical products; - Y3, Waste from pharmaceuticals, drugs, and medicines; - Y4, Wastes from the production, formulation, and use of biocides and phytopharmaceuticals; - Y5, Wastes from the manufacture, formulation, and use of wood preserving chemicals; - Y6, Wastes from the production, formulation, and use of organic solvents; - Y7, Wastes from heat treatment and tempering operations containing cyanides;

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- Y8, Waste from mineral oils unfit for their originally intended use; - Y9, Waste from oils/water, hydrocarbons/water mixtures, emulsions; - Y10, Waste from substances and articles containing or contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyl; - Y11, Waste from tarry residues arising from refining, distillation, and any pyrolytic treatment; - Y12, Wastes from production, formulations, and use of resins, latex, plasticizers, glues/adhesives; - Y13, Wastes from production, formulation, and use of inks, dyes, pigments, paints, lacquers, varnish; - Y14, Waste of chemical substances arising from research and development or teaching activities which are not identified and/or are new and whose effects on (wo)man and/or the environment are not known; - Y15, Wastes of an explosive nature not subject to other legislation; - Y16, Wastes from production, formulation, and use of photographic chemicals and processing materials; - Y17, Wastes resulting from surface treatment of metals and plastics; - Y18, Residues arising from industrial waste disposal operations. Source: Secretariat of Basel Convention 2019

Adding to the definitional breadth of what constitutes hazardous wastes, the Basel Convention also outlines the various constituents of wastes: complexes of transition metals with carbon monoxide ligands, metal and metal-bearing wastes, metal wastes consisting of alloys, wastes containing organic constituents, wastes containing inorganic constituents, copper compounds, zinc compounds, lead compounds, mercury compounds, and organic cyanides—to name just a few. Finally, the Convention provides a comprehensive list of hazardous characteristics of substances and compounds which could be classified as hazardous waste. These characteristics include explosive substances, flammable liquids and solids, substances and wastes liable to combustion, oxidizing substances, organic peroxides, poisonous substances, corrosives, ecotoxic compounds, and infectious substances (Secretariat of Basel Convention 2019). We should be clear, however: the Basel Convention has not, despite great intention and effort, stopped the international trade in toxic waste (Clapp 2011). The production of hazardous wastes is a thriving enterprise and it is extremely difficult to assess the potential hazards of the wastes generated and transported within and between countries. In fact, further research is required to establish the measures to identify the negative effects of the items listed in the Convention. This is, perhaps, one of the limitations of

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the Basel Convention, as individual countries are charged with the task of developing their own formal tests for hazardous wastes. The improper management, and disposal, of hazardous waste is equally dangerous and is a growing problem in our globalized world. Whether it is waste in the form of sludge from chemical plants, clinical waste, or contaminated oil, marginalized communities are forced to bear the brunt of hazardous waste. The World Bank (2002) reveals that estimations of the total amount of waste produced are unreliable. This is for many reasons, including the dearth of recorded data on the quantity of waste produced; untrained staff; waste evasion tactics; and the reclassification of “waste” to meet the definitional standards of certain industrial organizations—to name just a few (World Bank 2002). Relatedly, the management of hazardous waste encompasses various components: (i) prevention, (ii) responsibility for waste, (iii) storage of waste, (iv) treatment and disposal facilities, (v) incineration, and (vi) the use of landfills. The first component, prevention, aims to eliminate certain hazardous wastes, while reducing the generation of others. The most effective prevention measures include the imposition of hefty financial penalties for the continued generation of waste, or incentives for cleaner production methods and waste minimization initiatives (Caravanos et al. 2013). Responsibility for waste is the second component of the management regulatory framework and this involves the deterrence of the illegal dumping of hazardous waste. Companies, therefore, are encouraged to internalize disposal costs by exercising responsibility for the sustainable, and equitable, disposal of waste. This suggests a sense of coordination between the generator, the disposal facility, and the transporter of these materials (Fazzo et al. 2017). The storage of waste is the next component of the management framework and it highlights the regulations governing the storage of waste at transfer and disposal facilities. The aim of these measures, simply put, is to prevent the accumulation of neglected piles of deteriorating waste—most of which is potentially harmful to the environment (Caravanos et al. 2013). The various functions of treatment and disposal facilities comprise the next component of managing waste. This step refers to stages of storing, recovering, and treating waste, while blending different waste streams and recovering other materials during the process. This stage is extremely important as the operators of these facilities require the technical, financial, and managerial capabilities in order to earn a license to

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operate such facilities (Perkins et al. 2014). The management of waste also involves processes of incineration, which entails the thermal destruction of gaseous, liquid, and solid wastes. The benefits of thermal oxidation, for example, aid in converting complex organics into simple compounds, reducing the volume of waste. Most importantly, incineration occurs in purpose-built facilities and requires careful operation and stringent monitoring over the elimination of waste materials; the poor construction of these facilities can lead to the emission of particulates, acidic gases, unburned wastes, and traces of hazardous by-products (Barrett 2014). The final component of the management framework is the use of landfills, which serve as properly engineered and operated hazardous waste facilities. These secure sites are designated areas for minimal quantities of remaining waste and are designed to control the segregation of waste and groundwater monitoring. Considered the “final destination” of hazardous waste, waste material ends up at these sites after all reduction and treatment methods have been carried out. The monitoring framework described above is aspirational at best, laying the groundwork for how hazardous waste should be treated, handled, and disposed. The disjuncture between theory and practice, however, allows us to reflect on the myriad opportunities for illegal activities to unfold. There is a tremendous scholarship on the transboundary movement of waste and the proliferation of illegal waste disposal companies, questionable disposal methods, and even the influence of terrorist and organized criminal groups (Cheyne 1994; Hyatt and Trexler 1996; Lynch and Stretsky 2003; Gibbs et al. 2010; Boudier and Bensebaa 2011; Lawhon 2013; Lambrechts and Hector 2016; Kitt 1995; Reed 2009; Pratt 2011; Stoett 2019; Pulido 2000). The common motif in this research is a central focus on political economy—specifically, the structural economic conditions used to explain the transboundary movement of hazardous waste. Consider, for example, the illicit disposal of hazardous waste by multinational corporations within nation-states. It bears emphasizing that this pernicious activity isn’t conducted by faceless entities, but by the seemingly banal and innocuous companies consumers frequent on a rather frequent basis. Let us quickly apply a political economy lens to the transportation of hazardous waste by Canadian company, Chronic Inc.

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Canada and the Global Waste Trade Perhaps the most disappointing, and shameful, practice in Canada’s recent history of waste management was the country’s dismal delay in addressing its role in the global waste trade—a billion-dollar industry. Misbegotten attempts by Chronic Inc., a Canadian company based in Whitby, Ontario, to transport waste to developing countries have resulted in sheer misery for workers from the Philippines who lack the capacity for working with hazardous material, risking their health and lives to process illegally transported substances. The unconscionable acts of the Canadian company, and the government’s failure to act, have resulted in highly controversial Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte threatening to declare war on Canada in 2019. Allegations of Canadian companies mislabeling electronic waste as plastics for recycling since 2013, and using the Philippines as a dumping ground, confirm the Basel Action Network’s (BAN) findings that Canada has played an active role in illegally transporting waste to other countries such as Pakistan and Hong Kong (Abedi 2019). The political economy of the global waste trade theorizes transnational ecoviolence as the result of socio-economic factors and global economic strain. We could begin our analysis of the politics of hazardous waste with reference to select European countries proposing an amendment to the Basel Convention in 1995. The push for a complete ban on the exportation of hazardous waste was met with some resistance from other countries, one of which was Canada. Today, stringent environmental laws, coupled with the exorbitant cost of waste management, compel companies to exploit the imperfect implementation of waste management treaties (WMTs). Consider, for a moment, Article 11(2) of the Basel Convention, which stipulates that parties can negotiate bilateral, regional, or multilateral pacts to trade waste in an “environmentally sound manner” (ESM). Nwankwo and Okafor (2018) suggest that such stipulations undergird the Global North-South inequalities and the thriving poison-for-cash industry whereby developing countries accept toxic waste from developed countries for an embarrassingly low fee. This is all part and parcel of trade liberalization policies under the market forces of globalization and capitalism. In Canada, for example, it costs approximately $40 per ton to dump garbage; the amount of waste illegally exported to Manila was 2500 tons for a total of $100,000. The economic strain felt by waste disposal companies forces them to explore innovative, albeit socially irresponsible, methods such as those used by Chronic Inc.

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The mislabeling of materials as recyclables and donations has led to the proliferation of hazardous waste, electronic waste, and incinerator ash being illegally transported across the globe and disproportionately shouldered by developing countries. The Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation reveals that Canada violated multiple sections of the Basel Convention, perpetuating an acrimonious relationship between the Canadian and Philippine government. Philippine authorities have locally disposed of 34 of the 103 containers of approximately 2500 tons of hazardous waste that Canada dumped in Manila. This, according to President Duterte, is unacceptable and he is putting pressure on the Canadian government to absorb the cost for the disposal. After a lengthy six-year battle between the two countries, the Canadian government agreed in 2019 to ship the waste back to Vancouver, British Columbia. Incidentally, during the diplomatic row between Canada and the Philippines, Malaysia declared that it was preparing to ship approximately 450 tons of imported waste back to its source countries—one of which was also Canada (Abedi 2019). Clearly, the political economy of hazardous waste illuminates the global socio-economic differentials and dimensions of this egregious trade and its harmful effects on the environment and human health, as well as the conflictual politics that are resulting from its ongoing occurrence.

Waste Disposal in the United States While much of the literature on transnational ecoviolence focuses on southern hemispheric communities as victims and/or agents of change, we would be remiss if we did not comment on the waste disposal problems that exist in the North American context. Such case studies add to the breadth of our understanding of the intersections between ecoviolence, political economy, and the interminable struggle for environmental justice. Let’s expand our understanding of environmental justice as a framework by way of an example: the illegal dumping of hazardous waste by an all-too-familiar retailer and the use of geographic visualization tools for detecting transnational flows of hazardous waste. In May 2013, Wal-Mart (often referred to as the world’s largest retailer) agreed to pay approximately $82 million in civil and criminal charges after pleading guilty to violating California’s Clean Water Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) by improperly disposing insecticides and fertilizers into municipal trash dumpsters and down sewer systems (“Wal-Mart fined for dumping

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hazardous waste in US”, 2013). The Wal-Mart example serves as a microcosm for the politics of transnational environmental crime insofar as it highlights the etiologies of the every-day violations and transgressions against the environment. Surely, the employees of Wal-Mart didn’t mean to inflict harm on the unsuspecting citizens of California and Missouri, but the company’s distinctive organizational culture seemed to have neutralized rule breaking to the extent that putatively law-abiding and rational people were willing to endanger themselves and others by illegally disposing hazardous waste. We can give these employees the benefit of the doubt and assume they didn’t mean to harm the environment and others, but were simply not trained on how to dispose of these materials. While the latter conjecture is most commonly held by the public, green criminologists are more analytical and inclined to theorize this behavior, situating this example of environmental crime in a complex matrix of corporate greed and power to maximize profit and gain unfair economic advantages over the competition—hence the emphasis on the political economy of the illegal dumping of hazardous waste. Through a political economy perspective, we recognize that capitalist economic relations create structural conditions that promote crime. In the case of Wal-Mart, the company’s organizational goals of cutting costs on the sustainable disposal of hazardous waste created a criminogenic culture whereby employees were encouraged to cut corners, leading to environmental injustice and serious harm to the general public. This form of organizational illegality often evades the legal gaze because it is increasingly difficult to establish intent, determine individual responsibility, and apply traditional civil-criminal distinctions (Geis and Meier 1977; Schrager and Short 1978; Clinard and Yeager 1980; Braithwaite 1989). Nevertheless, governance regimes have evolved, institutionalizing norms for the effective enforcement of environmental laws and regulations—the Wal-Mart case is instructive in this regard, as the company was fined under state legislation. Not long thereafter, the company declared that it had designed, and implemented, comprehensive environmental programs, reducing hazardous waste by more than 30% since 2010 (DeVroom 2013). There is also burgeoning literature on what is referred to as the pollution or waste haven hypothesis (Kellenberg 2012; Rauscher 2005), which contends that affluent nations illegally export waste to poorer nations in a concerted attempt to evade putatively stringent environmental regulations. Nost et al. (2017), however, reveal that despite their differential

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economic status, some countries agree to the importation of hazardous waste. This is an observation recorded by Jacott et al. (2004), who suggest that developed countries engage in the trade of waste, despite international treaties such as the Basel Convention. Couched under the institutional discourses of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the movement of hazardous waste among members of what was formerly known as NAFTA has become a mere corollary of trade under market forces. The example of the international hazardous waste trade provides us with ample opportunity to identify potential environmental justice interventions (McEntee and Ogneva-Himmelberger 2008; Pulido 2000), grasping the nuances of waste flows (Davies 2012) and its effects on communities. A report by Nost et al. (2017) confirms that the United States, Canada, and Mexico import hazardous waste from other nations. In fact, their research reveals that over 118,000 containers of hazardous waste were imported into the United States between 2007 and 2012. Using sophisticated geographic visualization tools such as HazMatMapper, the authors referred to American censuses and community surveys to collect data on the racial composition of the communities forced to bear the disproportionate brunt of this waste. Exploring variables such as one-mile radius, census tract, zip-code, and state, the findings were nothing short of remarkable: waste processing sites in Arkansas were located near surrounding minority communities defined by extremely high rates of poverty. One processing site was located in the city of El Dorado and adjacent to a community which “falls in the highest quintile (top 20%) across all US import sites regarding poverty” (Nost et al. 2017: 19). What is all the more alarming is the fact that this particular site imported approximately 1 million kilograms of waste from 2007 to 2012. The method of disposal is also cause for concern, as the El Dorado site disposes waste by way of incineration, a practice which engenders environmental and public health concerns because incinerators release a plethora of pollutants depending on the composition of the waste. For example, the release of particulate matter, metals, acid gases, and sulfur leads to higher incidences of cancer, respiratory symptoms, congenital abnormalities, hormonal defects, and increase in sex ratio (Sharma et al. 2013). The importation, and incineration, of hazardous waste at the El Dorado site also produces detrimental effects for the surrounding communities—most of which have a poverty rate of 30.3% (Nost et al. 2017). The importance of applying an environmental

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justice perspective is captured in the El Dorado case study, adding a richer discussion about how environmental degradation and social inequality intersect. Environmental justice is poised to play an important role in addressing the varied dimensions of inequality and violence associated with the disproportionate environmental and health risks low-income and racialized communities are forced to bear (Beck 1992). In a related vein, environmental justice also captures grassroots activism, community development, and empowerment, encouraging communities to mobilize in an attempt to improve the manner in which government regulations and environmental policies are administered. One need only reflect on the phenomenon known as “nimbyism” (Ehrman 1990) to bear witness to the potential environmental justice holds in challenging the grossest forms of injustice.1

Transnational Waste and the Eco-Mafia Barnett et al. (2010) assert that notions of security have been monopolized by the bureaucratic state, failing to capture the fears, concerns, and insecurity of impoverished and marginalized peoples within these states. Let us apply the human security framework to the activities of one of the most notorious criminal organizations known for trafficking hazardous waste: the “eco-Mafia”. The transboundary movement of waste is a very profitable criminal activity, attracting myriad organized criminal groups (Banks et al. 2008). Global trade has opened up a space for transnational networks seeking a niche for the importation and exportation of hazardous waste. The issue of waste management, also, is compounded by the emergence of these clandestine criminal organizations. Some organized criminal networks, colloquially referred to as the “eco-Mafia”, have operated successfully as a trans-European criminal organization. These groups are concentrated in the southern regions of Italy and serve as an extension of powerful crime families. The “eco-Mafia’s” modus operandi includes the illegal dumping of garbage; the smuggling of archeological riches; and, of course, the wanton disregard for environmental and zoning rules covering large-scale projects in Italy and other European countries. The incendiary comments made by Sergio Costa, Italy’s newly-installed Minister of the Environment, in 2018 during a public rally reveal how harmful the activities of the

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“eco-Mafia” have been. Announcing that the country must rid its territory of the “menace of the eco-Mafia”, Costa has joined a global chorus denouncing the ecoviolence perpetrated by organized criminal networks. The region of Vesuvius has garnered serious attention due to extensive police investigations into a sequence of cases featuring illegal waste trafficking. In particular, Casal di Principe, a small village located in the province of Caserta, has become synonymous with organized crime. It is alleged that the municipality has been under the control of the Neapolitan mafia, colloquially referred to as the Camorra. In 2015, Italy’s environmental police discovered a massive dump in the backyard of this crime family’s residence, unearthing barrels of industrial sludge containing medical waste and asbestos. Similarly, certain regions of Caserta have been dubbed the largest illegal dump in Europe, featuring approximately 2 million cubic meters of hazardous waste beneath its topsoil. Police theorize that the trafficking of this hazardous waste is attributed to the illicit activities of the Camorra, who have been facilitating the flow of waste from destinations like Germany since the early 1980s. The concentration of this hazardous waste, furthermore, has polluted the groundwater and led to incessant fires between Naples and Caserta, earning the moniker “Land of Fires” due to the Camorra lighting fires to rid the regions of the waste (“Toxic waste: An international business which benefits the eco-Mafia”, 2015). The economic gain associated with the transboundary movement of waste comes at substantial social, economic, and environmental expense for communities, their livelihoods, and habitats. Indeed, organized environmental crime is identified by the UN as a key factor in the impoverishment, displacement, and violent conflict experienced by millions of people, notably in low-income regions. If we apply the dimensions of the human security framework, identifying the different aspects of victimization, we begin to see the truly harmful effects of the “eco-Mafia”. For example, consider the potential threats to Italy’s economic and health and environmental security: the poisoning of the area stretching between Naples and Caserta can lead to utter disaster for the country, affecting local economies. The “Land of Fires” may also instigate a mass migration of villagers wishing to evade the ecological degradation, indirectly affecting the local economy. Secondly, the residents’ health is compromised by the activities of the “eco-Mafia”. The aforementioned substances discovered in the region of Vesuvius have been linked to behavioral abnormalities, cancer, genetic mutations, physiological malfunctions (e.g.,

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reproductive impairment, kidney failure), physical deformations, and birth defects (EPA 2019). The loss of public funds to corruption is tremendous; indeed, one of the greatest transfers of public wealth to corrupt officials and organized crime occurred when feigned cleanup costs, referred to as “ghost recoveries”, were paid out in the Campania region (Peluso 2016). Finally, hazardous waste threatens Italy’s environmental security by reducing the country’s biodiversity, limiting the ability of ecosystems to survive, and increasing “environmental refugees” due to dislocation and forced migration (Humphreys and Smith 2011). This situation will only be exacerbated by the particularly harsh toll of the COVID-19 virus pandemic in Italy in 2020, an unprecedented public health crisis that threw the entire country into economic turmoil.

Syncretic Analysis: Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS) Wherever there is transnational ecoviolence, there is attendant human misery and exploitation. We assert that environmental crimes are effectively human security issues and should be treated as such by governments, but what happens when the movement of hazardous waste ends up being a function of recognized bilateral and multilateral treaties? How can we ensure that the quiet institutional violence inflicted on unsuspecting communities that end up being the victims of free trade policies is made visible? Globalization has facilitated an acceleration of interconnectedness between nations, multinational and transnational organizations, and nongovernmental organizations. Free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have become a common motif of our global economy, concentrating political power in the hands of investor states and corporations. A tremendous amount of wealth has been generated as a result of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). In an attempt to protect these investments, investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) have been used as a means of regulating International Investment Agreements (IIAs). Soares (2017: 2) maintains that ISDS provide “an adequate forum to ensure that substantive commitments that countries have made to one another to protect mutual investments are duly respected”. ISDS clauses have been embedded in Mega-Regional Trade Agreements under negotiation such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); the EU-Canada

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Comprehensive Trade and Economic Agreement (CETA); and the USEU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the EU—to name just a few. ISDS clauses allow foreign investor states to invoke arbitration as a means of bringing disputes related to international treaties against host states. Simply put, then, if a country is found to be in breach of an IIA, the investor can seek monetary compensation or perhaps other forms of legal redress through ISDS, which enforce compliance with investment treaty provisions (Gaukrodger and Gordon 2012). Of late, scholars of law and globalization have taken heed of the controversial dimensions of ISDS, especially the potential damage this legal instrument can cause against host states in favor of investor states. A chorus of opposition has been sung by members of civil society, NGOs, and legal scholars who suggest that ISDS impact a host state’s sovereignty. Soares (2017), for example, reveals that the amount of compensation awarded to claimants by international tribunals ranges from $10 million to $500 million, and these cases are usually related to infrastructure claims: electricity, gas, water, sewage and waste systems, construction, and civil engineering projects. If we consider the nature of some IIAs and how they might negatively affect a host state’s environment and its citizen’s human health, we begin to recognize the institutional violence embedded in ISDS. For instance, we can identify an overwhelming concentration of ISDS arbitration in Latin America, which has signed over 650 trade agreements; this translates into approximately 35% of all ISDS arbitration cases. Argentina, alone, has been presented with over 60 ISDS disputes and this has started a conversation about the global inequalities surrounding the disproportionate use of ISDS among developing nations (Soares 2017). In the face of mounting criticisms against the potentially dangerous implications of ISDS, the name of these investor dispute mechanisms was rebranded by the European Commission as the Investment Court System—also referred to as ICS. Eberhardt (2016) argues that the nature of these dispute settlements has not changed under the new label of ICS; in fact, the proposed ICS merely perpetuates oppressive arrangements between investors and host states, empowering multinational companies to sue countries that renege on IIAs. Despite the putative procedural improvements under the ICS, judges have now taken on the responsibility of arbitrators, leading to a perversion of democracy and justice. Under the guise of transnational law, millions of taxpayers’ dollars have been paid to multinational corporations, facilitating global inequality between

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investor states and host states. Under the new ICS regime, corporations could, theoretically, challenge a country’s environmental, health, and public safeguards, putting many at risk. So where, then, does political economy, environmental justice, and human security fit into this matrix of market-oriented international trade? We have alluded to varied dimensions of violence in other sections of this book, and we contend that ISDS and ICS constitute a particularly egregious form of institutional violence, inflicting ecological degradation and human misery on innocent civilians of southern hemispheric states. Consider the case of Texaco Petroleum/Chevron Corporation v. the Republic of Ecuador. In 2009, Chevron Corporation filed a case against Ecuador before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Under the US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty, the transnational company accused the Republic of Ecuador of causing damages to their operations. Such claims enabled the company to evade a multibilliondollar court ruling handed down to the company for the pollution of the Amazon rainforest. In order to lay bare the complexity of this case, we have to contextualize the activities of this multinational corporation. Near the close of the twentieth century, Ecuadorian citizens of the Oriente region sought a class action lawsuit in a United States federal court against Texaco. The complainants alleged that over the course of 26 years, the company polluted the rainforests and rivers of Lago Agrio, a canton of Ecuador, located in the Sucumbios Province, resulting in irreversible environmental damage due to the disposal of large quantities of toxic water in the country’s jungles. Approximately 30,000 residents—most of whom were members of indigenous communities residing in the country’s interior— suffered from increased rates of cancer as well as other health problems. Texaco, which was later absorbed by Chevron Corporation, denied these claims and the lawsuits were dismissed by the federal courts in 2002 on the legal grounds of forum non conveniens (FNC: the court decided the lawsuit would be better pursued in another legal forum). After an interminable legal battle between Ecuador’s indigenous peoples and Chevron, in November 2013, the country’s highest court ruled against Chevron, ordering the multinational corporation to pay $9.5 billion for cleanup and healthcare initiatives. Chevron, in turn, failed to comply with the sentence and accused the country’s indigenous and peasant communities of extortion.

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Not long thereafter, Chevron invoked the tenets of ISDS to challenge Ecuador’s highest court, deferring to an investor-state tribunal, which relied on the terms of the bilateral investment treaty to order Ecuador to compensate Chevron for the costs associated with cleaning up the country’s jungles, in conjunction with the attendant legal fees incurred by Chevron in its investor-state claim. Under the ISDS, specifically, Chevron claimed that its rights were violated under the bilateral treaty with the host state and, most importantly, convinced the investor-state tribunal to order Ecuador to violate its own constitution by reversing a ruling upheld on appeal in its court system (Chevron Corporation and Texaco Petroleum Corporation v. The Republic of Ecuador 2018). The ramifications of this legal maneuvering are chilling, as Chevron convinced the investor-state tribunal that it was the victim of unjust treatment and the denial of justice. This, in turn, led to a decision under the ISDS to oblige Ecuador to pay the oil company $112 million in damages. The case of Chevron v. Ecuador reveals the structural economic conditions giving rise to ICS/ISDS regimes. In our global economy, geoeconomics and the geopolitics of oil serve as drivers of environmental destruction, destroying the environs of host states in the name of corporate greed, trade, investment, and profit. Consider, for instance, the claim made by Chevron that the company suffered “damages” at the hands of the Ecuadorian government. The demand for arbitration is merely an example of the architecture of transnational trade and an attempt for multinational companies to profit by exploiting host states’ constitutional sovereignty. The geo-economy is extremely competitive, featuring ruthless transnational, multinational energy corporations. These entities seek clever ways to evade environmental regulations so that they may protect their bottom line. Chevron, for example, is one of the leading transnational corporations across the globe, boasting an operative income of $134 billion and profits of close to $40 billion in 2017 (Amazon Defence Coalition 2018). Chevron’s behavior can be interpreted as a direct result of macro, economic processes and global structural circumstances. Using a political economy framework, we can investigate the outward foreign direct investment (FDI) of Western multinationals, such as Chevron, and many other multinational corporations. According to Miller and Hicks (2016: 8), “the United States is the world’s largest single country source of outward FDI, providing 24% of the capital stock ($ 6.4 trillion)”. What is more, over one-quarter of the ISDS claims registered stem from

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investments in the oil, gas, and mining sectors. This suggests that the petroleum geo-economy is extremely lucrative for corporations, opening limitless opportunities for these entities to flout the national environmental regulations of host states. This is substantiated by Ecuadorians who witnessed Texaco’s disregard for the ecological integrity of the Amazon; local regulations merely served as a hindrance to the company’s oil operations, which resulted in the illegal dumping of 30 billion gallons of waste and crude oil in the communities of many indigenous peoples. The use of ISDS by Chevron not only legitimates the production of hazardous waste in Ecuador, it continues to drive the transnationalization of hazardous waste by enabling multinational corporations to evade internationally agreed-upon principles and standards of accountability and liability, placing environmental (and financial) burdens upon host states. ISDS are profitable and advantageous for transnational corporations investing abroad, especially if they do not meet their financial projections during ground operations (Falgueyrac 2019). If environmental injustice encompasses disproportionate exposure of communities of color and the poor to pollution, we can identify a tapestry of ecoviolence and injustice crashing down on the local peoples of Ecuador. Let’s begin with the importance of Ecuador’s geography to the country’s indigenous peoples: for centuries, the original people of this Latin American country have relied on the region’s abundant vegetation and availability of natural resources, but during the course of Texaco’s extractive operations in Ecuador, numerous wells were drilled on these sacred lands, spanning an area equivalent to 430 hectares (Cabrera 2019). The most obvious way in which environmental justice can be used to theorize the protracted arbitration process between Chevron and Ecuador is through the principle of disproportionality, but disproportionality on two disparate dimensions. The first dimension explores the disproportionate concentration of environmental hazards in Latin America generally, and the other dimension explores the disproportionate use of ISDS instruments in Latin American countries as a way of maintaining the presence of transnational hazardous waste. The extractive sector, for instance, takes advantage of ISDS, as numerous oil, gas, and mining companies have used this arbitration instrument in approximately 24% of known claims. According to Moore and Rocha (2019), the geographic distribution of ISDS cases is heavily concentrated in Latin America. In fact, LAC countries account for

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28.6% of all known investor-state disputes across the globe. Specifically, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru represent 77.3% of the total sum of arbitration claims against LAC countries. Olivet et al. (2017: 2) state “LAC States have already had to pay foreign companies 20.6 billion USD, which could cover Bolivia’s budget for health and education for four whole years”. The global inequalities linked to ISDS are captured in the statistics recorded by the Trade Justice Network, an activist network dedicated to challenging ISDS regimes, which reveals that Ecuador is one of the most targeted countries in the world with respect to ISDS claims. Olivet et al. (2017) also address the global inequities of international treaties, and the attendant arbitration mechanisms, suggesting that Texaco and Chevron’s activities constitute racism. Their views are substantiated by Pablo Fajardo, an Ecuadorian lawyer, who has accused the American company of failing to recognize indigenous and poor peoples’ right to environmental justice (Rusche 2012). This merely illuminates the global dimensions of environmental racism and the deliberate exclusion of Ecuador’s indigenous peoples from meaningful participation in arbitration rulings. The country’s former president, Rafael Correa, has accused Chevron of deliberately polluting the Amazon rainforest by dumping toxic waste in nearly 1000 pits. Correa has been very vocal in his lament over the nefarious practices of Chevron, stating: “the techniques they used here were against the law in their own country. They weren’t interested in the human beings who lived in the Amazon region. To me, it is a question of racism” (as cited in North 2015). Chevron’s behavior can be construed as a self-evident violation of environmental justice because the country’s indigenous peoples were not granted their rights to meaningful participation in the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws. The dimensions of environmental racism are further demonstrated when we reflect on what Feige (2008) refers to as Chevron’s environmental legacy in Ecuador, which entails approximately 16 million gallons of spilled crude oil and hundreds of toxic waste pits laced with cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The communities that are forced to bear the brunt of these environmental hazards are Ecuador’s 30,000 poor who reside in the country’s rainforests. This marginalized group of people are literally pushed to the margins of Ecuador, having been displaced from their traditional lands due to extensive pollution, a process some scholars refer to as toxic/waste colonialism (Kitt 1995;

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Reed 2009; Pratt 2011; Pulido 2000; Lawhon 2013). The distinct difference here, however, is the manner in which Chevron’s hazardous waste is transnationalized. While conventional definitions of toxic/waste colonialism entail the exportation of hazardous waste from developed nations to developing nations, it does not account for the exportation of the methods responsible for the production of hazardous waste. In the case of Chevron, mirrored in other cases such as Shell in Nigeria, the company had the technology to conduct their oil production activities in a sustainable manner but, for whatever reason, opted for practices which were deleterious to the environment and surrounding indigenous communities. Let us turn to the potential human security issues surrounding the case of Texaco Petroleum/Chevron Corporation v. the Republic of Ecuador. When unpacking the implications of economic and food security, we see that Chevron’s generation of toxic waste during its operations in Ecuador, in conjunction with the invocation of ISDS, threatens Ecuador’s economic and food security in irreversible ways. Consider, for example, how the indigenous peoples’ livelihoods might be affected by hazardous waste. Economic security guarantees reliable social safety nets for citizens, but the effects of toxic waste have destroyed such safety nets, spiraling community members into a vicious cycle of desperation and poverty. The emergence of what is colloquially referred to as “toxic tours” exemplifies the long-term effects of toxic waste and its ramifications. (Sadly, Ecuador has numerous “toxic tours” for environmental activists and NGOs interested in witnessing the effects of ecological degradation firsthand—eerily reminiscent to the “conflict tours” that were available following conflicts in Sarajevo, Belfast, and elsewhere.) Extraction and deforestation campaigns continue unabated on indigenous lands, accelerating the decline of myriad resources upon which local communities rely. This facilitates the displacement of thousands of Ecuadorians who are forced to flee their lands in search of viable employment. For avid proponents of “modernization-at-all costs”, the delicious irony behind this economic displacement is the fact that members of indigenous peoples are forced to enter the wage economy, seeking work in the very industry which brought misery to their communities (Sarlieve 2019). Finally, the threats to economic security are evident in the ISDS claims brought against Ecuador, whose taxpayers’ economic security has been threatened by arbitration and the projected $112 million in damages the country owes to Chevron Corporation.

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Food insecurity—that is, the inability to access basic foods—is also tied to economic security insofar as the contamination of water leads to a marked decline of game and fish, staples of local peoples’ diet. Many farmers, for example, have lamented that oil pollution has compromised agricultural productivity, affecting the food they consume, the water they drink, and the air they breathe. The severity of soil pollution has captured the attention of scientists who suggest that affected food supply chains violate a nation’s food security and necessitates global action from international organizations and actors (Sun et al. 2017). The imposition of ISDS, also, places a strain on the country’s ability to produce food for its citizens, forcing producers to turn to the exportation of food items which could have been used to sustain local, indigenous economies and communities. Food security, naturally, is tied to the idea of health security. Defined as protection from infectious disease and the guarantee of personal access to personal health care, the health security of approximately 30,000 Ecuadorians was compromised by Chevron’s disregard for the country’s environmental regulations. The health statistics reveal that the oil company extracted thousands of cubic feet of gases, which led to the contamination of water ingested by local villagers and animals. Such contamination, inevitably, results in an uptick in the rates of cancer among individuals residing in contaminated regions. Specifically, for those living in close proximity to Chevron’s oil wells, cancer rates of 31 cases per 1000 people have been recorded. This is in stark contrast to the national average of cancer rates which is 12 cases per 1000 people (Cabrera 2019). This is, unequivocally, a public health crisis which demands a human security framework to prevent such catastrophic impacts on human health. Environmental security refers to citizens’ right to a healthy living environment, and this right was clearly violated by the activities of Chevron and the company’s innovative use of ISDS during arbitration. For example, the oil extraction methods employed by the multinational corporation revealed the vulnerability of Ecuador’s natural biomes through the degradation of rivers, lakes, and the concomitant impacts on surrounding flora, fauna, and indigenous populations. Shaw (2013) views the irreversible degradation in Ecuador as evidence of ecocide, resulting in the destruction of ecosystems and harmful effects on the health and well-being of all species (White and Heckenberg 2014). Ecuador boasts bountiful biodiversity, including what could be thousands of undiscovered species of plants and animals which have been threatened by ecocide since

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Chevron’s predecessor, Texaco, commenced oil production in the 1960s. Today, uncovered pools of toxic residue continue to plague Ecuador’s local ecological integrity, poisoning the water, soil, and air. The act of ecocide has been denounced by the country’s political figures. Rafael Correa, for instance, has argued that the ecocide caused by ChevronTexaco was 85 times bigger than the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 (North 2015). ISDS merely compound the problem of ecocide, as these legal instruments, as mentioned above, have been used to evade cleanup responsibilities and environmental remediation initiatives, merely perpetuating the ecoviolence inflicted upon the people of Ecuador. Personal security and community security are also affected by the hazardous waste produced by Chevron. While the former refers to physical safety from crime, the latter entails a strong sense of community membership and collective cultural identity. Both types of security have been violated through ecological disorganization (Lynch 2013) within contaminated regions. For example, the proliferation of toxic waste has created environmental refugees; these are local Ecuadorians fleeing their homes and communities as a result of the state of anomie which has pervaded local economies. Shaw (2013) suggests that the abandonment of local villages has opened a vacuum for other illegal activities in regions bordering Colombia. Lago Agrio, in particular, has been the site of increased drug trafficking, prostitution, and other forms of organized crime. This affects both personal security and community security by placing the residents of Lago Agrio in a very volatile position: communities have been fragmented and forced to separate seeking new livelihoods and means of sustenance. Moreover, many residents have formed chronic drug and alcohol addictions, further contributing to their economic marginalization and vulnerability (North 2015). The final dimension of security which warrants analysis from a human security perspective is political security, which refers to freedom from state oppression. While it is clear that Ecuador vehemently opposed Texaco and Chevron’s production of hazardous waste, the use of ISDS can be construed as a threat to political security: the use of this arbitration instrument clearly violates the sovereignty of Ecuador as the country’s national courts lost their capacity to administer justice as a result of the economic and political pressure applied by the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The inherent bias of the ISDS regimes in Latin American countries is also cause for concern, as the disproportionate use of ISDS in these host states reveals an unjust global system of foreign investment. Through the use

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of ISDS, Chevron used its economic power to buy impunity and delay environmental remediation in Lago Agrio. Bilateral investment treaties placed corporate interests above national priorities in the case of Texaco Petroleum/Chevron Corporation v. the Republic of Ecuador, disfiguring global democracy and paving the way for transnational corporations to threaten the political security of nations, availing themselves of special privileges and rights as foreign investors.

Conclusion This chapter has touched on several factors that are apparent in the complex web of environmental injustice and human insecurity that hazardous waste disposal has created over the preceding century. While it has been a magnet for organized crime, and much of the international trade in hazardous waste reflects the larger North-South economic disparity, it is just as evident that northern corporations in the resource extraction sector, particularly mining, oil, and gas, are willing to use multilateral mechanisms to ensure they can pursue profit despite, or escape responsibility for, the production of toxic waste at the site of investment. There is a very broad landscape of hazardous waste exposure to vulnerable populations in both the southern and northern hemispheres; we did not have the space to properly elucidate concerns around microplastic waste, radioactive waste, electronic waste, biohazardous medical waste, waste associated with recycling plastic, or other forms of problematic waste disposal that often involves the crossing of borders either directly or through investment. China’s decision to stop accepting the world’s plastic waste for recycling, for example, is having serious ramifications for the global movement to limit plastic waste and to reduce unsafe practices related to plastic recycling, including the growth of more illegal imports and arrests of people trying to profit from the situation in Malaysia and elsewhere.2 These developments are not welcome if we want to minimize the harm caused by pollution in the future, but relying on China to recycle the world’s waste was a result of marketplace decisions without any guidance from a global governance perspective; conceptualizing the pollution of the commons (oceans, lakes, air) as a form of transnational ecoviolence may help us formulate a clearer understanding of our concerns.

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We turn next to an examination of one the most pernicious global environmental problems, overfishing and illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. As with the transmission and improper storage of hazardous waste, overfishing is often the result of careless decisions taken thousands of miles away from the site of immediate and even medium-term impact, with grave repercussions for the environmental justice and human security of those most affected.

Notes 1. NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard. 2. See https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/26/asia/malaysia-plastic-recycleintl/index.html.

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Environmental Protection Agency. 2019. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) State Authorization Performance Measures. Washington, DC: EPA. Falgueyrac, L. 2019, May 14. “Chevron, Clean Up Your Mess.” Retrieved from https://stopisds.org/chevron-clean-up-your-mess/. Fazzo, L., F. Minichilli, M. Santaro, A. Ceccarini, et al. 2017. “Hazardous Waste and Health Impact: A Systematic Review of the Scientific Literature.” Environmental Health 16(1): 107–126. Feige, D. 2008. “Pursuing Polluters.” Los Angeles Times, April 20. https://www. latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-apr-20-op-feige20-story.html. Galtung, J. 1990. “Violence, Peace and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research 6(3): 167–191. Gaukrodger, D., and K. Gordon. 2012. “Investor-State Dispute Settlement: A Scoping Paper for the Investment Policy Community.” OECD Working Papers on International Investment. OECD Publishing. Geis, G., and R. Meier. 1977. White-Collar Crime: Offences in Business Politics and the Professions. New York: The Free Press. Gibbs, C., E. McGarrell, and M. Axelrod. 2010. “Transnational White-Collar Crime and Risk: Lessons from the Global Trade in Electronic Waste.” Criminology & Public Policy 9(3): 543–560. Humphreys, J., and M. Smith. 2011. “Protecting Endangered Species.” Criminal Justice Matters 83(1): 6–7. Hyatt, W.D., and T.L. Trexler. 1996. “Environmental Crime and Organized Crime: What Will the Future Hold?” In S.M. Edwards et al., eds., Environmental Crime and Criminality: Theoretical and Practical Issues. New York: Garland Publishing. Jacott, M., C. Reed, and M. Winfield. 2004. The Generation and Management of Hazardous Wastes and Transboundary Hazardous Waste Shipments Between Mexico, Canada and the United States Since NAFT: A 2004 Update. Austin: Texas Center for Policy Studies. Kellenberg, D. 2012. “Trading Wastes.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 64(1): 68–87. Kitt, J. 1995. “Waste Exports to the Developing World: A Global Response.” Georgetown International Law Review 7(1): 485–514. Lambrechts, D., and M. Hector. 2016. “Environmental Organised Crime: The Dirty Business of Hazardous Waste Disposal and Limited State Capacity in Africa.” South African Journal of Political Studies 43(2): 251–268. Lawhon, M. 2013. “Dumping Ground or Country-in-Transition? Discourses of e-Waste in South Africa: Environment and Planning.” Government and Policy 31(4): 700–715. Lynch, M. 2013. “Reflections of Green Criminology and Its Boundaries: Comparing Environmental Victimization and Considering Crime from an

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Pulido, L. 2000. “Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90(1): 12–40. Rauscher, M. 2005. “International Trade, Foreign Investment and the Environment.” In K.G. Maler and J.R. Vincent, eds., Handbook of Environmental Economics. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Reed, T.V. 2009. “Toxic Colonialism, Environmental Justice, and Native Resistance in Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 34(2): 25–42. Rusche, D. 2012. “Chevron Accused of Racism as It Fights Ecuador Pollution Ruling.” The Guardian, January 4. https://www.theguardian.com/business/ 2012/jan/04/Chevron-accused-racism-ecuador-pollution. Sarlieve, M. 2019. “International Criminal Justice Fails to Meet the Challenge of Environmental Crimes.” Justice Info. Retrieved from https://www.jus ticeinfo.net/en/justiceinfo-comment-and-debate/opinion/41973-internati onal-criminal-justice-fails-to-meet-challenge-of-environmental-crimes.html. Schrager, L., and J.F. Short. 1978. “Toward a Sociology of Organizational Crime.” Social Problems 25(4): 407–419. Secretariat of Basel Convention. 2019. Call for Information and Follow-Up to the Decisions Adopted by the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention at Its Fourteenth Meeting. Geneva: United Nations Environment Programme. Sharma, R., M. Sharma, V. Sharma, et al. 2013. “The Impact of Incinerators on Human Health and Environment.” Review of Environmental Health 28(1): 67–72. Shaw, C. 2013. “Ecocide in Ecuador.” Ecologist, October 27. https://theecolog ist.org/2013/oct/27/ecocide-ecuador. Soares, Caio Cesar. 2017. “Investor-State Dispute Settlement: An Analysis of the Reform Proposals on Its Institutional Structure.” Available at SSRN: https:// ssrn.com/abstract=2984581 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2984581. Stoett, P. 2019. Global Ecopolitics: Crisis, Governance, and Justice, 2nd edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Sun, F., Y. Dai, and X. Yu. 2017. “Air Pollution, Food Production and Food Security: A Review from the Perspective of Food System.” Journal of Integrative Agriculture 16(12): 2945–2962. “Toxic waste: An international business which benefits the eco-Mafia”. 2015, October 7. Euronews.” Retrieved from https://www.euronews.com/2015/ 07/10/toxic-waste-an-international-business-which-benefits-the-eco-mafia. Uvin, P. 2001. “Difficult Choices in the New Post-Conflict Agenda: The International Community in Rwanda After the Genocide.” Third World Quarterly 22(2): 177–189. Wal-Mart fined for dumping hazardous waste in US. 2013. “BBC News.” Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/business-22698443.

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CHAPTER 4

Transnational Oceanic Ecoviolence

Enforcement of regulations is an often-neglected aspect of fisheries management. Setting catch regulations is of little use if they are not enforced, and in some fisheries, the illegal catch may be as high or higher than the legal catch. This is particularly true for high-value species such as abalone and lobster … The traditional solution is a top-down response of adding more enforcement officers, a highly expensive approach that is simply not working in many jurisdictions … State agencies are unlikely to be able to patrol large areas effectively, whereas locally based individuals with territorial fishing rights can and have kept the illegal fishermen away. Hilborn et al., 2005

Introduction Perhaps the most precious resource we are collectively squandering is the vast reservoir of life in the majestic oceans of Earth. As a species, we are a consequence of the global oceans, and our civilizational habitats spring forth from riverbeds and shorelines. The provision of water is one of the more obvious ecosystem services offered by nature, and our symbiotic relationship with it has shaped our history, culture, science, and today’s local and global economies. Many of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals refer to water, both freshwater and marine, as essential for human development, as they should. Indeed, water is so central to our lives that future generations will ask themselves how we could possibly treat such a vital resource with such systemic negligence. We’ve practically © The Author(s) 2021 P. Stoett and D. A. Omrow, Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58561-7_4

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built entire contemporary cites with the sand that oceans and lakes create, even to the extent that sand has become a commodity of transnational crime (see Beiser 2018). The oceans are also a tremendous source of nutrients: the nitrogen and phosphorus that gives life to the base of the food chain, plankton, and which we spread on our fields, often with wild abandon; protein, vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids from the fish and shellfish we consume; even seaweed, a macroalgae, is used as a thickening agent in many foods. In fact, the global food system would simply collapse if we removed the ocean component, including the massive aquaculture industry that has grown over the past several decades to surpass wild fish harvesting. Of course, there’s much more to the sea than food: it is a perpetual source of fascination and cultural inspiration. Even our darker episodes with it, such as when a handful of countries nearly drove most of the great whale populations to extinction, have given rise to greater awareness about the benefits and beauty of the oceans and the majestic creatures living in them (see Stoett 1997a). Our collective debt to the oceans is inestimable. And yet. Climate change threatens the very nature of ocean water and thus contributes to various feedback loops. The pollution entering our oceans every day from cities, farms, factories, ships, and other units is quite simply beyond measure. Aquatic invasive alien species are spreading through both incidental commercial trade routes and deliberate introductions. The fragile, biodiverse coral reefs are threatened by acidification, the use of cyanide for ornamental tropical fish hunting, and careless tourists (Wilkinson 2006); acidification from global warming has become so severe that scientists have declared parts of the Great Barrier Reef off Australia as effectively dead, with most of the damage being very recent (Meyer 2018). Warmer ocean water throws our understanding of planetary weather patterns into disarray and disrupts migratory patterns. Perhaps even more harmful is the pollution generated from “non-point” sources: human-caused increases in nutrient elements (e.g., nitrogen, phosphorus, and iron) that enter the oceans through rivers and air currents, causing massive changes in marine ecosystems. On-land sources of pollution, such as lawn fertilizers and agricultural runoff, have created areas with seasonally depleted oxygen levels (hypoxia), which in turn lead to so-called dead zones (oxygen-starved marine environments typically devoid of all marine life). Coastal zone development and the damming

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of rivers have also led to marine habitat destruction, often causing sedimentation problems in rivers and streams, beach erosion, and the near elimination of fisheries spawning in some areas. The oceans absorb most of the world’s carbon dioxide, which slows down global warming but has caused acidification, and because warming water expands, sea-level rise is a major threat to coasts and especially small island states. However, we are also concerned about ocean cooling in certain areas, because the melting of polar glaciers could slow down or stop the warm Gulf Stream that forms part of the great ocean conveyor belt and circulates the sun’s energy; should the Gulf Stream be disrupted, Western Europe may face severe regional cooling. Many of these processes would be difficult to stop even if we were able to halt all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow. However, the gravest threat to the oceans, and especially to ocean biodiversity, may well be humans in boats extracting astounding numbers of fish from the seas, over the years and on a daily basis. Despite improvements in fisheries management, an overfishing crisis is quite literally draining the oceans of biota—this is taking place also in the context of many freshwater ecosystems, but is particularly acute in pelagic and coastal ocean fishing. Overfishing, induced by bottom trawling, driftnets (some of them deadly ghostnets roaming the seas), wasted by-catch (around 10 million tons a year; see Zeller et al. 2017), and other practices that would not be followed by caring, rational creatures, continues to partly define our relationship with the ocean today (Pauly 2019). Some cetacean populations, such as the Gray Whale, have made remarkable recoveries from the ravages of commercial whaling, but others, such as the world’s largest mammal, the blue whale, remain perilously close to extinction (see Stoett 1997a; Heazle 2006). All of this takes place in an adaptive multigovernance context in which it is clear that a longstanding tradition of super-exploiting the commons is the norm, as Paul Harris writes in the introduction to an edited volume on climate change and the oceans: Existing national and international institutions for marine governance, which were created when oceanic conditions were relatively stable and humanity’s exploitation of the oceans were much less than they are today, may not be adequate for a future characterised by continuous oceanic change. (Harris 2019: 3)

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Even the more optimistic among us just can’t find much to grasp here: for example, David Suzuki and Holly Dressel find great hope in human actions, but are forced to admit that “Good news about oceans is in short supply right now” (269). So the addition of yet another pernicious threat to the biosecurity of the oceans, and for that matter other bodies of water including rivers and lakes, is really just too much to bear at this point, but it simply cannot be ignored: illegal activities associated with the oceans are often transnational in character, and have been taking place since the beginning of recorded naval history. Estimates range but many suggest that over a third of all maritime fishing, including in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, falls into this regrettable category; it is roughly a US$25 billion industry, and at least one out of every five wild-caught fish brought to market has been caught illegally (Agnew et al. 2009). Illegal fishing is not only causing severe ecological harm, but is a human security issue of the highest order as what has come to be termed “sea slavery” continues across the oceans. Illegal fishing is often tied to piracy, drug and arms, smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering, and other organized criminal offenses. INTERPOL has even devoted a special program, aptly named Project Scale, to this issue. Another recent exercise involving strapping radar sensors to 169 albatrosses and tracking the Indian Ocean as they flew long distances indicated that between December 2018 and June 2019, the sensors “detected a total of 353 fishing boats in the region. Of those operating in countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs), where vessels have to declare fishing, 25.8 per cent had their ‘Automatic Identification Systems’ – used for avoiding collisions and allowing authorities to track them – switched off. Such behaviour is often a sign of illegal fishing. In international waters, fishing is not illegal but should be declared. There, the birds found 36.9 percent of vessels had the system turned off” (Vaughan 2020). These numbers are not surprising at this stage. But it is a serious threat to environmental justice when the common resources of the oceans are used to feed wealthy markets, while those who are living without adequate nutrition, including many people who are engaged in the hard labor of the fishing industry itself, are unable to access this protein.

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What Is IUU Fishing? Common usage of the acronym IUU refers to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. It is important to note that these terms are not mutually exclusive. Typically, illegal fishing refers to fishing operations that occur without the consent of the state with jurisdiction over the waters in which it occurs or, in the case of the high seas where no one state has jurisdiction, fishing that contravenes multilateral agreements or regional fishing management organizations (RFMO).1 The latter can also include fishing operations “conducted by vessels flying the flag of states that are parties to a relevant [RFMO] but operate in contravention of the conservation and management measures adopted by that organization and by which the states are bound, or relevant provisions of the applicable international law; or in violation of national laws or international obligations, including those undertaken by cooperating states to a relevant regional fisheries management organization” (FAO 2019). According to the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, countries may exercise their sovereign right to manage natural resources in the waters within 200 nautical miles of their coastline (National Intelligence Council 2016). It is within these designated parameters that countries’ fish stocks are located and often under siege from foreign trawlers and other fishing vessels which fish illegally inside other countries’ waters. According to the World Bank Group report and the FAO, unreported fishing includes operations that: (a) have not been reported, or have been misreported, to the relevant national authority, in contravention of national laws and regulations; or (b) are undertaken in the area of competence of a relevant [RMFO] and have not been reported or have been misreported, in contravention of the reporting procedures of that organization.

1 Examples include the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), the Inter-

American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization (NASCO), the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission (NPAFC), and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). See https://www.dfo-mpo. gc.ca/international/dip-rfmo-eng.htm.

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Unregulated fishing refers to activities “conducted by vessels without nationality, or by those flying the flag of a state not party to that organization, or by a fishing entity, in a manner that is not consistent with or contravenes the conservation and management measures of that organization; or in areas or for fish stocks in relation to which there are no applicable conservation or management measures and where such fishing activities are conducted in a manner inconsistent with state responsibilities for the conservation of living marine resources under international law” (World Bank Group 2019; see also Cesar et al. 2003). IUU fisheries can be conducted by “legitimate” fishing operations (including state-funded operations) that are making money on the side; by organizations such as Vidal Armadores, an “infamous fish-poaching company” run out of the Spanish-Glacian region, and which we describe in more detail below (Urbina 2019: 29); or by small-scale rogue fishers who are knowingly breaking the law on a daily basis in order to feed their families after being excluded from legitimate fishing due to corruption, conservation efforts, pollution, or some combination of those factors. While this chapter does focus exclusively on exploited fish stocks, we would be remiss if we did not mention the illegal, unreported and unregulated trade of other marine life: crustaceans (i.e. crabs, lobsters, and shrimps); mollusks (i.e. squids, octopi, cuttlefish, and snails); echinoderms (i.e. starfish, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers); and a plethora of other invertebrates (National Intelligence Council 2016). In Chapter 2, we described various “rule breakers” in the international wildlife trade; they are all present in the IUU fishing universe as well. And the actual fishing is just part of it: there is a long supply chain that gets illegally harvested fish to the dinner table, including transportation agents, government officials looking the other way, marketers, complicit wholesalers who knowingly purchase the product, money launderers who help conceal the profits, fish launderers who mix illegally caught fish in with legally caught fish, and even boating equipment and fuel sellers who are supplying the IUU operations with hardware and software fishing technology and gas. IUU is often overlooked in terms of its impact, as navies are more inclined to worry about protecting coastal zones from other countries or marine piracy at the present time; and coast guards also need to contend with human smuggling-related emergencies and the maritime illicit drug and arms trades; meanwhile, the public radar on environmental crime is more often fixated on charismatic species in the wildlife trade than

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relatively unknown fish species (we discuss plant blindness in our chapter on floral ecoviolence, but “sea blindness” is also a major concern). We can count illegal fisheries and whaling as wildlife crimes, of course (and especially when it entails the harvesting of endangered species as established in the CITES appendices), but they really do stand out on their own for the sheer depth and breadth of this particular form of ecoviolence. One can very plausibly argue that the threat to both environmental justice and human security posed by IUU is particularly large since so many communities rely principally on harvested fish for their protein and other nutrient supplies. This is especially the case in the coastal regions of Africa, both west and east, where illegal fishing operations connected to Russia, China, and elsewhere have become so routine that they are part of the social fabric (Couper et al. 2015); we return to this geographic focus later in this chapter. As with all TECs, there is no solid knowledge of the extent of revenue generation involved; Urbina (2019: 7) describes the illicit seafood trade “a as of thriving global business that generates an estimated $160 billion in annual sales”. Part of the difficulty in measuring the extent of IUU fishing is the widespread use of transhipment, or the laundering of illegally harvested fish by transferring it to legally sanctioned vessels, which can take place in the open sea with relative confidence in the absence of effective monitoring systems. Though DNA testing has been used to determine whether catches are from endangered stocks, there are limits to how extensively this stillexpensive technology can be employed. It is quite difficult, despite various verification and certification regimes, to know what you are getting at the supermarket, or in a supposedly “dolphin free” (or friendly) can of tuna. This is even more the case when it comes to one of the world’s biggest but probably least well-known fishing sectors, that of reduction fisheries, where the catch is quickly turned to minced fishmeal and is shipped around the world to feed other fish, various farm animals, and even cropped plants and suburban gardens.

Environmental Justice and Reduction Fisheries Returning to Maantay’s definition of environmental injustice (2002: 161) as the “disproportionate exposure of communities of color and the poor to pollution, and its concomitant effects on health and environment, as well as the unequal environmental protection and environmental quality provided through laws, regulations, government programs, enforcements

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and policies”, we can see how IUU fishing has a similar trajectory to the other transnational ecoviolence (wildlife crime and hazardous waste and spillage) covered so far in this book. Illegal fisheries deprive local communities of protein and other nutrients, employment, tourist opportunities, and the ability of future generations to feed themselves and sustain livelihood from the sea. This reflects the international community’s unwillingness to pursue environmental justice on a global scale. Though the economic incentives are strong, the enabling environment for IUU has also been strong. Maritime law enforcement has generally been weak outside of the few coastal regions where it is affordable (and even there it is highly challenging). Toxic waste dumping in coastal regions combined with chronic overfishing has decimated populations of both fish and coastal communities off of Africa. The infamous piracy in the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Guinea, the Indian Ocean, and the Horn of Africa committed by former Somali fishermen is often attributed to their desperation as fish stocks have become unavailable (Zlutnick 2009); this has led to the “permanent international presence of warships from Japan, China, India, Australia and other countries for escorting the national fleet of merchant ships transiting through the region” (Narula 2019: 414), but not to serious aid to African states to stop foreign IUU, arguably a prime driver of piracy itself, in their coastal zones. Astonishingly, however, a much bigger environmental injustice is taking place on a daily basis that might qualify as an informal transnational environmental crime or as ecoviolence as described in Chapter 1: the use of fish food derived from the southern hemisphere to feed fish and domesticated land animals being farmed in or for northern markets (it is also used as fertilizer for both agriculture and ornamental gardens). While we are perhaps accustomed to viewing aquaculture in ethical terms as a compensatory industry, making up for the damage caused by wild fish catches, we have known for some time now that aquaculture has a tremendous impact on wild fish populations as well, and not just because of the heavy employment of antibiotics, the massive quantities of organic waste, the use of genetic modification, and other things that often find a way into wild populations, but because farmed fish are, more often than not, feeding entirely on wild fish products (Naylor et al. 2000). These “reduction industries” illustrate the fundamentally unjust nature of the global marketplace as well as the lack of sincere sustainability norms in the large-scale fishing industry. Globally, it has been estimated that up to 40 million tons of wild fish are used to produce fishmeal alone

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each year (Gibson 2019). Add to this the billions of fish used largely to produce fish oil, again for northern markets, and we arrive at yet another acronym rarely used in the discussion of global environmental insecurity and food injustice: FMFO (Fishmeal and fish oil). Surprisingly, roughly one-fifth of all fish taken from the oceans are not destined for human consumption, even though (contrary to industry claims) there is evidence that most fish products that go into the fishmeal supply chain are in fact food-grade fish that could be used to feed people in protein and nutrient challenged countries (Cashion et al. 2017; confusingly, Cashion, Tyedmers and Parker suggest one-sixth of global catch is used for this purpose). Instead it is ground to a pulp, and fed to domesticated animals (mostly, pigs and chickens) and is widely used in aquacultural enterprises. It is a largely overlooked aspect of the global food supply chain, and it is inevitably tied into formal IUU as well—it is not possible, despite claims of overt and sophisticated certification schemes, to differentiate fish sources once they are in the supply chain, ground to pulp, and sold to farms in distant regions. And it is transnational to the core. An excellent investigative report by the group Changing Markets (2019) notes that: Global demand for FMFO is mainly driven by China’s huge aquaculture sector, but export-oriented sectors, such as salmon farming in Norway and Scotland and prawn farming in Asia, are also significant consumers. The biggest reduction fishery, typically representing 30–35% of world production of FMFO, is Peruvian anchoveta….Our investigations found that in … India and Vietnam, collapsing fish stocks and the economics of the FMFO industry are pushing fishing vessels to systematically plunder the oceans for species that have not previously been used for FMFO production, as well as juvenile fish, which should be left in their natural environment to reach maturity and ensure a stable fish population. Increasing demand in major markets – notably China – has also spurred growth in West African FMFO production…

While it is common to decry countries with starving human populations producing food for export, something similar is happening with the fish reduction industry, in which it takes roughly five kilos of fish to make one kilo of fish meal. For example, in The Gambia, “where GDP was a mere $1,700 per capita in 2018 and people rely on fish as a staple food … the combined catch of just one of the country’s FMFO plants accounted for approximately 40% of the country’s total reported fish catches in 2016.

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Gambia’s fish catch is turned into fishmeal at a rate of 5 kilos of fish for 1 kilo of fishmeal and exported abroad, mainly to China”; FMFO plants often lock fishermen into prices fixed per haul instead of per fish, which can disincentivize the careful onboard separation of species (Changing Markets 2019). The FMFO, once processed in plants (some of which have dubious safety and environmental records) can be shipped illegally, circumventing safety standards in landing countries such as China. To this, we need to add the untold millions of tons of so-called fertilizer fish, which is used for agriculture (on farms and suburban gardens); the unmeasurable amount of by-catch which is thrown back into the sea, usually dead; the growing profitability of the fish oil as dietary supplement industry, which in some cases are so resource extractive that it is driving some species to endangerment and throwing off ecosystem balances in the process; and the toll that deliberate and accidental pollution, acidification, and climate change in general is taking on marine mammal and fish populations, and you begin to get the overall picture.2 A lobby group for the reduction fishery industry, which was originally named the International Fishmeal and Fishoil Organization, still goes by the acronym IFFO, but now calls itself the Marine Ingredients Organization, emphatically denies the problematic link between IUU and its massive industrial output, and claims to run a certification program that should remove any doubt about the legitimacy of its funding partners. The Marine Stewardship Council, which generally garners more respect for its certification regime, asserts that reduction fisheries can be sustainable but acknowledged that only a small portion of the industry is properly regulated, and most MSC-certified reduction fishing is based on the trimmings and byproducts of species caught for human consumption, which is indeed a logical way to produce it (https://www.msc.org/en-us/media-center/blog/2019/09/03/arereduction-fisheries-sustainable). The inevitable connections to IUU are underexplored by the IFFO or MSC and it is clear that we need more research into this darker side of global fisheries. Part of environmental

2 On fish oil extraction and production and the overexploitation of menhaden in the

United States for fish oil supplement production see Breyer (2019). Menhaden “keep the ocean waters of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts clean. A menhaden filters four to six gallons of water of algae in a minute, which prevents oxygen-depleting algal blooms that lead to underwater dead zones. If you calculate the filtering capacity of the half-billion menhaden that are turned into fish oil every year, the picture begins to look dismal”.

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justice is intergenerational. Unsustainably harvesting pelagic forage fish such as anchovy, sardine, herring and mackerel, as well as invertebrate plankton-based species such as krill, threatens the oceanic food chain, putting future generations of humans at jeopardy. Given its association with IUU, it is hard not to conclude that the reduction fishery industry is a form of ecoviolence, and that there is an obvious need to tightly monitor future regulatory regimes.

Human Security and Sea Slavery Beyond the ecological damage they inflict, the human cost of illegal fisheries is tremendous. Fishing is by definition a dangerous profession, not just because of the threats posed by unruly seas, lakes, and rivers to life and limb, but because it is a notoriously precarious economic prospect, vulnerable to not just the ups and downs of the marketplace but unseasonal weather patterns and fluctuations in fish stocks. Climate change, invasive species, and marine pollution are not making it any easier. As the FAO reminds us, and despite some excellent efforts at fisheries management, the overall amount of wild fish on Earth is steadily declining as we consume more and more of this protein source; and (coupled with technological innovations that make fishing increasingly automated) the amount of legitimate commercial fishers has been declining as well. Beyond this generalized precarity, however, modern IUU has brought with it the continuation of what is essentially a form of very pre-modern slavery on the high seas, bringing human security concerns—namely, health and personal security—to the fore. Migrant workers who have the unfortunate experience of working on IUU boats are some of the most abused “employees” on Earth; in many cases their condition is indeed abject slavery, and they are subject to not only the physical dangers of fishing on the high seas but are beaten, starved, raped, denied medical treatment, have wages withheld, and otherwise abused at the same time. In many cases, this involves child labor as well. One of the most notorious examples of sea slavery is the well-known southeast Asian fisheries, and particularly that of Thailand: “In 2009, the UN conducted a survey of about fifty Cambodian men and boys sold to Thai fishing boats. Of those interviewed by UN personnel, twenty-nine

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said they witnessed their captain or other officers kill a worker”.3 Not simply reprimanded, not simply punished, or sacked: killed. As Urbina wrote in a New York Times article, labor abuse at sea “can be so severe that the boys and men who are its victims might as well be captives from a bygone era. In interviews, those who fled recounted horrific violence: the sick cast overboard, the defiant beheaded, the insubordinate sealed for days below deck in a dark, fetid fishing hold” (Urbina 2015; see also Environmental Justice Foundation 2014; Chantavanich et al. 2016). Another Thai victim of sea slavery spoke of seeing a disobedient worker quartered—pulled into four pieces after having been tied to four boats (Mutaqin 2018: 81). There is a link here to the reduction fishery industry described above, as well, since much of the catch does not even end up as human food, but rather is reduced in canneries to cheap animal feed. Urbina reports that one of the men he interviewed “did not know where the fish he caught ended up. He did learn, however, that most of the forage fish on the final boat where he was held in bondage was destined for a cannery called the Songkla Canning Public Company, which is a subsidiary of Thai Union Frozen Products, the country’s largest seafood company. In the past year, Thai Union has shipped more than 28 million pounds of seafood-based cat and dog food for some of the top brands sold in America including Iams, Meow Mix and Fancy Feast…” (Urbina 2015). A recent 2016 U.S. Department of Labour report added two fishingrelated accusations, including child labor in fishing in Vietnam and forced labor in fishing in Indonesia. In total, the List now includes fish, dried fish, Nile perch, tilapia, shellfish, lobster, and shrimp from 16 countries. As the report suggests, the “isolated nature of work on waters presents a number of challenges to child labor and forced labor enforcement in the fishing sector. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is the leading international instrument on the issue of maritime law … The Convention distinguishes between different maritime areas – territorial sea, Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), and the high seas – and states’ ability to regulate activities within each … These maritime boundaries add an additional layer of complexity to enforcing labor laws on fishing vessels”. Further, the state that puts its flag on a vessel “generally has the responsibility for regulating labor conditions on fishing vessels. However, 3 https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/cambodian-fisheries-worker-urges-canada-tohelp-combat-slave-labour-1.5267778.

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when flagging states are unable or unwilling to enforce labor laws on their vessels, workers can become increasingly vulnerable to exploitation. While ships may not change their flags during a voyage, vessels have been known to use so-called flags of convenience, or the flag of a state other than that of the vessel’s owner, in order to avoid financial or regulatory charges in that state. Thus, in choosing a flag of convenience, vessels often choose the flag of a state with the labor regime they deem most beneficial, and in so doing, avoid the requirements imposed by the owner’s state. The hidden nature of this work, with workers out on vessels for long periods of time, sometimes without any form of communication with family or friends, contributes to workers’ isolation” (U.S. Department of Labor, 2016: 16). This situation prompted former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to say: “Modern slavery doesn’t happen only in warzones. It exists in areas of both darkness and plain sight of people all over the world – even at sea … where unscrupulous fishermen use the isolation of the sea to hide their crimes. When criminals are able to turn a profit in an illegal fishing market, they’ll go after as many fish as possible. So they not only destroy lives of human beings, they destroy an ecosystem. And the more labor they have on board,the larger their catches will be. A global, coordinated effort is desperately needed and long overdue …” (Remarks by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the Release of the U.S. Department of State’s 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report, Washington, D.C., June 30, 2016). There are many conduits that lead to this transgression of human rights and dignity, but market demand is the primary fuel for the international political economy of illegal fishing. In the case of the Thai fishing industry in the South China Sea, the fishing fleet is often from 50,000 to 60,000 workers short to bring in the haul, largely for foreign markets, that the industry is accustomed to providing. Migrants from Cambodia and Myanmar, lured by human traffickers, are offered jobs on fishing vessels engaged in IUU, and are taken far out to sea and forced to endure inhumane working conditions. This is not just a problem in the South China Sea, however. The pearl fishing industry in the Caribbean was one of the first recorded slavery-based industries in the Americas (Dominguez Torres 2015). This historical connection should not be lost on us, since the practice continues today in many regions. As Nakamura and colleagues write, seafood is produced “with a significant incidence of forced labor, child labor, or forced child labor in the seafood hub countries of Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Peru. In 2016,

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widespread forced labor in seafood work was reported in 47 countries, with incidents reported in additional countries, including New Zealand, Ireland, the United States, and Taiwan” (Nakamura et al. 2018: 1). The same group of scientists write in a paper on slavery-tracing or supply chain mapping mechanisms: “In the global seafood industry, flows of raw materials from fishing vessels and aquaculture farms are tracked over long distances with incredible accuracy, but the hands pulling fish from the net disappear from sight” (ibid., 2018: 1). There is little doubt, then, that the IUU industry is home to some of the most egregious assaults on human security found today. Sea slavery is real, and so is the environmental destruction caused by those who profit from it.

Syncretic Analysis: IUU on the West African Coast4 A syncretic case study that permits us to glimpse the environmental justice and human security implications of IUU’s ecoviolence can be found on the west coast of Africa. At Elmina port, one of Ghana’s main landing sites, women fish sellers sit on their stools under the tropical sun, large steel basins between their legs and elegantly knotted turbans on their heads. Some bang loudly on their steel, impatient for the ever-elusive catch of the day to be offloaded from the wooden canoes. It is a noise heard all along Africa’s former Gold Coast, a chorus of steel bemoaning the lack of fish in seas that once had the potential to support generations of small-scale, artisanal fishermen. One fisherwoman stands before a large square slab of mixed frozen fish that is quickly concealed with a cloth once the photographer approaches. This is no ordinary artisanal catch: it has

4 This case study was generously provided by environmental journalist Mona Samari, co-founder of the West Africa Fisheries Journalism Project and the Monitoring Compliance and Surveillance (MCS) 2019 Special Recognition Award recipient for the fisheries journalism project she developed and implemented in Ghana and Senegal, in partnership with Internews Earth Journalism Project. Mona has been working as an independent consultant on ocean policy, right to information, media freedom and NGO campaigning for over 20 years and comes from a right to information, human rights and conflict resolution background. Mona is the development team member of the Future Earth OCEAN Knowledge Action Network.

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been frozen onboard an industrial vessel and transshipped by organized Ghanaian-owned canoe operators. It has become increasingly clear that the fate of established fishing communities in this port town is at the mercy of the profits generated by trawler vessels illegally targeting and transhipping fish caught in the artisanal fishing zones. This transhipment practice is referred to locally as “saiko”, a word with etymological links to the now discontinued Japanese practice of selling surplus trash fish caught in the high seas to local Ghanaian fishermen in the 1970s. Thirty years on, this practice has now evolved into an organized collusion between foreign-owned trawler vessels and a faction of the Ghanaian industrial sector carrying out illegal transshipment at sea via purpose-built wooden transport canoes. Factors including a lack of transparency in trawler registries, low-level fines for infractions and the difficulty in tracing the ultimate beneficial owners of these 70–100 Ghanaian-flagged vessels further perpetuates the practice. Against a backdrop of weak monitoring and control measures and evidence of observer bribery (two observers were penalized with suspension in 2019), saiko fishing has evolved into becoming the most destructive and aggressive fishing practice to hit Ghana’s once abundant seas. Once brought onshore in less public places of the landing sites, the slabs of frozen fish, which include overfished species like sardinella and juvenile fish of other species, are offloaded into trucks and transferred elsewhere, with a small percentage being sold to the local population. “The Saiko trade mostly occurs in Elmina where the Saiko boat land their catch. Other locations include Apam, Sekondi and Axim”, explains Kofi Agbogah, director of the Ghanaian fisheries and coastal governance NGO, Hen Mpoano, and one of the key figures in Ghana leading the fight against transshipment. According to local sources, there are around 40 “saiko” vessels operating in Elmina alone. “When the trawlers come at night, they get very close to the shore, they will put off all their lights”, describes one of the chief fishermen of Elmina, Goodman Goodwill. Aboom, a fisherman engaged in the saiko trade who agreed to speak anonymously, is a member of the Ghana Industrial Trawlers Association. He says: “I can tell you on authority that without saiko, there won’t be Elmina. Saiko is an all-seasonal activity unlike our traditional fishing occupation and so all commercial activity here depend on it”.

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At another main saiko-landing hotspot in Ghana called Tema, an onboard fishing vessel observer who works under the mandate of the fisheries authorities, Akuoko says he was on board a saiko-fishing vessel that “spent over 50 days at sea and did 7 sessions of transshipment totaling 7,642 slabs of fish per trip. This is the average figure, some do more, and others do less”. Akuoko reveals that although he always submits inspection reports, these vessels are nonetheless still operating today. Prompted by two high-profile cases of fishery offenses committed in 2019 by some of the Meng Xin series of trawler vessels in Ghana, including the unexplained disappearance of a fishery observer named Emmanuel Essien onboard the Meng Xin 15 vessel in July, China Dialogue produced an in-depth investigation which uncovered evidence of Chinese ownership of these Ghanaian flagged and registered Meng Xin vessels, tying the vessels to 8 local Ghanaian companies and at least 9 Chinese companies (see Samari 2019). Despite the fact that Ghanaian law explicitly prohibits transhipment and foreign-owned business ventures, the two-part investigation revealed that a Chinese state enterprise called Dalian Meng Xin Fisheries is the beneficial owner of 35 Meng Xin-named vessels operating in West Africa, with at least 17 in Ghana and 5 in Sierra Leone and 1 in Guinea. The trawler vessels operating under the Ghanaian flag and registered in Ghana are also registered to the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture—with permit issuance dates and licenses to fish until 2021—as well as feature on the latter’s Overseas Vessel and Crew Inspection list. The investigation revealed that the Meng Xin vessels operating in Ghana are seemingly securing access to benefits available to two different flag states: Ghana and China. The Meng Xin vessels were fined a total of at least $90,000 for fishery offenses committed in Sierra Leone and at least 1,461,290 Ghanaian CDI ($267,963.75) in Ghana for saiko-related offenses. A picture emerged of a transnational network operating with little public scrutiny, at huge ecological and socioeconomic cost to artisanal fishing communities. According to Professor Tabitha Mallory, there was a deliberate policy adopted to fish within the territorial waters of other countries, as a target of 1400 boats and a 840,000t catch with a value of RMB5.5billion was set by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture at that time (Mallory 2013). Documents revealed that in 2012, Dalian Mengxin Ocean Fisheries was part of the 100 enterprises which were granted a certificate to fish in distant waters as an “offshore fishery enterprise of the Chinese Ministry of

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Agriculture”. Furthermore, Chinese public sites including qichacha.com state that “12 boats were built and went to Ghana for the sole purpose of ‘ocean fishing’ in the company profile for Dalian Meng Xin Ocean Fisheries”. If the saiko business is generating profits—both for Chinese trawler owners and the local Ghanaian operators—the reality for the rest of the fishermen in the town of Elmina is bleak. Sunkwa, a 49-year-old artisanal fisherman speaks on behalf of many when he says: “the fishermen are suffering. Things are not good and we are getting to a tipping point, fishermen are losing it. We are angry. If government is not careful, there will be a massive revolt in the country”. Aboom, a saiko operator who agreed to talk on condition of anonymity, divulged that “in a day, a maximum of 25 motor-powered canoes land saiko fish. A saiko canoe brings back to shore as much as 35,000 cedis [local currency] (about US$64,000) worth of fish for only a day’s trip. I can’t disclose how much we get but we make good money”. Many fishers are struggling to generate any revenue while subsequently paying off debts, and see little hope for an improvement in fish populations. One Chief Fisherman painfully divulged that the poverty cycles are becoming so entrenched within the fishing communities as a result of the impact of saiko fishing, that some fishermen have even resorted to selling their children for the price of a can of coca cola. Forty-year-old Kofi Nkrumah, an artisanal fisherman from Elmina, laments that “there is no business in the sea for me. Things are bad. A fishing expedition costs us US$180-worth of fuel, the cost of food for the crew and others can all total to additional US$150”. Nkrumah indicated that they fish the whole week and only catch enough to settle the cost of two days’ fishing. Nkrumah looks at the shore despairingly and admits to being driven to thoughts of suicide, his face weathered by the elements and worry about the future of his traditional trade, passed down through generations. Like many other fishermen in Ghana, he is negatively impacted by the saiko business. In comparison, it is estimated that a foreign-owned trawler in Ghanaian waters can land up to 26 tons of fish a day, the equivalent of around 400 canoe trips like those undertaken by Nkrumah. A number of factors allow this transhipment practice particular to Ghana to continue, including complex transnational foreign beneficial ownership structures. Agbogah from the NGO Hen Mpoano said that Ghanaian subsidiary companies acquire licenses directly from the Ministry of Agriculture “through some

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opaque and phony arrangements”, while the vessels are “manned by Chinese owners”. According to Goodman Goodwill, a well-respected chief fisherman in Ghana, “Nationally, foreigners cannot license a boat, so it is a Ghanaian which is licensing the boat, and they take about 5 or 10%, and the rest goes to the Chinese owners”. The activities of trawlers in Ghana are “financially capacitating fishing crime”, says Dyhia Belhabib, principal investigator at Ecotrust Canada working on fish crimes. “They are hiding under the rug of local subsidiary practices and disturbing the very cultural fabric of traditional fishing”. However, Daniel Owusu, Secretary of the National Fisheries Association of Ghana (NAFAG) an umbrella organization which regroups 5 other fisheries organizations including the trawler vessel industry, argues that the companies managing the trawlers in Ghana are “only owned by Ghanaians and that no law has been broken by the industry”, adding that there are about 47 registered Ghanaian companies managing trawler vessels. In contrast, Professor Denis Aheto, a scientist at the fisheries department of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, explains that “the Chinese own most of the industrial fleets in the country in connivance with Ghanaians. The law categorically rules out any form of joint ownership between foreigners and Ghanaians, but Ghanaians front for the de facto owners, to give the impression that these businesses are Ghanaianowned”. Both the fisheries minister, Elizabeth Naa Afoley Quaye, and the president of the Ghana Industrial Trawlers Association, Sammy Nii Okai Quaye, called for a complete eradication of saiko in August 2019.5 After a two-part China Dialogue investigation was published in October 2019 (Samari 2019), which was subsequently publicized by actress and eco-activist Pamela Anderson on her twitter account, the Ghanaian government took the unprecedented step to fine a Chineseowned trawler 1 million US dollars, the highest ever recorded fine issued. Although the move was praised by national and international NGOs and institutions including the EU, the eradication of saiko fishing will require a much more concentrated effort from all parties, with a clear timeline to phase out the practices completely. In the meantime, it continues to challenge efforts to establish both environmental justice and human security in the region.

5 https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/ghana-s-fisheries-minister-calls-for-endof-saiko.

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Conclusion It is tempting to think that illegal fishing is an African problem, with Asian actors involved, but we should recall that most fishing disputes between states over fishing regulations have occurred in the north (such as the Canadian-Spanish turbot dispute of the 1990s), and what is colloquially known as “black fishing” is seen as a food crime in Europe and elsewhere: “the practice of catching fish which are not officially declared is said to be endemic in Scotland and other parts of Europe. It has been estimated by fish merchants to cost about £80 million in Scotland alone. The quota system for fish such as cod has led to a situation in which any fish caught over quota must be thrown back into the sea, even if dead. Black fishing involves not only fishermen but also requires the collusion of fish processors and hauliers and the extent of the practise is so great that some have estimated that catches of black fish equal those of legal fish” (Croall 2007: 212). So much confusion remains today regarding the distinction between legal and illegal fishing that it is difficult to build comprehensive legal regimes that target IUU, and if they are built, the monitoring necessary to enforce them remains insufficient (see Miller et al. 2014) to induce the behavioral changes necessary (see Battista et al. 2018). This is truly a transnational issue, giving rise to interesting international solutions such as INTERPOL’s Project Scale. Project Scale is supported by NORAD, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the PEW Environmental Group. Norway’s extensive involvement in antitransnational environmental crime efforts is an interesting side-story here; given Norway’s reliance on oil production and explicit embrace of pelagic whaling, it might be surprising that this resource-rich country has made a leading investment in this area, but Norwegians have long held a strong reputation for their collective environmental consciousness. Others have suggested targeting legitimate operations that have gone rogue, or even individual fishers, by prohibiting insurance companies from providing liability coverage; without it, scaled-up fishing operations are virtually impossible (Soyer et al. 2018). More broadly, the monitoring of fishing and whaling and other forms of wildlife and resource extraction from the oceans can be subjected to the needs of an ecosystem approach, which “strives to balance diverse societal objectives, by taking account of the knowledge and uncertainties about biotics, abiotic and human components of ecosystems and their interactions and applying an integrated approach to fisheries within ecologically meaningful boundaries” (FAO

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2003). And many of the world’s fisheries are, in fact, well-managed, reflecting serious thinking about governance structures (Ostrom 1999) and the enlightened self-interest of fishers; as Hilborn, Orensanz, and Parma suggest, “there are many examples of successfully managed fisheries that are both biologically sustainable and economically profitable … the primary determinants of success relate to institutional structure and incentives for participants [and] the key to successful management of marine resources is the establishment of appropriate institutions for governance that include a reward system, so that the individual welfare of fishermen, managers and scientists is maximized by actions that contribute to a societally desirable outcome. The majority of existing governance structures encourage fishermen to overcapitalize and overexploit and managers to elude responsibility” (Hilborn et al. 2005). But the assertion of environmental justice and human security into the equation raises the demand that all fishing is sustainable so future generations can partake in it, that fish protein and other nutrients are made available to those who presently cannot afford them, and that the human misery that is sea slavery is put to an end for once and all. This applies to other extractive activties, including sand mining and sea cucumber harvesting and whaling, that are often conducted illegally; and to the spread of plastic, oil, nitrogen, phosphate, and other forms of ocean, river, and lake pollution. These are all high demands and it will take decades of hard work to realize these goals. And it’s not just the oceans that face long-term ecosystemic threats due to resource exploitation. If the illegal and unsustainable extraction of fish can be considered ecoviolence, so too can the extraction of plants and trees from fields and forests for the purposes of illicit trade, a theme we turn to in the next chapter.

References Agnew, D.J., J. Pearce, G. Pramod, T. Peatman, R. Watson, R. John, and T. Pitcher. 2009. “Estimating the Worldwide Extent of Illegal Fishing.” PLoS One 4(2): e4570. Battista, W., et al. 2018. “Behavior Change Interventions to Reduce Illegal Fishing.” Frontiers in Marine Science 5(4003): 1–15. Beiser, B. 2018. The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How it Transformed Civilization. New York: Riverhead Books.

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Breyer, M. 2019. “The Truth About Fish Oil.” Mother Nature Network, September 24. Available at: https://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-wellbeing/stories/the-truth-about-fish-oil. Cashion, T., F. Le Manach, D. Zeller, and D. Pauly. 2017. “Most Fish Destined for Fishmeal Production Are Food-Grade Fish.” Fish and Fisheries 18(5) [online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12209. Cesar, H.J.S., L. Burke, and L. Pet-Soede. 2003. The Economics of Worldwide Coral Reef Degradation. Arnhem: Cesar Environmental Economics Consulting; and Zeist, The Netherlands: WWF-Netherlands. Changing Markets Foundation. 2019. Fishing for Catastrophe: How Global Aquaculture Supply Chains Are Leading to the Destruction of Wild Fish Stocks and Depriving People of Food in India, Vietnam, and The Gambia. Available at: http://changingmarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/CM-WEBFINAL-FISHING-FOR-CATASTROPHE-2019.pdf. Chantavanich, S., S. Laodumrongchai, and C. Stringer. 2016. “Under the Shadow: Forced Labour Among Sea Fishers in Thailand.” Marine Policy 68 (June): 1–7. Couper, A., H. Smith, and B. Ciceri. 2015. Fishers and Plunderers: Theft, Slavery and Violence at Sea. London: Pluto Press. Croall, H. 2007. “Food Crime.” In P. Beirne and N. South, eds., Issues in Green Criminology (pp. 206–229). London: Routledge. Dominguez Torres, M. 2015. “Pearl Fishing in the Caribbean: Early Images of Slavery and Forced Migration.” In P. Braham, ed., African Diaspora in the Cultures of Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States (pp. 73–82). Newark: University of Delaware Press. Environmental Justice Foundation. 2014. Slavery at Sea: The Continued Plight of Trafficked Migrants in Thailand’s Fishing Industry. London. FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) Fisheries Department. 2003. The Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries. FAO Technical Guidelines for Responsible Fisheries 4(2). Rome: FAO. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 2019. “Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing.” Rome: FAO. http://www.fao. org/iuu-fishing/background/what-is-iuu-fishing/en/. Gibson, D. 2019. “Alltech: Global Aquafeed Production Hit 40m Tons for the First Time in 2018.” Undercurrent News, January 31 [online]. Available at: https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2019/01/31/alltech-glo bal-aquafeed-production-hit-40m-tons-for-the-first-time-in-2018/. Harris, P. ed. 2019. “Climate Change at Sea: Interactions, Impacts, and Governance.” In P. Harris, ed, Climate Change and Ocean Governance: Politics and Policy for Threatened Seas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Heazle, M. 2006. “Lessons in Precaution: The International Whaling Commission Experience with Precautionary Management.” Marine Policy 30(3): 496–509. Hilborn, R., J. Orensanz, and A. Parma. 2005. “Institutions, Incentives and the Future of Fisheries.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences 360(1453): 47–57. Maantay, J. 2002. “Zoning Law, Health, and Environmental Justice: What’s the Connection?” Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 31(1): 572–593. Mallory, T.G. 2013. “China’s Distant Water Fishing Industry: Evolving Policies and Implications.” Marine Policy 38: 99–108. Meyer, R. 2018. “Since 2016, Half of All Coral in the Great Barrier Reef Has Died.” The Atlantic, April 18. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/ archive/2018/04/since-2016-half-the-coral-in-the-great-barrier-reef-has-per ished/558302/. Miller, D., N. Slicer, and E. Sabourenkov. 2014. “An Action Framework to Address Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing.” Australian Journal of Maritime & Ocean Affairs 6(2): 70–88. https://doi.org/10. 1080/18366503.2014.912575. Mutaqin, Z. 2018. “Modern-Day Slavery at Sea: Human Trafficking in the Thai Fishing Industry.” Journal of East Asian and International Law 11(1): 75–96. Nakamura, K., et al. 2018. “Seeing Slavery in Seafood Supply Chains.” Science Advances 4: e1701833, July, 1–10. Narula, K. 2019. “Climate Change and Navies: Bracing for the Impacts.” In P.G. Harris, ed., Climate Change and Ocean Governance: Politics and Policy for Threatened Seas (pp. 409–423). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. National Intelligence Council. 2016. Global Implications of Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing. Washington DC: National Intelligence Council. Naylor, R.L., R.J. Goldburg, J.H. Primavera, N. Kautsky, M.C.M. Beveridge, J. Clay, C. Folke, J. Lubchenco, H. Mooney, and M. Troell. 2000. “Effect of Aquaculture on World Fish Supplies.” Nature 405(6790): 1017–1024 [online]. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10890435. Ostrom, E. 1999. “Coping with Tragedies of the Commons.” Annual Review of Political Science 2: 493–535. Pauly, D. 2019. Vanishing Fish: Shifting Baselines and the Future of Global Fisheries. Vancouver: Greystone. Samari, Mona. 2019. “Investigation Ties Foreign-Owned Trawling to Illegal Fishing in Ghana.” China Dialogue, September 12. https://chinadialogueoc ean.net/10050-investigation-illegal-fishing-in-ghana-pt-1/. Soyer, B., G. Leloudas, and D. Miller. 2018. “Tackling IUU Fishing: Developing a Holistic Response.” Transnational Environmental Law 7(1): 139–163. Stoett, P. 1997a. The International Politics of Whaling. Vancouver: UBC Press.

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Stoett, P. 1997b. “To Trade or Not to Trade? The African Elephant and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.” International Journal LII(4): 567–575. Urbina, I. 2015, July 27. “‘Sea Slaves’: The Human Misery That Feeds Pets and Livestock.” New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/ 2015/07/27/world/outlaw-ocean-thailand-fishing-sea-slaves-pets.html. Urbina, I. 2019. The Outlaw Ocean: Crime and Survival in the Last Untamed Frontier. London: Vintage Publishing. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs. 2016. List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor. Washington, DC. Available at: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article= 2848&context=key_workplace. Vaughan, A. 2020. “Albatrosses Strapped with Sensors Help Spy on Illegal Fishing Boats.” New Scientist, January 27. https://www.newscientist.com/ article/2231442-albatrosses-strapped-with-sensors-help-spy-on-illegal-fishingboats/. Wilkinson, C. 2006. “Status of Coral Reefs of the World: Summary of Threats and Remedial Action.” Coral Reef Conservation 13: 3–9. World Bank Group. 2019. Illegal Logging, Fishing, and Wildlife Trade: The Costs and How to Combat It. http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/482771571323 560234/WBGReport1017Digital.pdf. Zeller, D., T. Cashion, M. Palomares, and D. Pauly. 2017. “Global Marine Fisheries Discards: A Synthesis of Reconstructed Data.” Fish and Fisheries 19(1): 30–39. Zlutnick, D. 2009. “Sea Bandits: Poverty, Business and the Rise of Somali Piracy.” The Nor’easter (4).

CHAPTER 5

Floral Transnational Ecoviolence

Wild plant trafficking threatens and destroys numerous species and important natural resources and it hinders the rule of law, security and good governance. Lavorgna et al., 2018: 270

Introduction In this chapter, we explore forest, timber, and plant crime as acts of transnational ecoviolence against both the environment and the communities that rely on these resources for their very existence. While there has been a lucrative market in transplanted wild flora for many centuries, it was often associated with the spoils of military conquest. Many botanical gardens have been repurposed to fulfill educational and conservationist mandates, but they were initially intended to be ornate displays of the reach of European empire, showcasing the colonial narrative (see Neves 2019). However, the contemporary history of the transboundary movement and trade of wild plant and timber species can be traced to the period of rapid economic growth in the Western hemisphere following the Second World War: increased disposable income led to the affordability of luxuries such as greenhouses and an appetite for rare and exotic flora, increasing the demand for highly coveted endangered species (Sajeva and Carimi 1994; Sajeva et al. 2007), while the use of wood in products ranging from luxury liquor cabinets to skyscrapers increased the demand © The Author(s) 2021 P. Stoett and D. A. Omrow, Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58561-7_5

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for timber products and an illicit market fuelled by timber crime quickly took shape. Today, the global market for illegal forest products is massive, and there have been immense geopolitical changes as well. Illegal timber products, in particular, feed growth economies and the construction of urban centers. For example, the Chinese market for plant and timber products has a tremendous impact; as Dauvergne and Lister (2011: 11–12) inform us, over half the world’s traded timber “goes through or lands in China … the ‘illegal’ portion ranging from 30 to 80% from countries like Russia, Indonesia, Burma, and Papua New Guinea”. For example, on top of a massive $3.5 billion (US) yearly trade, much of the Siberian timber routinely sent to China arrives without formal authorizations or permits (Kramer 2019), though China claims it is clamping down on illegal timber imports. Similarly, globalization intensified pressure on wild plant species during the latter half of the twentieth century due to the extensive horticultural trade. As a result of this expanding network, rare plants such as Ariocarpus, a unique, subtropical Mexican cacti, became extinct (Lavorgna et al. 2018). The advent of Internet commerce, both legal and illicit, ushered in a new age of international, borderless and hybrid trade, advancing the digitalization of the illegal plant trade. Often overlooked, this is a form of transnational ecoviolence that has become systemic, a firm feature of the global illicit economy. It contributes to deforestation and climate change and biodiversity loss, spreads invasive alien species and pathogens, deprives governments of much-needed revenue, and has a detrimental impact on communities and indigenous people across the globe, and yet it is generally overshadowed by concerns about the international wildlife trade in charismatic species that more easily capture public attention. It is imperative that forest, timber, and plant crime garners equal concern, since this ecoviolence poses such a serious threat to ecosystems, biodiversity, and local communities. We discuss the predilection to focus on wildlife crime over plant crime below as we conceptualize the latter. Further, in keeping with our effort to expand the parameters of understanding selected spheres of violence, we offer a syncretic case study that describes the increasingly violent transnational avocado industry in Mexico, which has converged with the illicit drug trade and resulted in harms to both environmental justice and human security.

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Conceptualizing Forest, Timber, and Plant Crime While the illegal wildlife trade (IWT) conjures images of rare and exotic animals being snatched from their families and transported to destination countries for anthropocentric purposes, there is another, equally important, aspect of the IWT—the illegal harvesting, smuggling, and trade of plants, including trees and timber. Wandersee and Schussler (1999) coined the term “plant blindness” to describe the “the misguided anthropocentric ranking of plants as inferior to animals” (Wandersee and Schussler 1999: 82). “Plant blindness” can be construed as systemic bias against flora, as explained by Margulies et al. (2019), who reveal that this bias is embedded in conservation efforts in the United States—most notably, the Lacey Act of 1900, which serves as one of the earliest federal wildlife protection laws. A critical analysis of the legislation illustrates the hierarchical privileging of animal conservation over plant conservation, as the Act excluded the protection of flora. In 1981, the Lacey Act was overhauled, and a restrictive definition of flora was included. However, plants and wildlife were interpreted as disparate entities entitled to legal protection, and it was not until 2008 that the Lacey Act included a more expansive definition of plant species, conforming to conventional legal interpretations of “wildlife”. The new definition included non-native plants, along with various species of trees and timber. Such legal developments in the classification of flora as wildlife, however, have accomplished very little in altering “plant blindness” and the anthropocentric culture of conservation. Heywood (2017: 323) states: It is somewhat paradoxical that the widespread enthusiasm in many cultures for gardens and gardening, parks and other urban plantings…together with the aesthetic appreciation of flowers in art, literature and society, and in the home as cut flowers and potted plants, is not reflected in a public appreciation of the role and importance of plants in the natural Environment.

Margulies et al. (2019) argue that global efforts to curb IWT are “plant blind”, ignoring the protection of flora in policy and research. The Global Wildlife Program and the World Bank Group (2019), for instance, place much emphasis on the international trade of elephants, tigers, and pangolins, but fail to include the global illegal trade in plants, despite the robust scholarship on illegal plant trades involving medicinal and aromatic plant species (MAP species) and non-timber forest resources

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(Broad et al. 2003; Cruz-Garcia et al. 2015; Flores-Palacios and ValenciaDiaz 2007; Pauls and Franz 2013; Rijal et al. 2011; Tali et al. 2019). The culture of “plant blindness”, undoubtedly, is a concomitant of systemlevel structures which are responsible for privileging animals above plants in socially/culturally constructed hierarchies (Margulies et al. 2019). The consequences of this “blindness” impacts research and policy responses to forest, timber, and plant crime. For example, Havens et al. (2013) found that while 57% of species included in the United States (US) Endangered Species Act were plants, less than 4% of funding was earmarked for their protection and conservation. “Plant blindness” also influences how much funding is put into researching the illicit plant trade. For example, the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Combating Wildlife Trafficking (CWT) Program and the UK Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund are the predominant sources of funding for research into IWT. Margulies et al. (2019) reveal that the former program has spent $4.9 million from 2016 to 2017, while the latter spent £18.5 million in 5 years of funding, suggesting a bias in IWT funding by species group. The authors note that conservation funding initiatives demonstrate a propensity to favor “a small number of charismatic megafauna compared to plants and other less iconic species” (Margulies et al. 2019: 178). Despite the prevalence of “plant blindness” and the attendant faunal biases in conservation efforts, multilateral treaties such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) have been created to protect both endangered plants and animals. Scientists have overseen initiatives such as the “artificial propagation” of various plant species, an attempt to mitigate the illegal trade of flora. “Artificial propagation” increases the availability of plant species through horticultural practices in controlled environments. Such an initiative, it is presumed, would deter the illicit trade of certain plant species; however, Sajeva et al. (2007) maintain that plant aficionados and buyers in the medicinal plant market prefer wild collected plants because of their authentic aesthetic value and their superior restorative ingredients, respectively. Moreover, Lavorgna et al. (2018) assert that the regulatory framework utilized by CITES is a clear example of imperfect implementation, as the treaty’s attempt to exercise governance over the illegal trade of plant species features many vulnerabilities, creating unintended opportunities for smugglers and poachers to exploit. Nevertheless, multilateral

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instruments such as CITES serve as a point of reference when discussing the protection of wildlife. Other international organizations such as INTERPOL have spearheaded campaigns such as Project LEAF (Law Enforcement Assistance for Forests), an initiative to combat forestry crimes and illegal logging. The campaign features intelligence-led operations against illegal loggers, assisting law enforcement agencies in the management of natural resources. Such an initiative embodies the need for a human security approach to tackling this type of environmental crime because it accelerates climate change by reducing the carbon sequestration provided by trees (and illegal mining is often accompanied by the burning of forests, contributing more carbon directly to the atmosphere); it accelerates the exploitation of certain threatened, vulnerable, or endangered species such as rosewood and mahogany; it destroys the vital habitat for endangered species such as the orangutans featured on the cover of this book; it often entails social conflict between loggers and indigenous communities (which can in turn lead to violence and murder); and it involves other crimes such as document fraud, corruption and money laundering (INTERPOL 2019). Other INTERPOL efforts include Operation Amazonas II (2015); Operation Log (2015); Operation Putumayo (2014); and the Forestry Crime Working Group. All of these campaigns feature capacity-building through the provision of strategic advice and the creation of guidelines and methodologies to enhance governance over the forestry sector. In 2009, international organizations and agencies embarked on an initiative to combat transnational wildlife crime. Those participating in this effort included representatives from the CITES Secretariat; INTERPOL; the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; the World Bank; and the World Customs Organization. The result of this capacitybuilding exercise was the creation of the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC), as discussed in Chapter 2. The ICCWC defines “crime” as acts committed contrary to national laws and regulations dedicated to protecting natural resources. Some of these acts include the illegal trade of plants for the purposes of producing essential oils, medicines, perfumes, and ornaments (Jenkins et al. 2018; Goettsch et al. 2015; Hinsley et al. 2017), while other acts include poaching, smuggling, unauthorized logging, and the laundering of money associated with these crimes—to mention only a few. The nature of this criminality is

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transnational, taking place thousands of kilometers from source, transit and destination countries (Khatchadourian 2011). Illegal logging is a particularly lucrative trade. Indeed, the overall economic costs of the trade extend far beyond the profits made by timber smuggling. It has been defined by the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Facility (FLEGT) as the “harvesting, processing, transporting, buying or selling of timber in contravention of national and international laws… illegal logging in a protected area and trade of that timber product is an example of an activity considered in the calculation of economic losses…. Evaded taxes and royalties on logging done illegally (without the proper licences/permits) but which could otherwise have been legally sanctioned” must be included as well, and adding these opportunity costs to the formula, the illegal timber trade’s worth approaches the trillion dollar range (see Hoff and Walsh 2019). It is simply impossible to definitively state the economic value of this clandestine trade, or its contributions to climate change due to the loss of carbon sinks and illegal burning, but both are certainly massive. While we are concerned about all forms of flora exploitation, some species are in the unfortunate position of being far more in demand than others, such as the richly hued timber known as rosewood: the UNODC reports that approximately 35% of all flora seized by authorities between 2005 and 2014 was in this species alone (Margulies et al. 2019). Certain species of cacti are also the target of smugglers hoping to avail themselves of the burgeoning horticultural trade, which sells these plants for ornamental purposes. In fact, due partly to the growing consumer demand for cactus plants, 31% of all cactus species face imminent extinction (Goettsch et al. 2015). And finally, Cycads, a plant group known to have survived three mass extinctions, faces heightened vulnerability to extinction because of poaching and habitat destruction, and are considered by some to be the most endangered plant today (Brummitt et al. 2015; IUCN 2010). Illegal logging has garnered the attention of the global community at least since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and is linked to other forms of violence and injustice such as armed conflicts, corruption, exploitation, money laundering and organized crime (Bisschop 2012; see also Chapter 7). Falling under the category of forest, timber, and plant crime, illegal logging is the quintessential example of transnational crime, involving source, transit and destination countries, and an extensive network of actors: (transnational) corporations, corrupt

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governments, shipping companies, and lone loggers. There is a growing awareness of a multitude of practices which may not be “criminal”, but are equally violent and destructive (recall our discussion of the blurry divide between the strict legalist perspective and the social legalist perspective in Chapter 1), throughout the extraction, distribution, and production chain. White (2008, 2016) has been a prolific scholar in this vein, suggesting that green criminology must focus on the myriad issues relating to the environment and the notion of social harm. Expanding the conceptual development of social harm offers ample opportunity to challenge the anthropocentric framing of environmental crime, inviting ecocentric understandings of the social construction of forest, timber, and plant crime. Ecocentric philosophy expands our understanding of wildlife crime, promoting an ecological thought based upon humanity’s obligation to minimize harm against the various species of the biotic community. Ecocentrism decries the underlying forces responsible for anthropocentric thought and actions, critically analyzing language. Williams (2013), for example, explains that some environmental activists are reluctant to use the word “environment” during their advocacy, opting for the term “ecology”. This is because the former term is ideological insofar as it suggests that nature surrounds us and, most importantly, that it is something from which we can be ontologically separate. Moreover, it is maintained, the term “environment” has been subsumed by a capitalist ethos which positions the environment as a mere subset of the economy. Its natural resources, then, are appropriated as inputs and the disposal of waste from extensive production processes as outputs. The term “ecology”, conversely, views human beings as merely another natural component of complex ecosystems, embedding humans along with other organisms into the natural world. Although the framing of ecoviolence against flora may seem somewhat irregular and even abstract, should not the minimization of harm be applied to all living beings, or biota? Marder (2013) argues that the substantive notion of plant rights must be grounded in the uniqueness of vegetal subjects. He also suggests that this is certainly not a new way of thinking about flora, as evinced in Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Jainism. Hinduism promotes the principle of ahimsa (non-violence) to all living organisms, including plants, while Jainism prohibits the consumption of certain root vegetables because the roots, it is believed, contain the “soul” of the plant. Religious interpretations of the sentience granted

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to plants are extremely important when discussing national, and international, legal norms surrounding plant rights. Berman (2005) suggests that subnational ethnic groups or religious institutions, for example, exert normative force over jurisprudence, influencing the articulation of international norms. Such a legal pluralist approach to drawing the contours of plant rights is extremely important because current Western, scientific and philosophical debates on the rights of plants are influenced by Eastern religious doctrines (Marder 2013). It also leads to the conception of Earth Jurisprudence discussed briefly in Chapter 7. Plants, of late, have fallen in this category of sentient beings, according to Pollan (2013) who has provided compelling evidence from the evolving discipline of plant neurobiology. Plant neurobiologists explore the way flora process and integrate sensory data. From the secretion of defensive chemicals to the detection of gravity, water and potential obstructions to its expanding roots, plants possess the ability to send electrical signals and produce neurotransmitters during the course of their existence. In a related vein, other disciplines such as biology, botany, geography, philosophy, and indigenous studies have documented how plants can be categorized as intelligent and active organisms within our socio-ecological systems (Cowell 2018; Hall 2011; Fleming 2017; Head and Atchison 2009; Head et al. 2014, 2015; Ellis 2018; Kimmerer 2013; Kohn 2013; Rose 2002; Marder 2013; Plumwood 1993). What, exactly, does this mean in the context of environmental crime and environmental (in)justice? Harmon (2009) highlights how the concept of dignity has been applied to governance mechanisms in biotechnology, ensuring that stakeholders comply with the notion when conducting their work. Switzerland, for example, has passed the Gene Technology Act (2004), which protects the dignity of animals, plants and other life forms during any type of research. The Swiss Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology has declared that plants, among other living organisms, have inherent worth, and should not be used frivolously. The effects of this shift away from human exceptionalism have led to institutional changes in the preparation of research funding applications, as Swiss researchers must include how they have considered the dignity of plant subjects in their proposed research projects. In a related vein, Ecuador and Bolivia have recognized the rights of “nature”, in conjunction with approximately 30 cities in the United States. Smith (2018) suggests that there are pragmatic compatibilities between modern strands of environmentalism and what he refers to as

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a neo-earth religion. Such compatibilities, the author maintains, have led to a movement based on the philosophy of plant and animal liberation. Notionally, this type of liberation is based on human psychology, ethics, spirituality, botany, and zoological sciences, lending credence to an ecocentric perspective. Ecocentrism is embodied in recent developments in the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, a global network of organizations dedicated to the adoption of legal frameworks. The organization’s website states that the Earth is a living being, which is an indivisible, self-regulating system of interdependent beings which sustains, contains, and reproduces all other beings. Such a conceptualization of the Earth has led to the reasoning that this system’s inherent rights are inalienable (Smith 2018). While the philosophical tenets of ecocentrism have led to promising institutional developments among certain countries and networks, the enforcement of these norms of inherent worth and inalienability among species of flora is very challenging, indeed. Earth Jurisprudence, defined by the UN Harmony with Nature Dialogue as “a philosophy of law and human governance in which humans are only one part of a wider community of beings and the well-being of each member of that community is dependent on the well-being of the Earth as a whole” (see http://harmonywithnatureun.org/unDocs/), is an international legal movement reflecting these sentiments, to which we will return in Chapter 7 (see also Lamalle and Stoett, forthcoming). The vital role plants (including aquatic plants) play in human survival cannot be overstated: they produce the oxygen humans breathe, serve as a key source of the food consumed by humans and the myriad species they consume, and are used for medicinal purposes, restoring human, and non-human health. They are an integral component of the OneHealth approach that considers the relationship between people, animals, and the environment, emphasizing the importance of maintaining biodiversity (see IPBES 2019). Despite the role plants play in our very survival, they are especially vulnerable to extinction because when habitats are destroyed, plants cannot migrate and relocate to new areas, unlike fauna. According to Tilman et al. (1994), habitat destruction leads to what is referred to as an “extinction debt”—that is, the inability of plants to emerge in new habitat patches. This debt is growing as a result of warming temperatures affecting the distribution of plants in all biomes. According to The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), only 12,914 species of plants have been evaluated for endangerment. This is a miniscule figure when we consider the planet’s

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more than 300,000 known species of plants. The results of the IUCN’s research, furthermore, reveal that 68% of the plants studied face imminent extinction. The first global assessment conducted by the UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) also reveals that of the estimated 8 million animal and plant species on our planet, approximately 1 million are currently threatened with extinction (IPBES 2019). Indeed, the dawn of the era of the Anthropocene has led to ecoviolence being inflicted upon nature through processes of industrialization and the dire consequences of global warming, climate change, deforestation and many other threats to the planet’s environmental security. The Anthropocene is also reflective of the fetishization and commodification of rare and exotic flora, decreasing certain regions’ biodiversity to feed an insatiable appetite. This appetite is transnational in scale, fostering a growing illicit market for the most coveted flowers and plants across the globe. These economic, social, and cultural forces continue uninterrupted, driving seed-bearing plants to the brink of extinction. Consumerism’s propensity to commodify, and commercialize, everything within its reach may be the coup de grâce for the planet’s resplendent flora and the many species which rely on these natural resources. The fight against forest, timber, and plant crime is multifaceted and complex, as it not only targets poachers looking to make a quick buck, but also the consumer demands that drive their illicit, and illegal, operations. Ledford (2019) reveals that since 1900, plants have been disappearing at a rate of approximately 3 species per year. What is more, plants located on islands and in the tropics are disproportionately at risk of extinction, while trees and other woody perennials have the highest probability of disappearing, irrespective of their geographic location. While natural selection changes the course of genetic history, recent plant extinction is a direct result of the ecoviolence of the Anthropocene and humanity’s impact on the biosphere. This form of violence, it bears emphasizing, penetrates complex ecological webs, and the extinction of one species facilitates the extinction of others, causing irreparable harm to ecosystems. How then, do we begin theorizing and researching transnational ecoviolence against flora? It can be seen as the function of choreographed practices by poachers and smugglers carving out a niche in the black market for rare flora; it could be the result of the deliberate introduction of an invasive alien species into a native habitat; it could be the effect of the seemingly innocuous processes of agriculture and urbanization; and

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finally, it could be the result of a fickle, consumer-driven, passing obsession with exotic plants. Violence, then, takes on many guises and our collective behavior directly, or indirectly, is the source. This violence, moreover, is intergenerational, as anthropocentric activity is solely responsible for what ecologists refer to as “living dead” plant species. Carrington (2019) explains that these “living dead” plant species are the last survivors of certain strands of flora which are incapable of reproducing subsequent generations due to a dearth of genetic diversity. The anthropocentric interruption of plant species’ life cycles is a clear example of ecoviolence against plants, leading to a sixth mass extinction of plant life on Earth. Could this ecoviolence be a consequence of ecocide, or is ecocide responsible for ecoviolence? Relatedly, ecoviolence may result in environmental degradation, which leads to conflict; conceptually, the image of a circle of ecocide, derived from observable acts of harm against flora, may be helpful in operationalizing violence against plant life, especially if we are applying the definition of structural violence and the social structures and institutions responsible for preventing plant species from meeting their basic needs. Whether it is harm, ecoviolence or structural violence, these acts constitute environmental injustice, whether it is the extinction of spiny wild aubergines in Tanzania and Kenya; the Chile sandalwood; or the Saint Helena olive—to name just a few. What these plant species have in common is their exposure to the various modes of anthropocentric violence which has led to their abrupt demise. These plant extinctions heighten the vulnerability of other organisms, weaken the resilience of ecosystems, and threaten human well-being (Carrington 2019). While the putative acts of violence may not be intentional, they are nevertheless equally destructive and a clear violation of the inherent rights of plant species. The political economy of forest, timber, and plant crime is of paramount importance when presenting rational and scientific views of environmental crime. Political economy highlights the links between volatile economic systems and the social sphere. Specifically, the interconnectedness of economic relations, social relations and institutions is unpacked, offering new theories of environmental crime. Let us invoke political economy to theorize the burgeoning black market for Dudleya, a genus of succulent perennial plants.

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Dudleya Poaching and Trading The Dudleya succulent plant is native to the United States, boasting 45 different species, located primarily in Oregon, Arizona, and Baja California (Lanyon 2018). In 2017, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) made a startling discovery: a transnational Dudleya poaching ring extending all the way to South Korea, Japan, and China. The main drivers of the illegal trade of this unique plant are collectors who wish to join the expanding market for rare and exotic plants. Dudleya poaching is driven by powerful economic incentives: the CDFW infiltrated clandestine poaching networks in 2017 and 2018, uncovering more than 10,000 illegally harvested plants, with an estimated value of US $700,000. Similarly, another smuggling ring was investigated and approximately 27,403 plants were confiscated, valued at US $1.9 million (Lanyon 2018). Furthermore, in June 2019, three men were charged with the theft of approximately US $600,000 worth of Dudleya succulents—all of which were being transported to South Korea (Karlis 2019). The growing demand for the Dudleya succulent is a direct result of the links between global economic relations and consumerism, which is intensified through social media. The Dudleya succulent can be found on numerous social influencers’ Instagram accounts, making it one of the most coveted and trending potted plants on social media because of its lotus-like appearance. Social media has created a global obsession over this plant, resulting in the production of Dudleya merchandise such as clothing and wedding accessories in the United States. In South Korea, the fetishization of this species of flora is captured in the cultural phenomena known as “succulent fever” among consumers who have developed an affinity for raising these plants in their homes (see Margulies 2020, who suggests that common myths about ‘housewives and hipsters’ driving the trade are mistaken; it is rare plant enthusiasts that are behind it). In China, the Dudleya succulent is dubbed the “fat plant” and its resemblance to the lotus flower holds cultural significance for Chinese culture and the desire of the emerging middle class to distinguish itself through rare, luxury items such as endangered flora (McCormick 2018). This, in turn, encourages the smuggling and poaching of plants like the Dudleya succulents and the ecological devastation is considerable: the plant plays a vital role in California’s ecosystem, prompting conservation efforts by agencies such as the California Native Plant Society.

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According to the agency, the Dudleya succulent serves as a food source for hummingbirds, rabbits, deer and many other creatures along the coast of Northern California and its prospective extinction poses immeasurable harm for the region’s delicate ecological integrity, which is already compromised by human development. Dudleya succulents, moreover, have been known to serve as a source of erosion control on the coast of California; for instance, when Dudleya succulents are ripped from the coast’s soil, invasive plant species such as the ice plant take over, disturbing the composition of the soil, leading to accelerated soil erosion. This is of paramount concern for the CDFW because 39 species and subspecies of Dudleya succulents in California are endangered. In fact, the Dudleya verityi, a subspecies of the succulent plant, is located in only eight regions across the world—all of which are in the state of California (Karlis 2019). Political economy can be used to unpack the transnationalization of the Dudleya trade, exploring the economic and cultural drivers of plant poaching. This mode of ecoviolence is perpetuated through the political economy of rare plant species and the social sphere through which consumerism, materialism and social class intersect to instigate a global demand for a seemingly mundane plant. This example of ecoviolence and harm unfolds on the coasts of California, destroying habitats and altering the ecosystem for other flora and fauna, while satiating the voracious appetite of global consumers.

The Transnationalization of the Ginseng Trade If we revisit the definition articulated in Chapter 1, we can interpret plant crime as a violation of environmental justice because it undermines the equity surrounding decision-making processes that may affect ecological integrity and the right to human health, access to traditional food sources, and the biodiversity of flora and fauna. Let us investigate what is currently unfolding in two provinces of Canada: southern Ontario and southwestern Quebec. Of late, conservation officers have taken heed of an expanding black market for Ginseng, one of Canada’s most coveted and valuable endangered plant species. Environment Canada reveals that the rare plant can reach up to $500–$1000 per pound, supplying a burgeoning Asian market obsessed with its medicinal properties (Crawford 2017). Historically utilized by civilizations as an aphrodisiac and health tonic, Ginseng has been harvested for many generations, capturing the imagination of the healthcare industry. There is also a cultural dimension to the growing appeal of Ginseng, as captured in television shows such as “Appalachian Outlaws” and “Smoky Mountain Money”,

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programs which boastfully portray plant poaching as a lucrative business enterprise (Bonnabeaux 2016). American Ginseng is listed in Appendix II of CITES, so that special permits must be obtained to export it in either cultivated or wild form. Environment Canada’s conservation officers argue that unauthorized Ginseng removal is certainly not a victimless crime, prompting enforcement measures at the provincial and federal level in a concerted effort to prevent the plant’s extinction (Crawford 2017). Illicit networks of poachers and smugglers avail themselves of the profits to be made by selling Ginseng to organizations which, in turn, transform the plant into teas, capsules, candies and energy drinks (Bonnabeaux 2016). A similar turn of events in the Great Smoky Mountains of the United States signals a growing concern among law enforcement officials trying to put a dent in what is colloquially dubbed as “Ginsenging”—that is, the practice of Ginseng hunting (Taylor 2016). In the Appalachians, this practice is an age-old tradition, derived from Native American use of the plant as an immune-system stabilizer. The Great Smoky Mountains example is especially interesting because the illegal trade of Ginseng, and its criminalization, disproportionately affect poorer mountain families in the area who have relied on the cultivation and trade of this plant for generations. From an environmental justice perspective, we can uncover the injustices and inequities inherent in the illegal trade of Ginseng by documenting the inaccessibility of this plant species due to private development projects, which erect legal barriers to communities trying to access it. In the early twentieth century in the United States, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was created and given high priority by thenPresident Franklin Roosevelt. The moment the park was established, the Park Service created measures which disrupted long-held traditions among communities that created rich and vibrant traditions around the abundance of Ginseng plants. According to Taylor (2016), the criminalization of “Ginsenging” brings to the fore questions of class, race, gender and ethnicity and race; for example, the laws governing poaching are disproportionately applied to poor families—specifically, Latino men and women laborers trying to make a living by joining the expanding Ginseng trade. Environmental justice also allows us to lay bare the multidimensionality of injustice and, to some extent, ecoviolence: first, we bear witness to the endangerment of Ginseng plants (which are also threatened by invasive alien species) in the United States and Canada as a result of

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the delectation of poachers and traders trying to cash in on the lucrative wildlife trade; secondly, there is the displacement of traditional communities that have relied on Ginseng for many years before the establishment of National Parks which circumscribe these communities’ access to this plant species; finally, the disproportionate application of laws and fines against Latino laborers perpetuates a vicious cycle of poverty, increasing the vulnerability of racialized minorities. Clearly, an environmental justice perspective sheds much insight into injustice and ecoviolence, highlighting how members of certain communities are denied participation in important decision-making processes concerning access to a safe and healthy environment, even as they are affected by an illegal international trade route over which they have no control.

Human Security and Floral Transnational Ecoviolence in Peru The illegal timber trade has been thoroughly documented by scholars who tease out the harmful dimensions of this violent enterprise (van Solinge 2008; Green et al. 2007; Schloenhardt 2008; Graycar and Felson 2010). Deforestation in equatorial rainforests (van Solinge 2008) and the spread of violence and corruption in heavily forested nations are the direct result of forest crime and illegal logging. Whether it is informal logging (often done to facilitate mining or illicit agricultural operations), illegal logging resulting from forest conversion, or large-scale illegal timber extraction (van Solinge 2008), forest crime engenders irreparable harm on affected ecosystems and human communities. Peru’s extensive timber trafficking networks are illustrative. According to the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), a vast amount of the timber exported out of the country enters the black market, increasing the global flow of illegally logged wood. Regulatory agencies in the country rely on Forest Transport Permits, also referred to as Guias de Transporte Forestal (GTFs), to record the amount of timber logged legally and in 2017, the Agency for the Supervision of Forest Resources, or Organismo de Supervisión de los Recursos Forestales (OSINFOR), discovered that approximately 58% of the timber exported was the result of illegal logging operations spanning the regions of Ucayali, Huanaco and San Martin (Bargent 2019). OSINFOR’s mandate includes assessing Peru’s “hotspots” for timber traffickers, documenting the concentration of illegal logging on indigenous land, private lands, and

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local forests. Sophisticated criminal networks, aided by corrupt officials, have infiltrated Peru’s lush forests, manipulating logging permits, and exploiting institutional loopholes to smuggle timber through the global black market. How might human security be used to theorize and analyze timber trafficking rings in Peru? First off, we can begin by exploring the country’s economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political security. When referring to economic security, criminal networks weaken local economies by lowering the global price of timber which, in turn, results in an estimated global revenue loss of US $15 billion per annum and stagnates local economies which are dependent on the exportation of natural resources (van Solinge 2010). For indigenous communities, the threats to economic security are just as dire, as the destruction of forests forces these communities to migrate to densely populated cities, undermining their local economy’s vitality and forcing them to participate in an unsigned social contract with capitalist property relations and labor markets. In a related vein, the country’s food security is compromised by forest crime, resulting in biodiversity loss and the depletion of resources relied upon by many communities for sustenance. In Peru, illegal logging has led to the conversion of forests into grasslands, driving the depletion of food sources for both animal species and human communities. Health and environmental security, too, are affected by illegal logging due to increased turbidity in streams as a result of excess sediment. Excess sediment is a function of the removal of riparian vegetation; the development of inroads; and the use of logging machinery (Bargent 2019). Deforestation also contributes to the release of carbon into the atmosphere and an increase in soil erosion and landslides—all of which pose health and environmental threats to the people of Peru. Concerns with personal and community security, which are also related to health security, prompt the exploration of how certain communities’ traditional ways of life are negatively impacted by crime. In the context of forest crime, indigenous communities in Peru have lost vital elements of their culture because the forests upon which they rely for income and a collective social/cultural identity are snatched away by the avarice of timber traffickers, forcing unsuspecting indigenous communities into the modern wage economy (van Solinge 2010). Entry into the wage economy, moreover, disrupts the cadence of traditional lifestyles and facilitates the ethnocide of local people.

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Finally, the political security of Peru’s citizens is affected by the illegal timber trade because as mentioned above, corrupt officials aid timber smugglers and traffickers—often to the detriment of affected indigenous communities. Bargent (2019) notes an uptick in the amount of human rights abuses in the so-called hotspots of the country. Moreover, the liberalization of Peru’s forests could, potentially, encourage other multinational investors to avail themselves of the country’s natural resources, leading to further human rights violations such as the displacement of indigenous communities; ethnocide; and the violation of rights under Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) international frameworks.

Syncretic Analysis: Mexico’s “Avocado Republics” Conflicts over natural resources are very common across the globe, particularly when it comes to land use conflicts with attendant environmental justice implications (Kennedy 2017). In order to demonstrate the productiveness of pursuing a syncretic analysis of forest, timber, and plant crime, we will present an emerging development in Mexico: the ecoviolence in the country’s “avocado republics”. Classified as Lauraceae—that is, a member of the flowering plant family—avocados are an extremely popular food item in the consumer market. Driven by new health and fitness trends in North America, the average global consumption of this fruit totaled approximately 2.45 billion pounds per week in 2018 (Shahbandeh 2019). According to Rainsford (2019), the value of Mexico’s avocado industry has grown exponentially in the last decade, as exports to the United States market rose by 16% between 2018 and 2019. As mentioned earlier in this book, ecoviolence and harm occur under many guises, leading to the often coterminous destruction of the environment and human suffering and misery. In this case, the guise is diversified organized crime; in the Mexican state of Michoacán, the exportation of avocados has become a very lucrative enterprise and a strong revenue source for violent criminal gangs. In fact, the exportation of this coveted plant is formally valued at $2.3 billion per annum. While Mexico has turned out to be the world’s largest producer of this delicacy—growing more than half the avocados consumed globally— it has also become a stronghold of the country’s violent drug cartels (Matei 2019). Countless avocado orchards have captured the imagination of these cartels; reportedly, echoing extortion rackets across the globe, they are extorting rural communities and farmers by demanding

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money in exchange for their protection. Matei (2019) reveals that criminal networks have collected over $154 million from Michoacán farmers between 2009 and 2013 through threats of kidnapping and rape. Some gangs, moreover, charge local farmers up to a $60-per-acre tax on their own land and an accompanying fee for every box of avocados produced, creating extremely oppressive circumstances for local communities. It has also been documented that criminal networks such as the Knights Templar gang have vandalized avocado orchards as a form of retaliation when farmers decline their protective services; Nianias (2017) estimates that the Knights Templar have extorted over $100 million from rural community members since 2015. Activities of the cartels engender international ramifications for governance over the growth and exportation of avocados. In August 2019, a team of inspectors working for the US Department of Agriculture received threats from the Viagras cartel in Ziracuaretiro, a municipality in the Mexican state of Michoacán. Consumers’ global appetite for avocados has also exacerbated social conflicts between cartels. For instance, four drug cartels—the Viagras Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Tepalcatepec Cartel and the Zicuirán Cartel—have infiltrated Michoacán in an attempt to exercise control over the orchards and farmers (Stevenson 2019). How might a syncretic analysis of the ecoviolence and harm unleashed within “avocado republics” take shape? The political economy of environmental justice and human security sheds unique insight into the human suffering and misery in Mexico’s “avocado republics”. Clearly, the cultivation, and exportation, of avocados—colloquially referred to as “green gold”—produces ecological, socio-political and human rights concerns, garnering the attention of NGOs and locals who are prepared to take back their orchards and their livelihoods. We can begin with political economy as a point of departure, unpacking the connections between economic systems and the social sphere, highlighting the influence of economic relations on social relations. Pape (2018) suggests that the cartels’ first foray into the avocado industry was an attempt to launder money, and this has proven to be a most efficient way to diversify their criminal activities. Similar to the drug trade, biotic circumstances afford these development, given the unique position Mexico holds in the global trade of their homegrown plant: Linthicum (2019) asserts that Mexico supplies about 43% of world avocado exports, and Nianias (2017) reveals that the global

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trade of avocados is worth £1.2 billion to Mexico, with North Americans and Europeans consuming 2.7 kg per person of avocado per year. These economic relations, moreover, are also linked to social relations and the technosphere—especially social media. Much like promotion of the Dudleya succulent via social media platforms, avocados have been welcomed by social media influencers who share their favorite avocado delicacies on both Twitter and Instagram. In fact, there are now just under 6 million Instagram posts with the hashtag #avocado. Due to the nuanced relationship between the global economy and consumer-driven demand for this “green gold”, organized criminal networks, in search of ways to diversify their means of income, have begun to avail themselves of this market. However, to simply state that cartels control the avocado orchards and groves is far too simplistic; the truth is, cartels have always been active in various criminal enterprises and the avocado trade is merely the most recent manifestation of their organized activity. Some of the earliest cartels included the Zetas, who profited from the sex trade, extortion, human trafficking, and bribery. It bears mentioning that these enterprises were the direct result of criminals trying to eke out a living for themselves in a volatile economy with structured opportunities and economic disequilibrium between the poor and wealthy. Today, as mentioned above, the avocado industry holds much promise of lifting certain regions of Mexico out of poverty and cartels are taking heed of this. For example, Tancítaro, a municipality in the Western part of the state of Michoacán, is the hub for avocado cultivation. It is reported that nine out of every ten pesos earned there comes from avocado farming, and approximately $1 million worth of avocados are shipped out of this municipality daily (Nianias 2017). Clearly, then, we have the proverbial ingredients for the perfect storm: global consumer demand; ideal climatic conditions for the growth of this plant; and, of course, organized criminal networks equipped with tactics to extort and intimidate local farmers trying to make an honest, and sustainable, living. Environmental justice helps us explore the (in)equities surrounding decision-making processes within certain communities. While there is no disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards in the Mexican state of Michoacán, there are certainly barriers preventing low-income communities from participating in decision-making processes that affect avocado orchards, farms and, most importantly, the local and national economies within which the avocado industry operates. In places such as San Juan Parangaricutiro, local residents have extricated themselves out of

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poverty because of the growth and profitability of the multibillion-dollar avocado industry, but their agency has been undermined by drug cartels which have forced their way onto the farms and orchards. The state of Michoacán serves as a bastion of organized crime, as violent gangs dictate how avocado orchards will be run, using violence and intimidation as strategies to render local communities docile. Pape (2018) reveals that many cartels exploit farmers by forcing them to work seven-hour days without any compensation. At the same time, some farmers are actually prevented from working, in an attempt to create a scarcity in supply which, in turn, raises profits for cartel-controlled orchards and farms. Such tactics, in conjunction with chronic extortion and the hijacking of approximately four truckloads of avocados a day, serve as examples of environmental injustice insofar as producers and growers of avocados are denied the right to decide on how the state of Michoacán will benefit from the global avocado trade (Linthicum 2019). Finally, the seven elements of human security allow a systematic investigation into the ecoviolence and harm within Mexico’s “avocado republics,” documenting the threats to both individual and collective security. Let us begin with economic security; an overview of the reports coming out of Mexico clearly reveal that the cartels have undermined local villagers’ rights to economic security, especially through the proliferation of protection rackets and the outright theft of the country’s “green gold”. These threats occur at the micro-level, but also affect the country’s macroeconomics insofar as the cartel’s presence in Mexico could, potentially, jeopardize the country’s foothold in the global economy. According to Stevenson (2019), if the avocado orchards continue to be dominated by drug cartels, the United States could close the door on Mexican imports, bringing the avocado industry to a halt. Food security is also threatened by cartel activity in avocado groves. For example, the aforementioned gangs have been known to extort farmers, and those who refuse to pay often end up having their groves and orchards vandalized, leading to food shortages in places such as San Juan Parangaricutiro. Finally, there is, as mentioned previously, the theft of avocados which also threatens villagers’ food security. Ibarrola-Rivas and Galicia (2017) suggest that Mexico’s food security is threatened by the environmental impacts of agriculture and unsustainable food production and consumption. Clearly, the systematic theft of avocados and the vandalism of groves and orchards are by no measure sustainable, leaving farmers and growers in a very precarious situation.

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While the potential threats to health security have not yet been documented in Mexico’s “avocado republics”, there is some overlap between personal security and community security. We see clear examples of human rights violations and waves of extreme violence plaguing local communities. The state of Michoacán, for example, had an average of 800 murders annually in the early 2000s and these startling statistics are exacerbated by the presence of cartels trying to exercise complete domination of the global avocado trade. For example, in 2018, 1338 people were killed in Michoacán as a direct result of the rivalry between cartels trying to gain a foothold in the avocado industry. Innocent civilians are also affected by this “turf war”, as the Knights Templar gang is notorious for giving local farmers a sinister ultimatum of signing over family-owned avocado groves or choosing between death or torture. In 2019, the Jalisco New Generation cartel hung nine bodies from an overpass in Uruapan, reminding local farmers that the avocado groves and orchards have new stewards. Similarly, other cartels in the municipality of Tancitaro use other intimidation tactics such as burning down avocado packing plants and kidnapping the children of landowners (Linthicum 2019). Dimensions of health, personal, and community security are undermined by cartel activity in the “avocado republic”, reinforcing the need for a human security framework when analyzing the intersections between victimization and environmental harm. Environmental security, defined as access to a healthy living environment, is threatened by Mexico’s avocado boom, as Local villagers in the state of Michoacán have witnessed tremendous ecological damage to their communities as a result of unsustainable agricultural practices. According to Nianias (2017), the proliferation of avocado groves, orchards, and farms has led to the illegal destruction of Mexico’s lush forests, destroying the natural habitats of thousands of species. Furthermore, the maintenance of Mexico’s avocado orchards requires a tremendous amount of water—in fact, twice as much water as the country’s expansive pine forests require, putting pressure on Mexico’s already strained water resources. The global demand for avocados, furthermore, forces farmers to expedite the growing process, relying on dangerous agricultural chemicals which, in turn, contaminate the soil and affect the well-being of natives species. Mexico’s political security is extremely fragile due to the alleged collusion between various drug cartels and Mexico’s corrupt bureaucrats (Stevenson 2019). Defined as freedom from state oppression and

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abuses of basic human rights, political security has garnered the attention of many reporters, especially given recent allegations that the Mexican government has been reluctant to monitor avocado groves and orchards, amid escalating violence. Pape (2018) suggests that the state of Michoacán, for instance, is a haven for corrupt police—most of whom receive financial compensation for turning a blind eye to cartel vandalism and theft. Failed governance, in conjunction with questionable alliances between cartel members and the country’s officials, has led to political insecurity, jeopardizing the safety of citizens. Stevenson (2019) also comments on Mexico’s socio-political landscape, citing bribery of the country’s judiciary and police as key sources of the country’s political insecurity. Political insecurity, then, is inflamed by the avarice of cartels seeking dominance of the avocado trade.

Conclusion Floral transnational ecoviolence refers to various types of activity in relation to the planet’s flora, but also its inhabitants. The proverbial “egg collectors” driving the underground trade of rare plant species produce irreparable consequences, as evidenced in the case studies in the preceding sections of this chapter. One of the insurmountable hurdles in tackling floral ecoviolence is the absence of a “smoking trowel”, as plant poachers employ clever tactics to cover their tracks and such actors comprise a much larger network operating on a global scale. The glaring lack of equal legislation for plants merely perpetuates “plant blindness” among national wildlife crime agencies, most of which fail to thoroughly document and register plant thefts. Yet flora ecoviolence goes far beyond the illicit trade in rare plant species. The illegal timber industry destroys forests and transports invasive alien species around the globe, stealing important government revenue in the process; combined with illegal mining operations, these enterprises contribute not only ecosystem destruction but, often, coerced labour and related human miseries. This chapter presented conceptualizations of floral transnational ecoviolence, theorizing “plant blindness” as a driver for the decimation of the planet’s flora; we proceeded by providing some contemporary examples of these crimes, laying bare the “push” factors of this growing criminal enterprise; finally, we presented a syncretic analysis of Mexico’s “avocado republics”, a theme that resonates even at the time of writing, when the murders of environmental activists and avocado farmers are

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taking place. It is clear from the case study that even legal trade routes can facilitate violently criminal behaviour, and the destruction of local ecology, with commensurate negative impacts on humans and nonhuman animals. The political economy of environmental justice and human security highlights an interdisciplinary justice-based approach to investigating transnational ecoviolence and crime, integrating green criminology with other natural resource disciplines.

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CHAPTER 6

From Petty Fraud to Global Injustice: Climate Ecoviolence

In many ways, and from the vantage point of future generations, present action and lack of action around climate change will most likely constitute the gravest of transnational environmental crimes … Yet, things continue much as they have, the status quo is maintained, and the harms add up. White, 2012a: 2

Introduction Is Volkswagen a transnational environmental criminal organization? It would not normally spring to mind as such, but its self-admitted efforts to dupe consumers and governments by using “defeat devices” to fool regulators were certainly transnational environmental crimes. Not a big surprise: mega-corporations have the technological means to dupe the public and regulatory agencies alike, concealing information with the misapplication of software. Put starkly, the company was producing cars with rigged emission measurement technology in Europe and selling roughly 11 million of them across the globe. This worked by … programming engine management software in some diesel cars to detect when the vehicles were being tested by regulators and then to turn on emission controls only when being tested on treadmills by government authorities … the cheat device is not actually a device but rather several lines of software code in the computer that controls the engine’s exhaust system … Consequently, the vehicles seemingly operated within emission © The Author(s) 2021 P. Stoett and D. A. Omrow, Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58561-7_6

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control parameters; yet cars equipped with these devices would emit more than 40 times the emissions when back in normal driving conditions and actually running on the road. (Cavico and Mujtaba 2016)

A considerable level of conscious deception (at a mid-management level, apparently) is on display here, and took place within the company’s ongoing efforts to self-brand as responsible and safety-oriented (and imagine the lack of imagination regarding the parameters of what constitutes safety, in an era when we possess conclusive evidence of the deleterious impacts of air pollution and climate change). Notwithstanding the hefty (but not back-breaking) fines the company has paid in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere, this has become another standard case of corporate irresponsibility and regulatory ineffectiveness in the automobile industry, part of a sorry legacy that includes Ford, Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, and others (Whyte 2016). But as a specific climate crime, one can argue that the overall impact of the Volkswagen debacle is even more significant, since it begs the obvious question: What other acts of deception have been committed regarding climate fraud? How many companies, armed with the ability to manipulate emissions recordings with subtle code adjustments, have or will purposefully misrepresent their output? For that matter, can we really trust governments to report accurately as part of their quest to fulfill the goals of the Paris Accord? Of course, the issue of regulatory verifiability affects all kinds of pollution, but with climate change we are, arguably, looking at a fundamental violation of global environmental justice with each transgression. We have only just begun to grapple with the immense challenges, conceptual and practical, of climate justice, though entire Ph.D. programs are now devoted to the theme.1 In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (hereafter IPCC) produced a landmark report on the predicted impacts of climate change (all IPCC reports are landmark, of course, but this one had an especially ominous ring to it). The long list of likely effects included species extinction and loss of biodiversity, loss of food security and farming capacity; rising sea levels, especially harmful to coastal communities and small island states; warmer surface temperatures; frequent 1 Most notably perhaps Reading University in the UK, with support from the Leverhulme Foundation, has set up the Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Programme in Climate Justice.

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heat waves; more intense storms (hurricanes, tropical cyclones); increased intensity of floods and droughts (IPCC 2001). It is hard, twenty years later, to find empirical fault in these predictions. We are watching them unfold in live time. However, it could be suggested that an unfortunately unique phenomenon to this century is the advent of what we may formally call “climate crime”, though of course many would argue that one of the more preposterous and deadly crimes of the previous century was the steadfast refusal of the fossil fuel industry (and automobile and concrete/cement and shipping and airline industries and others) to acknowledge the considerable impact their profit-driven and progressjustified activities were having on the Earth’s climate (see Oreskes and Conway 2012). We may discuss climate crime in several veins, all of which can be subjected to political economy-driven explanations, environmental security concerns, and human security consequences. At the level of small larceny, for example, is the contemporary crime known as carbon fraud, which entails misleading people who have parlayed their personal sense of guilt over climate emissions from flying to sandy beaches and UN conferences and other indulgent activities into the purchase of carbon offsets, and using these funds in ways that do not offset carbon emissions but enrich the misleader. This is, pathetically enough, increasingly common in occurrence in various guises.2 However, consumers are becoming wiser to the possibility that their money could be taken for a non-offsetting ride. For example, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has teamed up with Xpansiv CBL Holding Group, a commodity exchange company, to provide a common marketplace for offset purchases called the Aviation Carbon Exchange. The legitimacy of this marketplace should be fairly tight, which is a good public relations move for an industry with a disproportionate impact, per

2 See INTERPOL’s Environmental Crime Programme, Guide to Carbon Trading Crime, June 2013, p. 11: Unlike traditional commodities, which at some time during the course of their market exchange must be physically delivered to someone, carbon credits do not represent a physical commodity but instead have been described as a legal fiction that is poorly understood by many sellers, buyers, and traders. This lack of understanding makes carbon trading particularly vulnerable to fraud and other illegal activity. Carbon markets, like other financial markets, are also at risk of exploitation by criminals due to the large amount of money invested, the immaturity of the regulations, and lack of oversight and transparency.

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consumer, on greenhouse gas emissions (commercial aviation is responsible for roughly 2% of global carbon emissions); the phenomenon of “flight shaming” is taking hold. This is the operative arm of the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), which was approved by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO); it is expected to provide “more than $40 billion in funding for climate projects, and offset 2.6 billion tons of Co2 emissions between 2021 and 2035” (Rucinski 2020). The ICAO will determine which environmental projects benefit from the funds collected. Such initiatives may help deter the crime of selling false carbon offsets. At the other end of the scale, and keeping with our discussion of ecoviolence in Chapter 1 of this book, the concept of climate crime can evoke a much broader debate about whether the climate crisis and the call for climate justice impart new legal obligations upon industrialized states (including the BRICS), leading to a searching discussion about defining crime in the modern era. For example, small island states have been pursuing international legal action, claiming legal negligence on the part of large emitters, for over a decade now. Small island states are animated by the abject reality that rising sea levels may well render them non-existent in the near future. Clearly, at either level of this spectrum, transnational environmental crime is not just about wildlife crime or hazardous waste dumping today, and climate change is an example of how the conceptual theatre has evolved. There is certainly a pronounced overlap between climate crime and climate injustice, even if we take the narrowest, minimalist perspective on what constitutes the former. Selling false carbon offsets not only rips off the misled purchaser; it also denies those most affected by climate change (who can least afford the costs of adaptation) whatever miniscule portion of relief those offset purchases may have procured had they been applied honestly (and intelligently— many carbon offsets are overhyped nonsense in the first place). Again, as with all the other transnational environmental crimes discussed in this book, there is a chain of corruption usually associated with these more base petty crimes: often, the offsets are misapplied at the source of purchase, but there have been cases recorded where the middleman is the one misled and what are supposed to be donations to replanting in deforested areas are simply donations to extant Christmas tree farms and similar projects. On a much larger scale, the Clean Development Mechanism, Joint Implementation, REDD+, etc., have been criticized for rewarding polluters for committing to investments they would have made,

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or certainly should have made, regardless. For example, should extractive industries be rewarded with carbon credits for ecological restoration of the areas they have rendered to a condition where restoration is necessary in the first place? Like pandemics, climate change crises are life-and-death issues. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 250,000 excess deaths per year will be the result of climate change between the years 2030 and 2050 (Honda et al. 2014). Criminologists have even predicted spikes in violent crime as a result of the stressors accompanying climate change, especially in urban regions, at the individual level, but also at the corporate and international levels (White 2012; Agnew 2011). This violence takes on many guises, hidden underneath seemingly innocuous practices and actions, yet the consequences of climate change bear down on the planet and its inhabitants disproportionately. The use of the word violence, or ecoviolence, in the context of climate change may seem hyperbolic, according to corporate interests invested heavily in the fossil fuel economy and the political actors who scoff at claims that the planet is warming and, most importantly, the demand for swift and immediate intervention to mitigate the effects of climate change. The violence unleashed through climate change is ugly, unfortunate, political, epistemic, and, most importantly, structural due to cultural ideologies pertaining to economic growth, development, modernization, and industrialization—to name just a few. The choreography of this violence is distinctly anthropogenic (Solnit 2014), mirroring the design of deregulation, and global laissez-faire environmental politics (Zilney et al. 2006).

And Justice for All? How, exactly, should we use the term ecoviolence, or conceive of environmental harm, when exploring the effects of global warming and the complicity of individuals, governments, corporations, and others? While the use of these terms seems logical and pragmatic when discussing climate change and climate crimes, we must first reflect on how violence and its myriad iterations are discussed in the context of human-induced climate change. An exploration of the themes of justice is equally important in this debate. Justice, we argue, is a capacious term, encompassing social justice (Kasperson and Kasperson 2001), environmental justice (Adger 2001), economic justice (Rosales 2008), and cognitive justice

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(Santos 2002). Perhaps the climate crisis has induced the emergence of a paradigmatic shift in how we interpret different variations of justice. For example, when speaking to the climate change debate, we must ask who owes whom a duty of care, and should certain actors bear the brunt of the costs of climate change mitigation? Clearly, there are pronounced disparities between those who shoulder the responsibility of releasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and those who are forced to bear the disproportionate burden of its effects. This is not just a north-south phenomenon based on historic patterns of colonization. For example, Phillips (2019) reviews some of the data on increasing temperatures and argues that Crawley, in West Sussex, England, witnessed some of the hottest days on record in the summer of 2019. The negative environmental impact of aviation is disproportionately affecting the communities located in close proximity to England’s Gatwick airport: aircraft emissions of CO2 and water vapor at high altitudes create condensation trails which contribute to humid atmospheres, exacerbating the ambient air quality problems, including high nitrogen dioxide levels. Crawley has a high proportion of ethnic minorities, suggesting it fits into a much broader pattern of environmental injustice and relative exposure to health risks discussed in Chapter 1: would this level of air pollution be tolerated in predominately wealthy, white neighbourhoods? At the global level, themes related to justice have played a crucial role and helped animate the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was established in 1992. The themes of air pollution and climate justice has attracted the dedicated attention of scholars as well. Steve Vanderheiden (2008), for example, calls for “atmospheric justice” through the creation of an international climate change regime based on principles of equity, responsibility, and compensation. Specifically, he examines the merit of liberal egalitarian principles of distributive justice to climate change, reflecting on how an equity-based model and a responsibility-based model might be invoked to mitigate related harms. While both models feature pragmatic and theoretical strengths, Vanderheiden also proposes what he refers to as an equal-shares approach that applies both equity and responsibility to all stakeholders concerned with reversing the effects of climate change. Vanderheiden’s work on linking issues of distributive justice to the climate crisis unfolding before our very eyes joined various proposals in support of “Climate Justice” a result of the activist energy of international networks, activist groups,

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and human rights-oriented organizations. Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t comment on the remarkable accomplishments of the dauntless young people who filed a lawsuit in 2015 against the US government, claiming the country’s energy policies are responsible for climate change. In 2020, the lawsuit was tossed by the federal appeals court on account of children not having the legal standing to bring such a case against the US government, and the legislative responsibility to form climate and energy policies (see https://www.vox.com/2020/1/17/21070810/ climate-change-lawsuit-juliana-vs-us-our-childrens-trust-9th-circuit). This event, however, was a watershed moment for young people disillusioned with the apathy of politicians, bureaucrats and big business, further inspired by awe-inspiring individuals such as Greta Thunberg, the Swedish environmental activist who has gained international recognition for her fight for climate justice. The IPCC’s fifth assessment report (AR5) recommends that sustainable development and poverty eradication be understood as mutually supportive and co-achievable when discussing climate change (Denton et al. 2014). Justice is also related to concepts of intergenerational, international, and national equity—that is, fairness between generations, fairness between states, and fairness between individuals, respectively (Fleurbaey et al. 2014). Equity is also related to procedural justice and distributive justice, the former referring to formal participation in the decision-making processes around a warming planet and latter relating to how the costs and benefits of climate actions are distributed (Sobrevila 2008; Pickering and Barry 2012; Müller et al. 2009). When reflecting on how the fairness in burden-sharing between generations, and between and within nations is exercised, we must ask how we ensure that global average temperatures do not exceed globally agreed-upon levels, compromising human security, poverty eradication, and sustainable development. While there is a literature dedicated to exploring how climate change heightens risk factors associated with conflict (Lawn 2003; Jackson 2011; Homer-Dixon and Blitt 1998), the precise causal relationship between climate change and violence is harder to establish. Some authors allude to a connection between climate change and social conflict, citing weather aberrations such as extended dry seasons, abnormally high temperatures, and droughts as the source (Agarwal and Narain 1991; Folke 2007; Gallopín 2006; Humphreys 2009; Knox 2009; McShane 2007). Such analyses, however, fail to attach responsibility to those orchestrating climate changes, shifting blame onto the Global South and

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their so-called unsustainable practices. While this perspective tends to overlook the climate-related violence of the Global North, there has long been recognition that the wealthy and powerful are responsible for harnessing structural violence through their advocacy of neoliberal capitalism (Bongaarts 2009). An examination of violence that is structural allows us to reflect on how such violence can be prevented. The IPCC, for example, has created a sense of urgency, declaring that humanity has a small window of ten years or less to avoid exhausting the carbon budget (IPCC 2014). Despite such claims, a “business-as-usual” ethos continues with little interruption, taking precedence over environmental well-being and justice. There remains a reluctance to draw causal connections between climate change and structural violence, and this is precisely where defining violence becomes challenging; recall, Lee (1996) examines definitions of violence and determines that, while there is a consensus among scholars that violence causes harm to people, there is an acrimonious debate as to whether violence must include an act of physical force or not. In this vein, then, we could situate climate change as a violation of “ideal” rules regarding morality and justice in society. If we interpret a warming planet, and its detrimental effects, as a violation of society’s “ideal” rules, it must be included in a definition of violence because it is both harmful and immoral. Relatedly, Jackman (2002) defines violence as “ actions that inflict, threaten, or cause injury. Actions may be corporal, written, or verbal. Injuries may be corporal, psychological, material, or social” (Jackman 2002: 405). Such varying forms of violence in social life, the author maintains, includes actions that are not necessarily driven by malicious intent but are nevertheless pernicious to the planet. Was U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change an example of agential violence which violates Lee’s (1996) “ideal” rules, or an example of Jackman’s (2002) actions which are corporal, written, or verbal? Arguably, the decision is an abject expression of either, and the violence it represents will also be structural in nature, impeding the global community’s efforts to help low income countries adapt to the effects of a warming planet. Clearly, opportunities abound when attempting to link climate change to varying definitions of violence, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the dynamic and highly imaginative works of Soron (2007) and Bonds (2016), both of which lead pioneering research on the structural violence of climate change. The authors suggest that such violence is never

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committed with malice and intent, but its impacts are equally devastating in the long run. For instance, the structural violence of climate change is embedded in the system-level structures of global capitalism—namely, the scale of production and consumption in relation to environmental limits and sustainable development. These structures, furthermore, maintain the inequalities upon which capital accumulation, wage labor, and competitive markets rely, continuing to endanger whole ecosystems and entire human communities (Lynch et al. 2017; Stretesky et al. 2014). Bonds’ (2016) research on the structural violence of carbon-dependent corporations is an inspiring attempt to add the term ecoviolence within the broader research on violence, holding the world’s largest fossil fuel companies responsible for anthropogenic global warming.

Conceptualizing Climate Ecoviolence It is precisely at this juncture that we can propose the use of the terms ecoviolence and harm when discussing global warming. Climate change is the direct result of the Industrial Revolution’s transition to a fossil fuelbased, non-renewable carbon economy. This transition ushered in a new era of risk for all of Earth and its inhabitants. The IPCC defines global warming as an increase in combined surface air and sea surface temperatures averaged over the globe and over a 30-year period. Unless otherwise specified, warming is expressed relative to the period 1850–1900, used as an approximation of pre-industrial temperatures. For periods shorter than 30 years, warming refers to the estimated average temperature over the 30 years centred on that shorter period, accounting for the impact of any temperature fluctuations or trend within those 30 years. (2014: 31)

The scientific data released by the IPCC is alarming; while the intergovernmental body does not conduct independent research, its status as a government and UN-supported international clearinghouse lends credibility to its scientific literature on climatology and related issues in biology, hydrology, oceanography, forests, glaciology, and other disciplines. Its purpose, therefore, is to encourage governments to respond to climate issues based on the methodologically sound research it produces. Conservative in nature, the IPCC’s conclusions regarding the effects of climate change paint a very frightening projection of the fate of

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our planet. Such projections even changed the myopic attitudes of some staunch climate change denialists; it concluded that humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels has dramatically increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide from approximately 280 parts per million (ppm) before the Industrial Revolution to 390 ppm in the twenty-first century (IPCC 2014). (The global average was nearly 410 ppm in 2019.) The disruption of the climate system’s equilibrium will lead to irreversibly destabilizing events such as increases in the planet’s absorption of solar radiation which leads, inevitably, to drastic changes in the chemistry and currents of large bodies of water, threatening remote communities with rising sea levels (Levin et al. 2012). Vidal (2009) estimates that by 2030, approximately 500,000 people per year could lose their lives to the apocalypse of climate change and its four horsemen: floods, droughts, forest fires, and new diseases. The economic costs, on the other hand, could be anywhere between $500 and $600 billion annually. Humanity is bearing witness to record heat waves, erratic precipitation patterns, dangerously rising sea levels, marine heatwaves, climate-induced biological invasions, and other detrimental climate outcomes. The IPCC’s 2018 report revealed that between 2006 and 2015, 20–40% of the global human population in certain regions of the world experienced warming of more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures. The latest report urges the global community to limit warming to 1.5 °C and adapt to the consequences of exceeding that prescribed limit. The report also states that a global paradigm shift is required in order to limit warming to 1.5 °C, drawing upon synergies and trade-offs between processes of mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development. When speaking to the feasibility of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C, a plethora of dimensions must be considered—some of which include geophysical, environmental-ecological, technological, economic, socio-cultural, and institutional (IPCC 2018). Pushing beyond 2 °C of the planet’s atmospheric temperatures, according to the report, would lead to “considerable” risks to the human population and the disruption of infrastructure networks and the provision of electricity, health, and emergency services (IPCC 2018). Given this scientific knowledge, can we interpret a warming planet as an example of ecoviolence, or the purposeful infliction of harm on ecosystems? If the effects of ecoviolence include ecocide, ecological sabotage, and the deliberate or neglectful harm of ecosystems, human populations, and non-human animals, it would seem hard to deny this conclusion.

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Perhaps the most recognizable effect of ecoviolence and harm, ecocide entered public discourse in the late 1960s to describe the detrimental impact of war on the environment. During the “Conference on War and National Responsibility” in Washington, DC in the 1970s, Professor Arthur Galston introduced a framework for an international agreement among nations to ban ecocide (Higgins et al. 2013). The term has also been used to describe the harm inflicted upon the natural environment on a massive scale as a result of breaches of duty of care owed to humanity. White (2018) uses the term to highlight the damage, and destruction, of ecosystems of a given territory. The concept refers to both natural and anthropogenic harms, expanding the definition to apply to a multitude of events impacting the environment. Invoking a harm-defining process, White (2018) explains that ecocide can be used as an ecological concept but also as a legal concept, the former describing natural processes of ecosystem decline and transformation, and the latter addressing environmental damage during war (see Stoett 2000, for an extensive discussion). Relatedly, the term geocide has been used in international law to refer to the right to a healthy environment (Berat 1993), while green criminology explores how certain environmental offenses and transgressions lead to acts of ecocide (White 2011a, 2018). More expansively, ecocide can also refer to the damage inflicted on the environment during peacetime, capturing the quotidian acts of environmental harm perpetrated by everyday citizens. Conversely, it is these very actors that can mitigate ecocide, reversing the damage they have wreaked upon the planet. Ecocide, like other examples of transnational environmental crimes discussed in this book, is burdened by definitional complexities and different perspectives which add to its ontological breadth. For instance, there are both anthropocentric (Baxter 2005; Eckersley 1992; Fox 1990; Hayward 1997; Kopnina et al. 2018) and ecocentric (Bosselmann 1999; Eckersley 1992; Hettinger and Throop 1999) dimensions of the term ecocide—the former privileging the harms suffered by humans and the latter giving equal weight to the harms suffered by non-human animals, recognizing that the environment has inherent value for its own sake. Recognizing climate change as an example of ecocide, we can begin to see the ecoviolence and harms accompanying a warming planet from both an anthropocentric and ecocentric lens: millions of people have been displaced from their homes because of the ecocide of climate change, while the delicate balance

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of ecosystems has been disrupted, contributing to the extinction of a plethora of non-human animals. As discussed in Chapter 1, another effect of ecoviolence and harm is ecological/environmental sabotage. Not to be confused with “ecosabotage” as an expression of civil disobedience by radicalized environmental activists (Martin 1990), environmental sabotage is a much more nuanced concept which covers the deliberate and intentional destruction of the environment through, to quote Jackman (2002), actions which may be corporal, written, or verbal. Referring back to the United States’ decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, we can begin to understand how such actions constitute contemporary manifestations of ecological sabotage. Such acts of sabotage conform to a history of political and bureaucratic apathy to act on climate change. In the early 2000s, Sweden’s environment minister, Kjell Larsson, accused then President George W Bush of sabotage when Bush announced that the energy shortages in the United States during the early 2000s would be exacerbated by the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol—an earlier international treaty dedicated to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Nearly twenty years later, the same ecological sabotage is taking place by the Trump administration and its disregard to fulfill its moral obligation in tackling climate change. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2017, the United States emitted “6,456.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, or 5,742.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents after accounting for sequestration from the land sector” (“Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks”, 2019). Despite such emissions, however, there is tremendous reluctance among big business in the country to mitigate the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As a response to the United States’ apathy, environmental groups have banded together to urge lawmakers to revise climate legislation in an attempt to keep global warming below 1.5 °C. Specifically, six major strategies have been proposed: (1) stop all fossil fuel leasing; (2) eliminate all fossil fuel extraction; (3) cancel fossil fuel subsidies; (4) move toward renewable energy; (5) expand public transportation; and (6) include impacted communities and workers in the efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions (Nuccitelli 2019). Such recommendations, however, fall upon deaf ears because such measures would require global action in reducing fossil fuel consumption and carbon pollution. Ecological sabotage, then, is revealed in data pertaining to the United States’ carbon budget, which has done very little to keep global warming below

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1.5 °C, as per the IPCC’s recommendations. The push toward a postcarbon economy based on the elimination of combustion-based power generation, nuclear energy, and large-scale hydro and waste-to-energy technologies is met with intransigence from certain actors that have a stake in protecting carbon-dependent companies. Self-regulatory corporate schemes and market-based mechanisms such as carbon and emissions trading—the cap-and-trade system, for example—fail to address the systemic issues underpinning climate change. The IPCC (2018) states that governance consistent with limiting climate warming would entail a political economy of adaptation and mitigation—both of which would enable and accelerate systems transitions; behavioral change; and innovation and technology deployment. In particular, an international framework dedicated to climate change mitigation would encompass multilevel governance among non-state actors from industry, civil society, and members of the scientific community; coordinated sectoral and cross-sectoral policies to strengthen multistakeholder partnerships; global-to-local financial architecture enabling access to technology; improved climate education and greater public awareness; improved climate monitoring and evaluation systems; and international agreements that address equity and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Kates et al. 2012). Mitigation suggests drastically reducing our production of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, while adaptation refers to preparing humanity to live with the negative impacts of climate change (Kates et al. 2012; Newell and Mulvaney 2013). We are witnessing both technical and political adaptations through the transformation of our relationship with nature and the transformation of social relations among people, respectively. Whether it is through the collective march toward the reliance on clean energy sources and the creation of carbon-capture and sequestration technologies, or the use of conflict resolution mechanisms to contain, avoid, and de-escalate violence within and among nations, mitigation and adaptation hold tremendous promise in saving humanity from the perils of climate change (Pelling 2010). However, the hope for survival through these measures is often diminished and challenged by the ascendency of market-based schemes which, according to green criminologists, serve as a meticulously orchestrated example of ecological sabotage, undermining intergenerational equity and the aforementioned climate-preserving efforts (Higgins 2010). The disproportionate impacts of climate change are key to this discussion. Leonard et al. (2014) project that a +0.5 °C increase in

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global temperatures will produce extremely negative effects on human health, increasing heat-related morbidity and mortality and ozone-related mortality. The authors also suggest that urban heat islands will amplify the impacts of heatwaves in cities, increasing the risk of undernutrition and vector-borne diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever. Warner et al. (2010) highlight how climate change leads to massive dislocations, citing a study from Columbia University’s Centre for International Earth Science Information Network, which predicts that 700 million climate refugees will embark on a mass exodus by 2050. Specifically, a projected 22 million Bangladeshis will have to leave their homes in Bangladesh by 2050 because of climate change. Consider, also, the Pacific Island nations, home to an estimated 7 million people, and the current plans underway to relocate them beyond the reach of rising sea levels. The violent displacement of these people is just the beginning of what Parenti (2011) refers to as “the catastrophic convergence”—that is, the intersection of climate change with already-existing crises of poverty and violence. This collision of political, economic, and environmental disasters serves as a litany of examples of the ecoviolence and harm of climate change (on the special vulnerability of women after climate-related/natural disasters, see Masika 2002; Enarson 2002). The deliberate or neglectful harm of ecosystems and non-human animals in the context of climate change is also extremely disconcerting; the risk of species loss has garnered the attention of various actors investigating the ramifications of a warming planet. For example, the IPCC (2018: 37) concludes that “the number of species projected to lose over half of their climatically determined geographic range at 2°C global warming (18% of insects, 16% of plants, 8% of vertebrates) is projected to be reduced to 6% of insects, 8% of plants and 4% of vertebrates at 1.5°C warming”. Also, biodiversity-related risks such as forest fires, extreme weather events, and the spread of invasive species, pests, and diseases are heightened through climate change, pushing vulnerable species to the brink of extinction. Hamann and Aitken (2013) provide a comprehensive review of the effects of climate change on wildlife: fatal synchronized infections; destruction and fragmentation of habitats; altered non-human animal behavior such as the premature laying of eggs, disturbed hibernation patterns, and loss of nesting beaches—to mention a few. Sea temperature changes will also affect certain ecosystems: kelp forests and coral reefs, unlike plankton, do not have the ability to migrate to higher latitudes and, therefore, experience high

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rates of mortality and loss. In fact, a vast majority of tropical coral reefs are expected to vanish if climate change is not mitigated (Barr 2006; Goeminne and Paredis 2010; Jamieson 2013). The vulnerability of fisheries and aquaculture, then, is heightened under climate change, especially due to ocean warming and acidification. Small-scale fisheries in tropical regions, especially, have been disturbed because of habitat loss and the decimation of coastal ecosystems as a direct result of increasing global temperatures. Both vulnerable human populations and biota are therefore markedly threatened by climate ecoviolence. The pioneering work of White (2009, 2013, 2018) has paved the way for exploring the criminal dimensions of climate change; he suggests that public discourse regarding climate change ignores the multifarious roles of “carbon criminals”—that is, “a wide range of actors, from farmers and tourism operators through to national transportation firms and individual consumers” (White 2018: 100). When speaking to corporate-induced climate change, White (2018) argues that the very raison d’être of any corporation is to advance the interests of shareholders. This means that executives and managers are contractually obliged to put the corporation’s best interests first, even to the detriment of the environment and human and non-human populations. White (2018) also notes that there are several “legal fictions” that facilitate corporate wrongdoing. They are as follows: (1) registered corporations are seen as separate legal entities, acting in their own self-right, (2) corporations cannot be found guilty of a criminal offense, and (3) corporate wrongdoing occurs with impunity due to the structured, criminogenic nature of the corporate bodies. Such “legal fictions”, according to White (2018), need to be further analyzed when considering the criminal status of an operating corporation, the specified responsibilities of corporate managers, and the role of shareholders and their potential complicity in climate change. White (2013) also observes that climate change is exacerbating global divisions between those at most risk and those at least risk, creating what he refers to as a “climate divide” which highlights inequitable global social relations between rich consumer societies and poor and developing nations. Such a divide speaks to the ecocidal tendencies of climate change, but also the criminality of climate change and its devastating effects on the planet. Kramer and Michalowski’s (1991) research on state-corporate crime is useful here, as it sheds light on the functional interdependence

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between states and corporations. The authors propose four conceptual and theoretical innovations: state-facilitated corporate crime, stateinitiated corporate crime, corporate-facilitated state crime, and finally, corporate-initiated state crime (Kramer and Michalowski 1991; Kramer et al. 2002). State-initiated corporate crime refers to when the government of a state employs a corporation and that corporate entity engages in organizational deviance, with the tacit approval of the government; state-facilitated corporate crime occurs when a government’s regulatory agencies fail to restrain organizational deviance due to collusion between corporate and governmental actors or shared economic goals; corporateinitiated state crime unfolds when corporate bodies utilize their economic power to coerce governments to adopt deviant behavior; and finally, corporate-facilitated state crime is committed when corporate bodies enable governments to engage in various forms of criminality, or when they fail to inform the international community of a government’s malfeasance. If we consider, for example, how state-corporate crime relates to climate change, we begin to see how big business’ reliance upon dirty energy sources is facilitated by governments, whether it is through tacit approval to continue engaging in harmful business practices or the failure to regulate carbon emissions. White (2009, 2012, 2018), Kramer and Michalowski (1991), and Kramer et al. (2002) are certainly not the first to link climate change to criminality. Consider Carter and Woodworth’s (2018: 25) contention that the lack of media coverage in the U.S. and Canada of the signing in 2015 of the Subnational Global Climate Leadership Memorandum of Understanding to limit warming by 2050 to 2 degrees celsius is criminal behavior of the powerful: There is no benign explanation for a full media blackout of a significant global development that was heralded by the United Nations SecretaryGeneral. This blackout goes far beyond ignorance or negligence. It is a willful obstruction of public knowledge of the extraordinary extent of global efforts to combat the greatest existential threat of all time by changing business-as-usual. We define this willful, methodical blocking of vital survival information as an unprecedented crime against life on the planet.

Such rhetoric signals a change in the way we approach climate change from both a strict legalist approach and a social legalist approach (Situ-Liu

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and Emmons 2000). White (2018) asserts that three questions typically asked when exploring the legal dimensions of climate change relate to: those who disproportionately contribute to the problem of global warming; their foreknowledge of the effects of the release of greenhouse gasses; and the ability and responsibility of these polluters to pay for the damages associated with their activities. In response to such pressing questions, sophisticated metrics and matrices have been developed to quantify harm and calculate compensation. Weisbach (2010), for example, explores how tort-law principles can apply to past greenhouse gas emissions. Relying on data gathered by the World Resources Institute’s Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (CAIT), the author reveals that responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions is spread among developing and developed countries and this produces some ethical and legal considerations. The first consideration, of course, is how to measure responsibility. Simply put, most data on greenhouse gas emissions cannot be used to assign culpability to actors because such a decision may end up being applied to poorer nations in a discriminatory manner. Second, while tort law normally requires a close connection between victims and injurers, climate change does not feature such a connection, as victims of climate change, for the most part, are unborn generations and those responsible for a warming planet are now deceased or will not be around when new generations inherit this planet and its climate-related issues. Finally, considering the data on greenhouse gas emissions, tort-based arguments may produce highly inequitable distributive consequences on many poor nations that are high emitters. The ethical considerations here are the potential of tort law imposing crushing obligations on poor countries, negatively affecting their way of life. While Weisbach (2010) paints a rather bleak picture when attempting to apply tort-law principles to climate change, he does offer some theoretical alternatives to tackling climate change—namely, the principle of strict liability notion. Using this approach, he argues, legal regimes would calculate the start date of all greenhouse gas emissions by a company, for example, and apply strict liability retroactively and prospectively, while determining “offsetting benefits” created by greenhouse gas emissions. The complexities of applying a strict legalist approach to climate change are captured in attempts to measure “offsetting benefits”—that is, the benefits that the victims receive as a result of the same act that caused the harm. In the context of climate change, we can, surely, identify some of the benefits of burning fossil fuels, including agricultural

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production, transportation, winter heating, and many others. Keeping this in mind, the theoretical application of the strict liability notion to climate change must be weighed against pragmatic considerations and the feasibility of doing so. White (2018) recognizes the potential of the strict liability approach, advancing a sound argument in favor of identifying climate change as a “strict liability” offense. For White, the excessive release of greenhouse gases should be prosecutable regardless of the intent of the perpetrator or, conversely, subject to a standard of mens rea which considers the intent, recklessness, and foreknowledge of the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. This argument echoes Higgins’ (2010) contention that ecocide—climate change, in particular—should be interpreted as a crime of strict liability because of the considerable scale of harms associated with a warming planet. Strict liability, therefore, should be assigned to the governments and corporations behind human-induced climate change, criminalizing their ecoviolent and harmful practices. We can witness a clear case of strict liability when examining the illicit market of illegally produced chemicals that are detrimental to the ozone layer and the climate.

Chlorofluorocarbon Trade The behavior of select companies responsible for the production, distribution, sale, and use of chlorofluorocarbons speaks to the wider structural circumstances and economic conditions in which they operate. Transnational state-corporate synergies create a global market where the promise of tax revenue and job creation may lead to unethical and unsustainable business practices. Moreover, powerful social interests may mask the ecoviolence and harms associated with the burgeoning black market of harmful chemicals. In 2018, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) discovered that certain regions in China were using CFC-11 in the production of plastic foams, a substance used predominantly for building insulation. A chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), CFC-11 is one of the most dangerous chemicals responsible for the holes in the ozone layer of the Earth’s stratosphere. When the stratospheric ozone layer is depleted, ultraviolet radiation affects all of humanity, leading to cataracts, skin cancers, and suppression of our immune systems (Zaelke and Ramanathan 2018). This particular chemical was banned under the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a global agreement to protect the stratospheric ozone layer by eliminating the production and consumption of ozone-depleting

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substances (ODS). The Protocol has received support from a worldwide network of monitoring stations which, among other tasks, provides data on concentrations of CFCs in the atmosphere across the globe. When anomalies in the concentration of CFCs were reported to EIA, a comprehensive investigation revealed that the Chinese chemical industry ignored such international agreements. What is more alarming is the fact that China accounts for 70% of the world’s production of foam, most of which rely on the use of CFC-11. This chemical produces a global warming effect and has a climate impact equivalent to 16–20 coal power stations (Stevenson and Dryzek 2012; Darby 2018). Why would an otherwise rational and reputable company in China continue to use such dangerous chemicals? For Darby (2018), the answer is quite clear: CFC-11 serves as a cheaper substitute for more expensive and sustainable chemical products. In China, the illicit market for such noxious substances is growing, as companies responsible for a range of products—everything from foam insulation to refrigerators—are using these banned chemicals as a costcutting measure. The continued production, and use, of CFCs is cause for concern because the Montreal Protocol banned developed countries from using these substances in the 1990s and guided the developing world on phasing out CFCs by 2010. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, a notable amount of black market activity was exposed by global governance officials, and such trends continue today unabated (Zaelke and Ramanathan 2018). Avipsa Mahapatra, a member of the EIA, laments: It is outrageous that industrial climate-killers banned several years ago continue to be produced, used and emitted at this scale in an industry where better technology is easily available. This could undermine not just the slowly healing ozone but also the global efforts to battle climate change. (cited in Darby 2018)

Despite the 2016 amendments to the Montreal Protocol and the creation of substances such as HCFC-141b, a safer alternative to CFCs, the black market is flooded with ODS, posing inimical threats to the planet. Consider, for example, the following statistics pertaining to the concentration of CFCs: an increase of CFC-11 emissions was reported during 2014–2016, with 67 gigagrams per year (Gg/yr). These numbers capture an increase of 13 Gg/yr from the 2002 to 2012 emissions levels (Zaelke

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and Ramanathan 2018). The proliferation of CFCs is a direct result of the globalization of these synthetic compounds: CFC-11, for instance, could be produced in one country and emitted from another country, creating hurdles for monitoring stations trying to get to the source of these internationally banned chemicals. The example of CFC-11 emissions puts a face to White’s (2018) “carbon criminals”. These crimes are committed by corporate entities trying to appease shareholders by advancing corporate self-interest and greed in a highly competitive global market. The socio-economic and structural conditions influencing these companies to engage in such harmful practices must be understood as a function of the global economic conditions in which they operate. These “carbon criminals” engage in climate crimes to protect the proverbial bottom line of their companies, potentially wreaking havoc on the planet, and its inhabitants. But we also see incidental harms caused by efforts to reduce the overall impacts of climate change, such as the shift to “green” vehicles and establishment of protected-area carbon sinks.

Perverse Consequences: Green Land Grabs and Conflict Minerals As we inch toward a post-carbon global economy, two striking concerns include the use of carbon conservation as a pretense to engage in land grabs and other forms of marginalization of local people, and the use of human beings in what are essentially slave labor conditions (often mixed with ongoing conflict) in order to mine the precious metals that are helping to fuel the transition to a post-carbon economy. To be clear: neither of these concerns negate the dire need to move away from fossil fuel-based economic growth, nor do they deny the need to achieve the conservation of natural areas as carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots. But they both suggest that environmental justice and human security are not always at the forefront of forward thinking about energy transformations that are largely geared toward compensating for the carbon overreach in northern advanced capitalist economies and in large industrial economies such as China and India. Some of the laudable efforts to stem the impact of climate change through the conservation of carbon sinks, such as the establishment of forests and coastal marine protected areas, are being criticized as invoking a new era of “carbon colonialism” which could in itself be

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viewed as a form of environmental injustice (Lyons and Westoby 2014; McAfee 2016; Roht-Arriaza 2010).3 This echoes earlier concerns about the validity of largely self-regulated carbon emission mitigation plans based on self-reporting that open the door to innumerable opportunities for carbon fraud (Bachram 2004; Lohmann 2008), but goes deeper—into the use of market mechanisms that purport to conserve carbon sinks while in actuality expanding land control by governments or outright property ownership by corporations and individuals in the name of climate change adaptation. Green Resources, the largest plantation forestry and wood-processing corporation on the African continent, funded largely with Norwegian and Finnish capital (https://www.norfund.no/investment/green-resources-usd/) and with significant investments in Uganda, Mozambique, and Tanzania, has come under special consideration in this context. Sweden pulled out of buying carbon credits from Green Resources several years ago, concerned about human rights issues (Lyons and Westoby 2014; see also https://stopgetrees.org/carbon-colonialism-failure-green-resourcescarbon-offset-project-uganda/). Other projects inspired by carbon offsetting schemes have been critically viewed for compromising human security and rights in Panama (Finley-Brook and Thomas 2011) and Mexico (Dunlap 2018). The concerns with so-called green grabbing are quite widespread, since it forges unfamiliar political space for new players and unlikely alliances: Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neocolonial resource alienation in the name of the environment – whether for parks, forest reserves or to halt assumed destructive local practices. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances – as pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers among others find once-unlikely common interests. (Fairhead et al. 2012: 237)

3 Note this is not to be confused with the concept of “carbon imperialism” which suggests the west is actively using the climate crisis as a means to delay development in regions of the world such as Africa and India with low electrification profiles. That is another issue.

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As one observer put it, some of the mechanisms aimed at rewarding northern polluters for investing in conservation involve situations where “land is commandeered in the South for large scale monoculture plantations which act as an occupying force in impoverished rural communities dependent on these lands for survival” (Bachram 2004: 7); this has also been termed “accumulation by decarbonisation” (Bumpus and Liverman 2008). The UN program for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) has been criticized in this light as well (in the case of Australian investment in Indonesian forestry, see Goodman and Roberts 2010), as has the Kyoto Protocol-based Clean Development Mechanism (Schade and Obergassel 2014). We might add to this the continuation of large dam construction, justified partly by the misleading claim that large dams are a form of green energy, that displaces thousands in the name of avoiding fossil fuel consumption, regardless of the harm to nature caused by this process (Erlewein 2013). The UN offsetting programs, and the World Bank and other institutions, have integrated human rights and other factors into monitoring programs, but as the need for offsets under the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change increases, it is more important than ever to ensure that climate change mitigation efforts are not making a bad situation worse. Similarly, while there is no doubt that the move toward renewable energy is necessary if we are to limit greenhouse gas emissions, there is a price for everything, and no energy technology is entirely free from environmental costs. There is a long history of the pursuit of so-called blood diamonds and other conflict minerals generating sustained misery, fueling wars primarily in Africa, and enslaving hundreds of thousands if not millions, including children, in dangerous working conditions akin to those experienced by workers caught in the sea slavery described in Chapter 4. The rush for the minerals needed for green energy may, sadly, be replicating this transnational ecoviolence. A groundbreaking study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) (Church and Crawford 2018) shed much-needed light on the practices involved in the extraction of several precious minerals that are in high demand not only to operate electronic devices including cell phones, but also those necessary for the battery systems used in electronic and hybrid vehicles, solar power, wind turbines, and other green technologies. These minerals include copper, iron, lead, molybdenum, nickel, and zinc, and their consumption could increase by 300% through 2050 if countries are serious about achieving limiting

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global warming to two degrees Celsius (Arrobas et al. 2017). Similarly, demand for minerals like cobalt, lithium, and rare earths such as dysprosium, neodymium, and praseodymium is rising for use in electric vehicles, wind turbines, and energy storage. Already, demand for some of these rare earths is outstripping immediate supply. China produces the majority of rare earths on the market today. As Church and Crawford (2018) write: Rare earth mining can be both destructive and toxic … Almost all rare earth ores contain the radioactive elements thorium and uranium (Huang, Zhang, Pan, Chen, & Zheng, 2016) … In 1958, the Baotou Iron and Steel Company began producing rare earths near the city of Baotou in Inner Mongolia; by 1980 crops in the nearby villages had already started to fail due to pollution of soil and groundwater attributed to rare earth mining and processing (Bontron, 2012). Today, the lands surrounding Baotou are stripped of topsoil while streambeds contain thousands of gallons of acid (Bradsher, 2010). Dalahai village, located close to a Baotou rare earths tailing pond, has been named a “death village” due to the high incidence of lung cancer, brain cancer, respiratory illnesses and cardiovascular diseases suffered by local residents (Huang et al., 2016).

There are, arguably, even more pronounced problems in the African context. For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is well known as an illegal mining hotspot where seemingly perpetual conflict has driven thousands to accept unsafe working conditions, and it is also the world’s biggest producer of cobalt. Other cases examined in the IISD report include the mining of nickel in Guatemala, bauxite and alumina in Guinea, manganese in Ghana, lithium in Zimbabwe, and the “Lithium Triangle” between Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia. Unlike the successful movement to establish a certification program for diamonds, animated primarily by Western consumers who felt guilty about purchasing blood diamonds, the international community has been slow to act to keep illegally or problematically mined minerals used in green technologies out of the marketplace (and it is hard to achieve this at the best of times), although industry schemes such as the Responsible Mineral Initiative are having some impact. In both these cases, it can be argued, it is essential that an ecosystem approach (adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1995) is employed when plans are made to either mine for “green” minerals or use specific areas for carbon sink and biodiversity conservation. Above all, this entails the active participation and consent of local communities

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and indigenous peoples. It would be foolish to assume that any effort that can be labeled “green” is somehow automatically contributing to environmental justice and human security. Similarly, we will not advance human security or environmental justice if we are accepting of what Diana Ojeda refers to as “green pretexts” which are essentially fronts for growth-oriented ecotourism, neoliberal conservation (Neves 2019), and militarized land grabs and power moves (Peluso 1993).4

Human Security and Climate Change in Turkey While narrow approaches to human security explore the consequences of armed conflict, or the political violence imposed upon civilians by corrupt and repressive governments, broader approaches look to other sources of violence and threats to security—namely, endemic diseases, natural disaster, starvation, severe poverty, and displacement (Cao and Wyatt 2016; Stoett 2000). We can, therefore, reflect on the complexities of the ecoviolence and harms associated with climate change, viewing anthropogenic-induced warming as a threat to humanity’s security. Let us turn to Turkey’s struggle with climate change and how human security can be used to document the myriad threats to the country’s citizens. Though Turkey has some industry and its vehicle drivers and homeowners produce greenhouse gas emissions, it is clear that this country is being affected largely by a problem it did not create, since climate change is inherently transnational in character. A newly industrialized country, Turkey’s anthropogenic activities associated with the energy, transport, and agricultural industry bring this nation to the forefront when discussing the brutal realities of climatological, hydrological, and meteorological disturbances (Timperley 2018). Certain “push factors” in the form of climatic stress have swept over communities in Turkey as it continues on the path of industrialization. According to Karapınar (2019), Turkey’s greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 2015 have increased by 122% between 1990 and 2015, producing 475 million tons of CO2 . The country relies heavily on fossil fuels as a source of its electricity and has yet to ratify the 2015 Paris Agreement. This alone does not explain the fact that citizens of 4 Even the CBD has been accused of contributing to the cognitive and regulatory environment that enables green grabbing (Corson and MacDonald 2012), though this probably exaggerates the impact of that constrained organization.

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Turkey have experienced a drastic rise in temperatures when compared to the global average temperature. In fact, June 2019 was the warmest June on record, according to Europe’s Copernicus satellite monitoring system (Karapınar 2019). But there is no doubt that Turkey is geographically vulnerable to climate change even as its developmental path continues to contribute to the problem. Turkey’s economic security is threatened by rising temperatures; economic security is vital to a nation’s economic growth and position in the global market. Climate change has the propensity of disrupting Turkey’s economy through extensive damage to property and critical infrastructure, negatively impacting sectors such as agriculture, forestry, water provision, fisheries, and tourism (Karapınar 2019). In a related vein, Turkey’s food security is compounded by climate change’s negative impacts on trade and supply chains. This leads to volatility in the food supply and difficult-to-predict surges in food prices, affecting low-income communities where the nutritional quality of leads to malnutrition and developmental problems. Protection from infectious diseases and access to public health care constitute citizens’ overall health, and Turkey has witnessed grave threats to its health security. For example, Tapan (2018) reveals that in 2017, provinces across Turkey’s Marmara and Black Sea regions were affected by floods and hail storms—both of which increase the likelihood of epidemics, affecting residents consigned to the poorer regions of the country. In other areas, declining precipitation and droughts threaten water supplies vital to agricultural production and health security, and this precarious situation is exacerbated by the melting of Turkey’s mountain glaciers. Tapan (2018) estimates that the glaciers have been retreating at a pace of approximately 10 meters per year, and excessive snowmelt has raised water levels causing flooding even while it portends a lack of freshwater availability in the future. There is considerable overlap between personal security and community security. If we expand the definition of violence to include ecoviolence and the harms inflicted on the people of Turkey, we can clearly see how climate change undermines both dimensions of security. For example, Turkey may face mass migration of its citizens as a form of adaptation to climate change; poor rural communities in the country have been pushed to the margins of society, growing more vulnerable to chronic flooding, limited food production, and water stress (Karapınar 2019). A nation’s political security, then, is highly contingent upon

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the rest of the world’s commitment to curbing CO2 emissions. Turkey has placed itself on a trajectory to battle climate change: for instance, drawing on its “National Sustainable Energy Action Plan”, the country has pledged to align itself with international agreements and treaties. Yet since 2002, Turkey has been run by an autocratic leadership under President Aecep Tayyip Erdogan which has engaged in widescale human rights abuses and has contentious relationships with neighbouring states. Will climate change induce even harsher conditions which in turn justify an even stricter and further militarized authoritarian regime in Turkey?

Syncretic Analysis: The Wildfires in Australia As we write this chapter on climate change and climate crimes, the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales are being ravaged by wildfires which, according to some, are the result of natural causes such as dry lightning striking drought-affected forests. The fires started in September 2019 and continued into early 2020, and the world watched in terror as flames spread through cities and towns, wreaking sheer havoc on the county’s human population, biodiversity, and economy. Despite claims that these fires are a mere concomitant of the country’s fire season, or even the work of malicious arsonists, climate change activists have used this tragic event as an opportunity to discuss the broader implications of climate change: a warming planet means soil and vegetation are drier and this exacerbates bush fires which spread farther at an accelerated rate, especially in drought-prone regions. This was certainly a transnational event, as the smoke resulting at least partially from fires caused by global warming literally made its way across the globe, affecting other continents. Indeed, NASA reported that ‘the fires in Australia can cause global damage, saying that “unprecedented conditions that include searing heat combined with historic dryness” have led to an erratic weather phenomenon called “fire clouds”. These clouds allow smoke to travel 10 miles high, and from there, it can disperse thousands of miles away from its origin’. (https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/scientistsfind-australian-wildfire-smoke-has-circled-globe-n1116511.) While Australia is no stranger to wildfires, 2019–2020 was especially unique because that year witnessed unprecedented temperatures in both scale and intensity, reaching a record-breaking high of 41.9 °C. Dozens of people lost their lives in the inferno that spread through various regions of the country, destroying more than 3000 homes and 7.3 million

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hectares (17.9 million acres) of land (Newey 2019). Such human misery and destruction remind us of the pernicious effect of climate change and the crimes that drive these incidents. Despite claims that Australia is susceptible to bushfires due to natural causes such as lightning strikes, the country’s Bureau of Meteorology argues that temperatures have been increasing since 1920. In fact, the rate of increased temperatures coincides with rises in global averages as well as Australia’s focus on industrialization in the 1950s, signaling a link between anthropogenic-induced climate change and the preconditions of the wildfires. Australia’s reliance on coal production (and exports to China) is enhancing climate change on a daily basis; state-corporate synergies have been driving this reliance for many decades, regardless of the consequences. During the height of the fires, the Australian capital city of Canberra was registered as having the worst air quality reading in the world. In fact, the Canberra Times reported that the smoke billowing through the city increased the hazardous air quality reading to about 20 times above acceptable levels (“Media reaction: Australia’s bushfires and climate change”, 2020). The scientific evidence concludes unequivocally that climate change plays a major role in driving these fires as rising temperatures increase rates of evaporation and the severity of lightening storms. Yet the coal coalition—the present Australian government, the coal industry, importers of Australian coal—refuses to acknowledge the obvious. Despite pleas from climate activists to steer the country away from coal, the acting government refuses to abandon this lucrative industry, with the prime minister stating: “I am not going to write off the jobs of thousands of Australians by walking away from traditional industries” (Dunne et al. 2019, para. 3). Such comments are disconcerting, indeed, as Climate Action Tracker notes that Australian emissions will increase by 8% above 2005 levels by 2030, according to the Paris Agreement targets (Newey 2019). Importantly, it is not just emissions within Australia that matter, but the burning of Australian coal in countries such as China and Japan. Australia is the biggest exporter of coal in the world and one of the top exporters of Liquid Natural Gas (LNG), another fossil fuel. In the long run, it may well be the case that Australia will have no external market for its products (and other heavily fossil-fuel-dependent extractive industries in countries such as the OPEC states and Canada are in a similar position); China, Japan, and South Korea have all pledged to reach netzero emissions by mid-century. However, in the short-run, this can instill

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a sense of urgency amongst industrialists to dig up and export as much coal as possible, as quickly as possible, instead of curbing extraction and exportation. How might environmental justice aid in expanding our understanding of the ecoviolence and harm of wildfires enveloping Australia? We can begin by exploring how communities’ rights to meaningful involvement in certain decision-making circles were undermined: environmental justice ensures that all people, irrespective of race, ethnicity, class, gender, etc., have an equal opportunity to participate in decisions about activities that affect their environment and/or health. It stands to reason, then, that the public’s collective voice can influence the government’s decisions on how to best conduct certain tasks (Zilney et al. 2006; Banzhaf 2019). With this in mind, we can ask if all Australians had an opportunity to weigh in on important discussions regarding the country’s decision to repeal a successful carbon tax in 2014. This tax, it bears emphasizing, contributed to a laudable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 1.4% over two years (Newey 2019). In a related vein, as the country serves as the world’s largest exporter of coal and liquefied natural gas, it is not surprising that coal lobbyists exert tremendous sway over national politics, ensuring their industry flourishes in the global economy. While members of the New South Wales community, along with its fire chiefs, have pressed Prime Minister Scott Morrison to hold an “emergency summit” to explore the possible links between the coal industry and the exacerbation of wildfires, Mr. Morrison has trivialized such links, rejecting the need to change the government’s approach to climate change, and referring to these members of the community as “raving inner-city lefties” (quoted in Newey 2019). According to the principles of environmental justice, the deliberate exclusion of residents of New South Wales on how to tackle climate change speaks to the power of big business and its ability to sway the government’s decisions on how best to run the economy, despite the negative environmental effects. An examination of the wildfires from a human security perspective lends support to the claim that climate change is a harbinger of ecoviolence and harm, taking a tremendous toll on the planet and its many inhabitants. Let us explore the myriad dimensions of security undermined by the raging bushfires. Many Australians’ economic security has been negatively affected by the 2019 fires, which affected over 7.3 million hectares of land. Economic security refers to the incomes and livelihoods

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of Australians—most of which are derived from work, the public, environmental resources, and reliable social safety nets. With an estimated 5900 buildings and 3000 homes having burned to the ground and industries such as farming and tourism coming to a standstill, it is quite clear to see how the fires affected the economic security of the nation (Dunne et al. 2019). Many Australians’ food security has also been disrupted by the wildfires, which have inhibited peoples’ physical and economic access to basic foods. For example, the fires have destroyed livestock and the country’s dairy supply has been hobbled by a drastic loss of farmland and infrastructure. Newey (2019) concludes that climate change and the bushfires have affected food security and the agriculture industry due to changing precipitation patterns; increased land surface air temperature; and climate variability and anthropogenic activities. Australia’s health security, on the other hand, is severely undermined by the bushfires because recent reports indicate that ash is now washing up on the country’s beaches and into water catchments, some of which are relied upon as a source of drinking water. Health security is the guarantee of protection from disease, and access to personal health, but the fires in Australia have subverted such a guarantee. For example, bushfire ash contains nitrogen and phosphorous and these elements stimulate the growth of cyanobacteria, colloquially referred to as blue-green algae. This particular strand of algae produces toxic chemicals and can lead to skin/mucosa irritation, flu-like symptoms, gastrointestinal illness, and liver failure among humans and non-human animals. Air pollution, on the other hand, leads to reduced lung function, bronchitis, exacerbated asthma, and premature death (Peischel 2020). Environmental security in Australia is also impacted by the bushfires, with peoples’ rights to a healthy living environment being infringed upon. Smoke and fine particle air pollution from the fires threaten environmental security through the release of hazardous gases and particles that can negatively impact water, soil, and air quality. When considering how the fires affect the nation’s ecology and biodiversity, we need only look to the estimated billions of animals and insects that have likely died as a result of habitat destruction and food loss. If we consider that the world’s terrestrial biodiversity is heavily concentrated in forests, and the bushfires swept through the majority of Australia’s expansive and lush forests, we can safely conclude that the country’s environmental security has been severely impacted by climate change.

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Referred to as the safety from violence and the membership in a community with cultural values, personal security and community security, respectively, have been weakened by the toll the bushfires have taken on myriad communities. As of this writing in early 2020, at least 33 people have died as a result of the colossal fires, with tens of thousands of people being forced to evacuate their homes (and it is estimated that some 3 billion animals were harmed or killed: see https://www.bbc. com/news/world-australia-53549936). With some of the fires spreading at a rate of 55 miles an hour, some of the country’s most vulnerable had no chance of escaping the grips of the infernos. Finally, the political security of Australia is undermined because the people of Australia have, arguably, experienced a gross violation of their human rights. While conventional definitions of political security revolve around freedom of state oppression and abuses of human rights, we interpret the Australian government’s complete disregard for pleas to curb greenhouse gas emissions as a failure to act and protect its people. This failure is revealed not only through the lives that were lost, but the mental trauma that citizens have experienced as a result of emergency evacuations and the tragic loss of homes, belongings, livestock, and many other sources of livelihoods. Relatedly, other communities were not so fortunate and unable to evacuate and, therefore, were trapped in extremely high-risk areas. Under such circumstances, it could be suggested that basic human rights were jeopardized due to the sheer political inertia of the government during the apex of the global climate crisis. This statement can be extended far beyond Australia’s Pacific borders, and is made even more emphatic by the sheer fact that we know there is an even greater climate crisis coming. While we might have been surprised by the severity and extent of the COVID19 pandemic in 2020, we have no such excuse for the ravages of climate change that await us; surely this shifts our perceptions of culpability?

Conclusion Climatologists have prognosticated about the grave perils of a warming planet for quite some time, yet their pleas to mitigate climate change have generally fallen on the deaf ears of the powerful and wealthy that continue to engage in activities and investments that induce climate change. The stark fact that much of the world’s wealth was accumulated with energy derived from fossil fuels is also a legacy that underpins the contemporary global economy. The spectacle of the uber-wealthy taking climate

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change seriously is almost passable as Monty Pythonesque humor. For example, as George Monbiot relays, “when Google convened a meeting of the rich and famous at the Verdura resort in Sicily in July [2019] to discuss climate breakdown, its delegates arrived in 114 private jets and a fleet of mega yachts, and drove around the island in supercars. Even when they mean well, the ultrarich cannot help trashing the living world….” (Monbiot 2019). Indeed, they just can’t help themselves! Or, as Bruno Latour, displaying his usual tendency to upscale modern problems into the collapse of modernity, writes: …the superrich, of whom Trump is merely the intermediary, have added to their flight a crime for which there is no atoning: their obsessional denial of climate change. Because of this denial, ordinary people have had to cope within a fog of disinformation, without anyone ever telling them that the project of modernizing the planet was over and done with, and that a regime change was inevitable. (Latour 2018: 24)

Mary Robinson, former Irish President and UN Commissioner for Human Rights, reminds us that “climate change is a threat multiplier – it exacerbates poverty and water scarcity, it compounds food and nutrition insecurity and it makes it even harder for poor households to secure their rights” (Robinson 2015). But it is also a crime multiplier, as the lying, deceit, and fraud designed to avoid serious transformational change continue to gain traction in the twenty-first century (Agnew 2011). The fight against a warming planet begins with addressing the different dimensions of justice: international justice, intersectional justice, and intergenerational justice, all of which are aspects of environmental justice. The first dimension, international justice, recognizes that climate change is a global phenomenon, and responses must be predicated upon cooperation and coordination between countries. Intersectional justice refers to ensuring that no community is excluded from a green transition, irrespective of race, gender, gender identity, age, dis/ability, nationality, immigration status, sexuality, religion, or education. The elimination of barriers so people from all walks of life may weigh in on important decisions affecting the health and safety of their environments is, of course, a shining example of the tenets of environmental justice. The final dimension is intergenerational justice, and this promotes the responsibility of redressing the history of anthropogenic climate change, while creating new innovations and strategies of environmental governance so that

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future generations do not bear the disproportionate share of global warming (Adler and Wargan 2019). This chapter explored the themes of justice as they relate to the crisis of climate change; this was followed by an analysis of the ecoviolence and harm of climate change, and then by some prospective legal responses; finally, we presented disparate case studies of climate change through the lenses of environmental justice and human security and offered a syncretic analysis. While the calamity of the Australian fires faded into the background and the world’s attention was grabbed by the COVID19 pandemic in 2020, the climate crisis will no doubt resurface as the greatest threat faced by humanity. Those seeking solutions will need to be aware of the new crimescape being constructed as climate changerelated behavior becomes a central focus of governments, international agencies, and corporations—and as community actors continue to lead the way toward a greener future.

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CHAPTER 7

Responses to Transnational Ecoviolence and Crime

Introduction There is ample evidence that transnational ecoviolence threatens the attainment of both human security and environmental justice; and that many threats to human security, and all threats to environmental justice, also degrade local ecology and the global biosphere. The preceding chapters have, we hope, demonstrated this effectively. The question remains of what, exactly, we can do about this. It would be misleading to suggest there is any one answer. Adaptive governance across a range of scales is necessary, and the style of policy development and implementation is not always inclusive of the various stakeholders, actors, approaches, cultures, and ecosystem contexts involved. Cultural sensitivity is invaluable, but so is awareness of the international agreements, funding opportunities, and political currents that are promoting, or restraining, concerted action. However, recent years have seen a renewed call for a stronger set of international laws, organizations, and judicial venues to cope with the myriad of environmental justice issues—including, ultimately, climate justice itself. Efforts to categorize ecocide as an international crime, to use the International Criminal Court in this context, or to establish a new world environmental court can be juxtaposed with more modest efforts to pursue transnational environmental crime through conventional means, including multilateral environmental agreements, INTERPOL and other international policing agencies, market-based approaches, and the eventual establishment of an international court. A robust and interlinked © The Author(s) 2021 P. Stoett and D. A. Omrow, Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58561-7_7

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network already exists; efforts to better coordinate its activities could lead to more predictable results and perhaps get us closer to the establishment of an international court dedicated to eradicating at least the more egregious acts of transnational ecoviolence. The most perplexing and challenging of these will be related to the pursuit of climate justice, a theme we covered at some length in the previous chapter. Whatever solutions are reached, it’s our contention that they must not only provide opportunities to stop environmental destruction, they must also address the attendant human super-exploitation that is common to both formal and informal environmental crimes and transnational ecoviolence. Local legitimacy is vital, or projects will not be sustainable (and can even be accused of fitting into historical patterns of colonial relations). We do not have the space to adequately explore the complex topic of democratic legitimacy here but it involves both stakeholder participation and legal acceptance by authorities and representatives of civil society, as well as the implicit (if not explicit) acceptance of nature as an equal partner with its own right to representation (see Lamalle and Stoett, [forthcoming]; the subject of legitimacy is also covered in Stoett 2019). This is not an easy thing to achieve at the best of times, let alone in the midst of the political chaos many disadvantaged people find themselves in amid global pandemics and ongoing conflict. Avoiding empty slogans and false promises is as important as strategizing to meet future challenges; as John Gerard Ruggie writes, we are “well aware of what some call the “expressive” function of law, in contrast to its regulative role. But the field of international human rights does not lack for expressive legal instruments; what is in short supply are actionable paths to cumulative change” (Ruggie 2015: 12n27). This applies equally to environmental governance and especially to the global fight against transnational ecoviolence.

States and Markets The first line of defense against transnational ecoviolence is, ideally, provided by functional governments; indeed, environmental crime is easily construed as a threat to national security (Ivanovi´c 2010). Domestic environmental crime legislation and enforcement is clearly a growth industry today; though environmental law has been largely considered a form of administrative law, it has emerged as a form of criminal law as well. Most governments have some form of related legislation but as usual there are tremendous discrepancies in the professionalism and resource

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capacity committed to enforcement and compliance.1 Command-andcontrol enforcement of environmental laws is difficult and for the most part focused on after-the-fact punishment; the regulatory approach was “not designed to pre-empt the realizations of harms (other than through the deterrence effect of punishment) or encourage norms and behavior that foster proactive protection and management” (Halley and Shearing 2016: 556). For the most part, fighting environmental crime has (rightfully in many eyes) been left to national governments; yet one could even argue that, especially in a pro-deregulatory political climate (from Reagan-Thatcher to Trump-Johnson-Bolsonaro), it’s been left largely to corporations and, at times, consumers to sort out. In other words, the vague abstraction referred to roundly as “the market”, which encompasses the production, purchasing, marketing, distribution, and reification of commodities (including human and non-human labor), reflects the outcomes of billions of consumer choices over the past few hundred years. The market liberal approach to environmental politics accepts all this as the natural state of things and convinces its adherents that with time, wealthier consumers will make more environmentally conscious choices, and the marketplace will lead the way to a greener future (see Clapp and Dauvergne 2011; Stoett 2019). This is a rather optimistic take on both the power and disposition of the marketplace, but it survives as the reigning ideology of those heavily invested in the capitalist socio-ecological system that prevails across continents today. In this world, power and wealth and their cumulative impact are ideally invisible, and the role of the state in protecting privilege is incidental, not fundamental, to the evolution of modern societies. Environmental crime is bad, of course, since it not only pollutes and otherwise desecrates the environment (and can harm property values), but it also distorts the free marketplace: even in a highly deregulated economy, it is a form of cheating, and cheaters are scoundrels who besmirch the reputation of all the good players who abide by whatever rules (limited as

1 The IUCN’s Environmental Law Program, which supports the World Commission on Environmental Law (WCWL), a network of over 700 experts in over 110 countries. The IUCN, UNEP, and FAO have merged efforts to create an expansive and easily accessible database of environmental law (Ecolex), including domestic court cases: https://www.eco lex.org/p/about/.

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though may be) are passed by whatever legislative component of government has been installed by the consuming public to look out for the interests of the organizing principles of marketplace wisdom, freedom, and dynamics. Those who believe the state has a primary duty to intervene in the marketplace (of things, certainly, but even in the marketplace of ideas) are sometimes conflated with those who espouse some form of communist/centralized planning ideology wherein the state actually replaces the marketplace entirely. This latter construction is also a caricature today, with the possible exception of the North Korean regime, an anachronistic dictatorship that would no doubt be displaced if it did not pose a limited but real military threat to Asian neighbors. But the authoritarian state is another matter entirely: the modern Chinese political economy seems based on the premise that we can have all-out capitalist development and a proliferating class of new billionaires as well as an all-powerful, increasingly AI-driven, state that controls socialized production while protecting the accumulation of private wealth. No other state has proceeded to do this with the severity, success, and international impact as China in the last 40 years. Yet we know that environmental crime, even in the midst of such a formidable regime stretching its authoritarian limits to cope with destabilizing levels of urban air pollution, exists in China. Indeed, it exists everywhere, and while potential consumer boycotts might sway some corporations in the West from getting their hands dirty, there is little corresponding public scrutiny in the tightly controlled media environments driving consumer behavior in the massive emerging Chinese marketplace. China’s efforts to economically colonize post-colonial states in Africa and elsewhere are thinly disguised, even mechanical, instruments to avoid what Rosa Luxemburg referred to as the internal collapse of capitalist accumulation, not to be confused with the joyous spread of socialist ideology. We still have no idea what impact this will have on the enforcement of environmental laws or the continuance of human superexploitation, but it doesn’t look very promising given the size of the Chinese economy and the singular preoccupation of the Chinese government with the maintenance of power and political purity; the ethnic oppression and forced relocation into “Vocational Education and Training Centers” of Muslim Uyghur communities in China itself are certainly an ominous development, and the near-totalitarian embrace of AI as an

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instrument of social control is portentous. Leaving aside Chinese involvement in illegal fisheries (see Chapter 4) and mining, one of the largest environmental crimes taking place presently (2018–2022) is surely the unprecedented illicit deforestation of Siberia, where clear-cut logging for wood destined for Chinese factories and urbanization is shipped via rail or processed in lumberyards the Chinese state has, in hand with complicit officials in the Russian government, set up along the Trans-Siberian railway.2 Any effort to pivot the state, or governments, as the main obstacle to transnational ecoviolence must face the prospect that those institutions are often better suited to wear the label of facilitators than warriors. Beyond the rabid deregulation we have seen in Brazil, the United States, and elsewhere, which is giving polluters and land grabbers and others a new license to proceed with environmental harm, corruption is an ongoing theme in the environmental crime narrative (see Sundstrom and Wyatt 2017; UNODC 2012), though the broader conceptualization of the commodification of nature and super-exploitation of humanity as a form, or even structure, of corruption gets less attention. Complicity as corruption also has its conceptual dead-ends stretched somewhat by the urgency of environmental crime in the midst of what is slowly emerging as consensus that we are in a climate crisis, if not enough to trigger the outward expansion of the term “ecocide” away from its more legalistic minimalist meaning related to the deliberate destruction of the environment chiefly for military purposes (see Stoett 2000). Efforts to stop corruption in the wildlife trade, for example, are vast but mostly unsuccessful, perhaps viewed by many familiar with the trade and its associated human dilemmas and drama as good-hearted but futile. Links between notorious armed rebel and terrorist groups and poaching— driving the call for further militarized responses—have been largely debunked (see Haenlein et al. 2016; though there is no doubt that violence against nature is greatly accentuated in conflict zones). The real problem of poverty and a cultural engagement with corruption surely precedes any Western-driven sudden preoccupation with charismatic endangered species or elephant graveyards. But there is also a 2 https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/10/08/siberia-illegal-logging-feeds-chi nas-factories-one-woman-fights-back/. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/world/europe/russia-china-siberia-logging. html.

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tendency, shared by many international organizations, to put state-level corruption on the list of primary suspects, and this is understandable given the role bribery plays in the facilitation of not just environmental crime but human, arms, and drug trafficking, as well as the money laundering that accompanies all of these activities (see Felbab-Brown 2017). Beyond the state, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operate largely with the agenda of public knowledge sharing and shaming corporations and governments that are committing acts of transnational ecoviolence. The use of corporate boycotts, often tied to other human rights concerns, is a frequent tactic for the NGO community, as are letter campaigns and internet-based petitions. Much of this activity is focused on animal rights issues, wherein corporations are accused of violating domestic laws and governments are accused of inadequate regulatory and prosecutorial action. The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), TRAFFIC, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), the Environmental Law Institute, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, and Greenpeace have all played visible roles in focusing public and governmental attention on TEC. TRAFFIC perhaps deserves special mention; partnering with the IUCN and WWF, its Cambridge-based organization has over 20 regional/local offices around the world and plays an active role, in coordination with CITES, in the monitoring of wildlife crime. Indeed, the direct participation of NGOs and other non-state actors in policing is part of the New Environmental Governance that Halley and Shearing cover so well in their excellent review article (Halley and Shearing 2016). Reducing demand for the products of illicit markets is a theme we return to often in discussions on transnational ecoviolence. Recent campaigns to devalue the absurd notion that eating shark fin soup somehow conveys social mobility, for example, have attracted attention. There are several strengths to this approach, which NGOs and others are prone to take. There would be even fewer large cetaceans left in the oceans if the demand for whale oil and meat did not diminish over the past century (Stoett 1997a). And it is true that, though exceptions certainly exist, poaching and illegal forestry and mining are all done for the ultimate purpose of supplying demand, in most cases for foreign markets. Illegal fishing, covered in Chapter 4, is a case in point: it is fueled by a combination of demand for products and, often, the inability to distinguish legitimate from illicit markets. While we certainly commend efforts to educate consumers about their market choices, and

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support the general idea that demand reduction is necessary if we are to de-incentivize the commission of environmental crimes, this is only part of any solution because environmental crime is not only driven by foreign markets. The transnational element is often just the last step in a structured environmental crime apparatus; local consumption of illicit products is almost always visible as well. The power configurations that permit transnational ecoviolence to take place are not just cogs in a market supply chain, they are deeply embedded in governance structures and have their own incentives, including local patron–client relations, political dominance, the pursuit of wealth, and other factors. In other words, the political economy is multilayered, and those engaged in efforts to reduce demand for products based on a hierarchy-of-value developed coterminously with the evolution of environmentalism in Western markets need to be aware of this complexity. There is also the sting of cultural imperialism that can be imposed by condemning the dietary and hunting and agricultural habits of others in far off lands: this particular form of paternalism does not sit well with the Inuit, for example, who resent efforts to ban the sale of seal products in Europe and elsewhere. We will avoid the elaborate debates on cultural relativism, but surely this permeates many of the case studies we’ve covered in this book: it is one thing to use moral-suasion around the themes of biospheric integrity, extinction, and even self-enlightened interest; it is another to condemn entire cultures for their past or present survival or development choices and cultural cognitive structures. None of which is intended to deflate the added value of NGO activities that aim to reduce transnational ecoviolence and the broader ecocidal project that enables it, but to insist that they go about their work with the utmost awareness of and respect for the cultural milieu and socio-economic conditions of those affected by their actions. As is often the case in environmental affairs, civil society groups have played leading roles in pursuing both small and system-level change, and they have certainly entered permanently into the arena of marketplace ideas (even the more radical and unapologetic, such as the Sea Shepherd Society, have played an educative role that few governments could match). Indeed, civil society actors are usually far ahead of governments when it comes to calling for innovative legislation and policy designs. However, NGOs on their own lack the resources needed to overcome the deeper causes of both formal legalistic and, especially, broader conceptions of transnational environmental crime. And we need to be aware

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of a simple fact: this is a very dangerous business. Vigilante justice is not recommended when dealing with organized criminal gangs, cartels, or even large corporations that can effectively destroy the lives of those taking action against them. Governments need to be there for them, and when that is not the case, the results can be disastrous, as we explain later in this chapter. However, there is real concern that governments can also go too far when it comes to conservation, or even use conservation and anti-environmental crime actions to buttress their own political power, a theme we turn to next.

Militarized Responses This excerpt might shock some readers, while others may sigh in recognition of an old problem: “Armed ecoguards partly funded by the conservation group WWF to protect wildlife in the Republic of the Congo beat up and intimidated hundreds of Baka pygmies living deep in the rainforests, an investigation into a landmark global conservation project has heard. A team of investigators sent to northern Congo by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to assess allegations of human rights abuses gathered “credible” evidence from different sources that hunter-gatherer Baka tribespeople living close to a proposed national park had been subjected to violence and physical abuse from the guards over years, according to a leaked draft of the report. The allegations, reported to the UN last year, included Baka tribespeople being beaten by the ecoguards, the criminalisation and illegal imprisonment of Baka men, summary evictions from the forest, the burning and destruction of property, and the confiscation of food”.3

There has been a rise in the adoption of both governmental and privatized militarized responses in a range of sectors (humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, wildlife conservation, coastal fishing enforcement, forest protection) (see SIPRI Yearbook 2019; Asiyanbi 2016; Duffy et al. 2019; Marijnen and Verweigen 2016), which raises significant challenges and more concerns about the role conflict is playing. While supporters claim that militarized-pacification responses can be a solution to the need for a 3 John Vidal, “Armed ecoguards funded by WWF ‘beat up Congo tribespeople”, The Guardian, Feb. 7, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/feb/ 07/armed-ecoguards-funded-by-wwf-beat-up-congo-tribespeople.

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swift response to an urgent problem, critics have questioned their effectiveness and their implications for social justice and human rights (Duffy et al. 2019). For people and their possessions, security has become increasingly militarized and privatized for those who can afford it; anyone who has travelled in Africa or Latin America is well aware of this, but the sheer volume of private security forces in the United States is further testament to the death of public security as a major focus of governance outside of the capitalist-authoritarian states of China and Russia (organized crime is the main provider of “security” in much of Russia, of course). Those who cannot afford private security are left at the whim of the state, or patron–client relationships formed in local communities. No doubt, this is an ancient tale, retold with modern technology and weapons (see Peluso 1993). So the question naturally arises: Why not treat nature in much the same fashion? If private guns can stop environmental crimes, or at least the ones not sanctioned by the “need” for rapid economic growth, why not employ them accordingly? Arguably, there are cases where law enforcement needs military muscle to be effective, but the broader militarization of conservation efforts is typically decried as illegitimate and, even, counter-productive. It is viewed as a step too far, or as a coy effort to legitimize militarism and/or enforce geopolitical boundaries, as part of a new “green militarization” (Lunstrum 2014) waging the “war to save biodiversity” and an “anti-poaching arms race” that renders local participants/stakeholders powerless (Duffy 2010, 2014). Worse, the private military contractor is pleased to step in, where needed, for the usual mercenary fee: … green militarisation has opened the doors of conservation to private defence corporations. The most caricatured must be Ivor Ichikovitz’s Paramount Group, thanks in part to his celebrated Mbombe Parabot, the CGI African “superhero” cyborg-robot. These firms seek to create new markets for their hardware and services, markets they actively work to enlarge by exploiting conservation to showcase their hardware at military tradeshows. This also amounts to a perverse form of “greenwashing”. As the firms bedazzle us with their well-advertised commitment to environmental protection, we are left blind to the destruction they leave in their wake in conflict zones around the world. (Lunstrum and Bond 2016)

It would be foolish to not take advantage of the universal disdain for poaching, provided anti-poaching efforts are not simply excuses for the

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extension of military power or are showcases designed to overshadow the rampant corruption that enables a successful illegal wildlife trade in the first place. And it is difficult to conceive the pursuit and apprehension of notorious environmental criminals, many of whom are linked to large organized crime organizations, without the application of physical force at some point in the process. But it is equally clear that violence against the people conservation is supposedly designed to help and even empower— indigenous people, local communities, those dependent immediately on the land or coast—is unacceptable as well, and that most of the people involved in poaching, dumping hazardous waste on site, or enslaved in illegal fishing vessels do not deserve to become the objects of a military campaign. Again, we see that human security must be protected and promoted if we are to avoid making bad situations worse (see Duffy et al. 2019). This leads to our next topic, since the use of violence against petty criminals is bad enough, but its employment to deter environmental activism is even more striking in many parts of the world today.

The Protection of Environmental Activists In early February of 2020, Mexican police located the body of Homero Gómez, 50, who managed a butterfly sanctuary in the town of Ocampo in Michoacán state, a region well known for its violent criminal gangs. The speculation was immediate: his murder resulted from his refusal to allow illegal logging on the sanctuary grounds. We discussed the rise of avocado-related violence in Chapter 5: this seems to be another case. A second butterfly protector was found dead a few days later. This cannot be overstressed: the death rate for environmental activists in many countries (and in some cases on the open seas) is spiking, especially in places where the rule of law is a figure of speech and corruption (defined in terms of governmental involvement in criminal activity) is rife. We mentioned this in Chapter 1 but it is worth revisiting here, since the international human rights community and many of the more staid Western observers and states which promulgate civil liberties seem to have missed the memo on this one. Such murders have been spreading over the past two decades, leading to observations such as that in Scientific American: “environmental activists have higher death rates than some soldiers” (Nuwer 2019). A recent Global Witness (2019) report has spurred some measure of media coverage, thankfully, though it is highly unlikely that the report has captured the full extent of crimes against people who

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are defending the environment. (The imprisonment of environmental activists is also a travesty, but this is rarely extrajudicial.) The question of how, exactly, we define an environmental activist is an interesting one, but suffice to say that their main political preoccupation should be with the conservation or preservation of the natural environment, which can of course extend to the fight against the commission of environmental crimes—local, regional, transnational, or some combination thereof. This might easily conflate with other human rights activities, such as the promotion of indigenous rights, gender equality, support for the LGBTQ community, and other expressions of solidarity with oppressed groups, so it is difficult to isolate them entirely. There are also many groups who are in essence lobbyists for industrial concerns who claim to be environmental activists, and some of them have full rights to this claim if they are genuinely convinced their agency serves to promote environmental protection. Then, there are various layers of the legal system, so often under constant threat in states run principally by the corporate-state structure, narco-regimes, or military juntas: many of these lawyers, prosecutors, and judges are deeply concerned about the environment, environmental crime, and related corruption, and they are routinely targeted as well. In an important survey article, Butt et al. define “environmental defenders” as “community activists, members of social movements, lawyers, journalists, NGO staff, indigenous peoples, members of traditional, peasant and agrarian communities, and those who resist forced eviction or other violent interventions” (Butt et al. 2019: 742). It is unclear whether the Global Witness Report should be seen as a limited snapshot of what is happening on the international scale, but there can be little reasonable doubt that there is a great deal of unrecorded violence against environmental defenders and activists (and, for that matter, against species that make whatever effort they can to defend their habitat from encroachment or destruction). Nonetheless, the Report reaches some startling conclusions: in 2018 alone, 164 land and environmental defenders were reported killed; many more were attacked or jailed. More particularly, and perhaps unsurprisingly given recent political events in some of these countries, the death toll is highest where a combination of high biodiversity and generalized political violence (and land disputes in particular) is found, including the Philippines (30 killed in 2018 alone) and Guatemala (from three killings in 2017 to 16 in 2018). The study found that:

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Europe continues to be the continent that’s least affected by defender killings, with only three reported deaths in 2018, all in the Ukraine. The number of reported killings in Africa (14) was also low, which is surprising given the prevalence of conflicts over land there … signs point to a shortage of evidence stemming in part from the fact that less attention is paid by civil society and the media to this issue over others. [Overall] mining was the deadliest sector, with 43 defenders killed protesting against the destructive effects of mineral extraction on people’s land, livelihoods and the environment. There was an escalation of killings of defenders struggling for the protection of water sources, rising from 4 in 2017 to 17 in 2018. In India, 13 people were killed in the biggest massacre we documented in 2018, in response to a protest over the damaging impacts of a copper mine in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. In a second massacre, gunmen shot dead nine sugarcane farmers and burned their tents on the Philippine island of Negros. The victims included three women and two teenagers.

Again, unsurprisingly, state security forces were linked to many of the murders, while criminal gangs and landowners were also involved. The need for vigilance is obvious: while it is understandable that our attention gravitates toward the more visible and openly violent crimes of thugs, no corporate stone should be left unturned either. Beyond this, however, the state-corporate structure of extractive and pollutive industries remains seemingly unbreakable, strengthened by the privatization of security provision. The tired routine has become nearly universal: those opposed to projects that threaten environmental security (and, as often, their own human security) are deemed foreign infiltrators and/or terrorists—in short, enemies of “the state”—which justifies their oppression. In the Canadian case, this has reached almost comedic proportions as the oil and gas industry struggles to make itself invulnerable to climate change mitigation and has used various federal and provincial governments to link opposition to pipeline construction with devilish foreign influences. But the line between such shallow efforts and the justificatory application of violence can be a thin one. The militarized response to indigenous people defending land from pipeline construction in both the United States and Canada has become so routine that the media barely flinched when protestors of the Dakota Access pipeline construction in

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Standing Rock, North Dakota, were sprayed with fire hoses in sub-zero temperatures in late November 2016.4 If we are serious about preserving biodiversity and protecting ecosystem resilience, we must be prepared to counsel governments and corporations to help avoid the physical annihilation of those trying to achieve these goals on the ground, whether it be through assassination or the “slow violence” described by Nixon (2011) and others (see also Middeldorp and LeBillon 2019). This will take many readers (abruptly in some cases) out of their comfort zones, since it is the commodities that are consumed in largely Western and Asian markets that are at least in part driving this behavior; and the capital investment involved is often a dizzying multinational tapestry. The Global Witness Report includes a case study from the Philippines, where the Dole Corporation (which exported roughly $647 million of bananas and banana products in 2016 and 2017 alone, mainly to China, Japan, and South Korea) is owned by Dole Asia, which in turn is owned by the Japanese Itochu Corporation, which in turn receives investment from the Japanese Development Bank, US investment bank JP Morgan Chase, and CP Worldwide Investment Company from Hong Kong. A local gun manufacturer has been sub-leasing part of an indigenous community’s ancestral lands for banana production, despite serious irregularities in the licensing process. The community … allege[s] fraud was used to fake their consent. They told police that a local government official attempted to coerce community members into signing the agreement, and even threatened community members with imprisonment if they failed to sign it … Those who have protested have faced violence and intimidation. On 1 August 2016, according to a human rights group, 73 year-old Estrella Bertudez, a member of the indigenous community, was confronted by two security guards of the De Leon ranch and told her to leave her land or something might happen to her. Later that month her house, as well as those belonging to her community, were allegedly destroyed by armed security guards who three days later went on to uproot the community’s crops, fired gunshots and threatened to kill several people.

4 See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/21/police-

citing-ongoing-riot-use-water-cannons-on-dakota-access-protesters-in-freezing-weather/.

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Thankfully, criminologists and other academics take this agential violence seriously (see Lynch et al. 2018; Middeldrop and LeBillon 2019). But until governments, many of them complicit in these crimes, take it seriously as well, the onslaught will continue. As Nathalie Butt and her colleagues suggest, this is to a large degree about eliminating violence from the supply chains of many of the commodities we take for granted (Butt et al. 2019); to pursue environmental justice in these cases might well mean we live without those commodities altogether, or at least ensure companies are acquiring them without accompanying murder, displacement, and other threats to human security.

High Tech Approaches Technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and its use depends on people with commitment, motivation, context and the means to best protect our intimately-bound habitats and ecosystems. (Davies 2013) Environmental crime requires high-tech solutions. (Higgins 2017)

We lump these themes together as they so often, but not always, will go hand in hand in the future. Intelligence-led policing demands substantive investments, on and off the ground, yet it is clear that the complex supply chains described in this book cannot be intercepted without serious intelligence, informants, and technological innovations such as DNA tracking. We live in the age of surveillance, even if much of it is designed to influence market behavior and sell products (including, of course, the very products that enable mass surveillance). Using the big data produced and utilized across a variety of sectors to limit violence against the environment seems a logical enough direction at this stage, providing it is not violating privacy in the process. The UN has been working to develop a web-based tracking system that it calls Situational Awareness Geospatial Enterprise (SAGE) to track threats to human security including armed attacks in conflict zones. As always, there are real challenges to implementing technology that relies on informants and privacy concerns abound for not just private landowners but small communities and others. (This applies to any surveillance program designed to protect the environment, including the threat to the autonomy of legitimate farmers, fishers, foresters, and others—see, for example, Devitt et al. 2019.)

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Control and power: who can produce, control, and disseminate this data? How far can governments go to procure it, and should they work with social media platforms and other companies willing to cooperate? Another issue that must be considered is the analytic and pragmatic distinction between crime detection and crime prevention: most of the policing techniques discussed here, including robust surveillance, are based on the former as the raison-d’etre of policing, but we all know that environmental crime must be prevented since it is generally too late once detection takes place to protect the people and the natural systems being harmed (see Gore et al. 2019). The combination of emerging technology and the digitalization of transnational environmental crime has led researchers to explore how related technologies can mitigate crimes against the environment (Ayling 2013a, b; Agranoff 2013; Alacs and Georges 2008; Anderson-Rodgers and Crawford 2018). A rhetoric of urgency concerning the digitalization of transnational crime has dominated public discourse, especially when discussing the pervasiveness of illicit social platforms such as the “dark web” or “darknet” and new decentralized digital crypto-currencies. The ingenuity of certain criminal organizations involved in money laundering, human trafficking, and illicit drug and arms/weapons trading has driven the development of new and emerging technologies to combat these crimes at the local, national, and international level. Many of these organizations also partake in the burgeoning field of TEC, threatening the environmental and human security of billions of people in the process as they drive endangered species closer to extinction, further diminish already rapidly decreasing fish stocks, poison water tables, destroy critical wildlife and plant habitat, and contribute unrecorded emissions of greenhouse gases to the climate crisis. As we have stressed throughout this book, it is important to focus on local communities, including indigenous peoples and civil society, because these groups are most vulnerable to the deleterious impacts of environmental crime. Proponents of the use of emerging technology in anti-TEC efforts aim to empower such communities, highlighting the importance of civic science and its role in creating a sustainable relationship between national law enforcement agencies, international agencies, and non-governmental organizations (such as INTERPOL, the World Bank, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and the wildlife trade monitoring NGO, Traffic), and the private sector. Such relationships can harness the technological expertise from these groups so that

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capacity building and best practices for protecting the environment are exercised. The Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System (WEMS), which began largely as an Asian-based effort spearheaded by the United Nations University and CITES, now involves domestic law enforcement units and several African states. Among other things, the WEMS has explored the use of drones in Chitwan National Park in Nepal and the refinement of investigatory DNA and isotope analyses to trace wildlife sources. Emerging technologies are increasingly in general use among law enforcement personnel and members of civic society—drones with thermal imaging cameras, range finders, light-intensifying binoculars, Open Data Kits (ODKs), DNA analysis instruments, pesticide drift catchers, aerial mapping kits, spectrometers, near-infrared imaging units, etc. (Higgins 2017; Davies 2013). The broader socio-legal concerns with these emerging technologies have been examined in both academic study and public debate (Higgins 2017). Of late, researchers have turned to the putative potential of blockchain technology as a solution to combating transnational environmental crime, securing global supply chains to ensure that certain products are ethically and sustainably sourced. As an open, distributed ledger that records transactions between parties, and which cannot be altered retroactively, blockchain technology holds immense promise in stunting certain transnational environmental crimes due to its decentralized yet reliable structure (Zheng et al. 2017). The merit of blockchain technology is its potential to create accountability and transparency among its users, ensuring that the information registered to certain wildlife resources, for example, can be trusted and is not open to tampering. Radocchia (2018) maintains that blockchain technology provides greater transparency into certain supply chains—namely, timber, non-human animals, flora, and waste—and is the key to environmental regulation in the twenty-first century. While such emerging technology is at the forefront of discussions on enforcement, there is a pronounced absence, overall, of studies that have examined the attitudes of law enforcement personnel toward the effectiveness of these new and emerging technologies. Gaps in the literature include study of (1) how law enforcement personnel feel about the digitalization of transnational environmental crime; (2) how emerging technology can be harnessed among law enforcement personnel to foster accountability and transparency in the realm of environmental governance in both the national and international contexts; and (3) how governments can best facilitate the utilization

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of advanced technology in anti-crime efforts without compromising the human security of civilians. Before we envision a high-tech world where artificial intelligence and deep machine learning stops transnational ecoviolence before it is even committed, a note of caution applies: even in states with relatively advanced technological and criminological infrastructures, wildlife crime enforcement lags very far behind other aspects of law enforcement (see Wellsmith 2011; Halley and Shearing 2016; Ayling 2013b; Felbab-Brown 2017). Some of the situational prevention methods of choice, such as closing logging roads and using unmanned drones, involve serious opportunity costs and/or investments in technology. (Drones are being deployed to some effect, however, and this seems a promising technology, if one that will be used by logging companies, illegal fisheries, and other actors interested in extractive resource use as well.) The technology transfer necessary for DNA typing for species identification is quite demanding and remains prohibitively expensive (see Tube and Linacre 2010; Ogden 2011). Another issue is the use of the internet for trade in endangered species, which is by most accounts thriving. As more remote areas in range states become connected to the internet, there are both positive and negative implications for anti-crime efforts. Moreover, there are legitimate concerns that the policing approach to the criminology of environmental crime will, by design, reflect a Western agenda that dovetails with neoliberal, managerial efforts to rationalize and commodify nature and overlook the local needs of the people who are most violently affected by environmental crime. Put another way: ideas about crime, law, policing and related policies – or criminological thinking – are also subject to (de)politicization. They too are shaped by uneven power dynamics that can privilege ideas and voices from the Global North and uncritically promote positivistic crime science, policing and legalistic approaches to understanding and addressing crime in differing contexts. Such dynamics are important in understanding how crime, perpetrators, causes and the needed solutions are defined, understood, and justified. We now find these dynamics from criminology and policing overlapping and intersecting with Conservation concerns, policymaking and practice. (Massé et al. 2020: 27)

An awkward but necessary marriage, perhaps—but the central point remains: programs, policies, police actions, and other efforts are doomed in the long run without local legitimacy. If we want to avoid the resort

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to violence and authoritarianism (which of course simply profits small segments of society), then we need to avoid insensitivity to the concerns of those who do not fit the typical, Western-inspired model of conservation. Although intelligence-led policing holds great promise, it also demands considerable resources and time, and many environmentalists would argue we do not have much of either. If technological innovations can help, they are certainly welcome, but more research needs to be conducted into both the practical and ethical consequences of its deployment.

International Efforts At the international level, where we function in an “anarchical society” (Bull 1977) with a loose social fabric based on a combination of commonly accepted norms and principles within the context of an intensively competitive and global economy and a highly militarized geopolitical system, the UN system broadly defined is at the heart of prevention and prosecution related to transnational ecoviolence. Lately, its involvement in fighting international wildlife crime has become the most prominent aspect. At the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Vienna-based Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (UNCCPCJ) took on wildlife crime in 2007 and 2013 resolutions. The February 13, 2014, “London Declaration on the Illegal Wildlife Trade” was signed by over 40 countries and the EU, and it requested the UN Secretary-General to establish a Special Representative on the issue. Even the Security Council has been involved: in January 2014, it adopted two resolutions sanctioning wildlife trafficking, though some have suggested it was motivated primarily by a dubious link between the wildlife trade and terrorist organizations and rebel groups. We hope this book has demonstrated the need to think beyond the wildlife crime fixation and to consider other forms of transnational ecoviolence, and while there is no international convention designed to do that specifically, there is one that could very well apply to a wide spectrum of cases. With 191 Member States as Parties by 2020, the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC)5 arguably forms the legal basis for international cooperation against all types of serious 5 See https://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNTOC/Publications/TOC%20C onvention/TOCebook-e.pdf.

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crimes. Its Global Programme for Combating Wildlife and Forest Crime supports regional and national law-enforcement responses against the criminal poaching of protected species. UNTOC itself defines organized crime in a particular way and covers only certain crimes: (a) “Organized criminal group” shall mean a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences established in accordance with this Convention, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit; (b) “Serious crime” shall mean conduct constituting an offence punishable by a maximum deprivation of liberty of at least four years or a more serious penalty; (c) “Structured group” shall mean a group that is not randomly formed for the immediate commission of an offence and that does not need to have formally defined roles for its members, continuity of its membership or a developed structure. Clearly, these definitions do not exclude all environmental crimes, but they do preclude many of them. Unfortunately, for example, not many environmental crimes are met by a “deprivation of liberty” (generally, a jail sentence), of at least four years; in some of the areas we have covered in this book, the legal response has been rather lukewarm and environmental crimes are not typically met with prison sentences. This is slowly changing, but in most national jurisdictions environmental crime is barely an issue, let alone one that evinces serious detention or sentences.6 And many would argue that the largest environmental crimes would be considered nonviolent in the conventional sense and would not even involve criminal courts. Article 3 does give some latitude to the location of transnational crimes, however: 2. For the purpose of paragraph 1 of this article, an offence is transnational in nature if

6 At the present (2020) time, Canadian, Australian, and American laws present the ability for courts to prescribe sentences of more than 4 years for wildlife crime, and if an international transaction was involved, this qualifies them under UNTOC and can trigger the UNTOC provision on extradition and seizure of assets.

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(a) It is committed in more than one State; (b) It is committed in one State but a substantial part of its preparation, planning, direction or control takes place in another State; (c) It is committed in one State but involves an organized criminal group that engages in criminal activities in more than one State; or (d) It is committed in one State but has substantial effects in another State. The last clause does open some interesting possibilities. We return to international courts below, but suffice to say that the idea of an international climate tribunal would be based on a similar conception of how a major crime against humanity perpetrated in several key states has had an impact on the rest of humanity. This is far off from any sort of legal convention, however, and will most likely remain there given current power configurations. The UNTOC has three protocols, all signed by most countries: the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, which entered into force on December 25, 2003; the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, which entered into force on January 28, 2004; and the Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, their Parts and Components and Ammunition, which entered into force on July 3, 2005. Adding an additional Special Protocol to this convention would be a good place to start the broader pursuit of environmental crimes and demand more resource pooling and information sharing among member states. Sporadic efforts at producing one have been bogged down by endless debates over its intended purpose and definitions. Also within the UN orbit, research is undertaken at the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute located in Turin, Italy, and the United Nations University in Tokyo. That this barely-funded body is looking into wildlife crime suggests perhaps that a new protocol to the UNTOC would be sensible today. However, despite calls for this Special Protocol, it has proven too contentious an issue for international diplomacy to channel into something concrete. It is becoming increasingly unlikely that this can be attributed to apathy; rather, governments are always reluctant to enter into agreements that might, in even some small fashion, limit their sovereign jurisdiction, especially where natural

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resources are part of the equation. Recent (2020) concern over the link between the illegal wildlife trade and zoonotic pandemics might reignite this diplomatic energy, however. Also largely within the UN orbit are the multitude of international conventions that color the constellation of global environmental governance (see Stoett 2019). The UN Environment’s Department for Environmental Law and Conventions (DELC) runs the Montevideo Programme, which conducts sequential ten-year reviews on the effectiveness of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). Though we should not overestimate their influence, MEAs play a key role in defining and in some cases, resource-pooling to combat formally recognized environmental crimes. A partial list would include: • UN Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992, and its protocols; • UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982, and the Convention for Prevention of Maritime Pollution by Dumping Wastes and Other Matters; • Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wildlife Fauna and Flora (CITES), 1973; • International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA), 1983, renegotiated last in 2006; • Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, 1987; • Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, 1989; and the Bamako Convention on the Ban of the Import into Africa and the Control of Transboundary Movement and Management of Hazardous Wastes within Africa; • United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1992; Kyoto Protocol, 1997; Paris Agreement, 2015; • Antarctic Treaty, 1959; • Convention on the Regulation of Whaling, 1946; • Convention to Combat Desertification and Land Degradation (UNCCD), 1994; • Agreement Relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, 1995 (not yet in force—requires 30 ratifications); • Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International

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Trade, 1998 (not yet in force—applied on a voluntary basis until 50 ratifications are obtained); • Convention on Migratory Species (Bonn Convention), 1993. Only the Basel Convention on Hazardous Waste (see Chapter 3) and the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Environment Through Criminal Law explicitly oblige parties to criminalize offenses. It is a truism that international law is based on voluntarism. There may be room, however, to encourage further criminalization under extant MEAs and negotiate a Special Protocol to the UNTOC, as discussed above, that could significantly increase government’s obligation to criminalize violations of MEAs. Many of the MEAs have Secretariats that can be relatively influential, working to facilitate relevant diplomacy, raise funding for projects, and even contributing original scientific and policy analysis. The question of the effectiveness of international bureaucrats is still an open one, but as it receives accumulating academic interest it is becoming clear that Secretariats do make a difference (see Young 1999; Bauer 2006; Biermann and Siebenhuner 2009; Birnie et al. 2009; Stoett 2019). On the trade front, the premier international arrangement remains the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which is entering its sixth decade; we described this arrangement in some depth in Chapter 2 (see also Duffy 2013). Many would argue that CITES has been largely successful, and that without it many of the species protected in Appendix 1 would be extinct today, but it simply does not have enough of a mandate for its success to either spread horizontally across sectors or dig into the actual roots of the illegal wildlife trade (it is also criticized as an instrument that justifies the trade in animals overall, and thus as part of the broader problem of speciesism and the commodification of nature; see Sollund 2019). Even the widely respected former Secretary General of CITES (2010–2018), John Scanlon, laments the lack of efficacy of the Convention; while maintaining CITES as a regulatory instrument, he would prefer to also see an international agreement devoted specifically to wildlife crime embedded within the UNTOC: This could include, obliging countries to criminalise certain wildlife crimes, enhancing cooperation across international borders, including the exchange of information, training and technical assistance, providing a common agreed definition of wildlife crime that addresses illegal harvesting, poaching and illicit trafficking, and assisting CITES Parties to enforce

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its provisions through the criminal justice system. It could apply to CITES-listed species as well as species that are being illegally exploited by transnational organised criminals but are not yet listed under CITES. (Scanlon 2019)

Scanlon’s idea is timely and it has been discussed at great length in conservationist circles. The suspected involvement of illegal wildlife trade in the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 might, sadly enough, be the impetus needed to move states to take the proposition seriously and toward realization. Again, embedding such an arrangement in a Special Protocol of the UNTOC makes sense, if political obstacles can be overcome. Regional networks are also active, such as the South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network, the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, the EUTWIX (EU Trade in Wildlife Information Exchange), the Asia Regional Partners’ Forum on Combating Environmental Crime (ARPEC), the Multilateral Environmental Agreements Regional Enforcement Network (MEA-REN), the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEANWEN), the South Asian Wildlife Enforcement Network (SA-WEN), the European Network of Prosecutors for the Environment, and the Regional Environmental Centre in Budapest. The UNECE Aarhus Convention can serve as a model for regional agreements, though it is probably far too radical an advance in participatory rights for most governments to consider. At the regional level, it is possible to find encouraging examples of a broad approach. Though the Council of Europe’s intent in 1998 to give birth to a Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law was not successful for lack of ratification, it did inspire the adoption of an identically named European Directive ten years later. The Directive 2008/99/EC of 19 November 2008 became the common legal basis for the member states of the European Union to address all types of environmental crime together from a criminal law perspective. Of course, we know in 2020 that the European Union faces its own problems related to internal cohesion, and even if it were the gold standard, few regions have the adaptive or diplomatic capacity to follow its more ambitious designs. Another ongoing form of international collaboration is global or regional certification programs, which have proliferated in many areas today but perhaps most noticeably when it comes to fisheries and forestry

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products. On the one hand, this is a form of market intervention that boosts the ideal of consumer choice; on the other hand, the programs are quite varied in terms of their authenticity, robustness, and impact (one can argue, for example, that certification programs can actually increase consumer demand and therefore encourage illicit and mixed market supply chains). We refer to certification schemes in Chapter 4, related to the global fishing industry, and in Chapter 6, related to the extraction of rare earth and other minerals essential for green technology. Finally, international financial institutions were once widely denounced as displaying conditional immunity to environmental and justice concerns, but they have changed with public perception in the past several decades. The World Bank’s emphasis on corruption has led inexorably to a concern with wildlife and fisheries crime, for example. The London Declaration on wildlife crime mentioned above makes explicit reference to the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and indeed, it has proven instrumental in many areas as a funding mechanism, but also mentions the Asian and African Development Banks. Private IFIs are also involved, since private investment opens opportunities for environmental crime as well as its prevention. (For every opportunity to launder the proceeds of transnational crime, there is a corresponding opportunity to legally pursue it with cooperation from banks.) The Equator Principles related to environmental impact assessment, which have been adopted by some 80 multinational banks, certainly preclude any investments that violate extant environmental laws (domestic or international), though the record of implementation here is rather spotty and difficult to verify. Banks have a corporate social responsibility to invest resources into the fight against crime, but more importantly they need to stop financing largescale projects that are in essence acts of violence against nature and people. This opens a wide door, of course, and is an imprecise imperative subject to much discussion. But as a 2017 report on organized crime in the southern hemisphere concluded, Laundering the proceeds of, and therefore sustaining, this industry is the global shadow financial system: a vast network of banks, intermediaries, and secrecy jurisdictions around the world that move all forms of illicit money, from the proceeds of tax evasion, to revenue from organized crime, to the resources of terrorist organizations. Increasing financial transparency, especially through the creation of public registries of beneficial ownership information, limiting secrecy jurisdictions, and curtailing trade

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misinvoicing, along with improved information sharing across government agencies, has the potential to significantly shrink all forms of transnational crime simultaneously. (May 2017)

Meanwhile, efforts by the UN to monitor the activities of multinational corporations have a mixed record at best (Sagafi-nejad 2008); earlier efforts to realize the goals of the UN Commission on Transnational Corporations largely sputtered (it was often attached conceptually with the New International Economic Order movement, which called for some redistribution of global wealth, debt relief, commodity price stability, and other measures that would benefit the southern hemisphere, rejected by northern industrial countries). The 2000 Global Compact received great fanfare but no one is under the false impression that it changed much. The jury is still out as to whether the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011 will have a serious and lasting impact (see Ruggie 2015, for an account by the central progenitor of the Principles). The Principles rest on three pillars: 1. The state duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business, through appropriate policies, regulation, and adjudication; 2. An independent corporate responsibility to respect human rights, which means that business enterprises should act with due diligence to avoid infringing on the rights of others and to address adverse impacts with which they are involved; 3. Greater access by victims to effective remedy, judicial and nonjudicial. The pillars are certainly strong ones, of course. A similar set of principles on environmental security, embedding a combination of the interrelated environmental justice and human security concerns discussed throughout this book, would at least set the spotlight firmly on the nexus between corporate decisions and the transmission of transnational ecoviolence. Within the context of climate change and the need for ever-expanding regulatory scope to control greenhouse gas emissions, the practicality of monitoring the activities of multinational corporations will once again be at the center of a diplomatic firestorm.

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INTERPOL and NESTs INTERPOL is a relative newcomer to the world of transnational organized environmental crime. Originally conceived as part of the battle against the rise of anarchist violence in Europe in the late 1800s, INTERPOL has undergone various priority shifts over the past century. Informally, the International Criminal Police Commission began meeting in Vienna in 1923; INTERPOL (the International Criminal Police Organization) was not officially formed until 1946 (see Fooner 1973). Since 1992, and especially from 2008 onward, INTERPOL has played an increasing role in assisting a variety of response agencies to deter, detect, and disrupt environmental crime, with particular emphasis on pollution and wildlife crime. In this time, INTERPOL has acted as a coordinating hub and conduit for building capability and capacity to effectively respond to this crime type, whether domestic or transnational. Despite its global reach and extensive mandate, INTERPOL does not, however, have any policing powers of its own, and it suffers from its own legitimacy issues (this was exacerbated when Meng Hongwei, INTERPOL President from 2016 to 2018, was abducted by Chinese authorities on what many consider fabricated corruption charges).7 Instead, its primary roles lie in coordinating and supporting, and the secure exchange of information through its I-24/7 global police communications system. Any actual or on-the-ground policing and enforcement work is performed collaboratively by staff from member countries individually or in cooperation with other member countries. In 1992, INTERPOL established an Environmental Crime Committee, and in 1993–1994, a Pollution Crime Working Group (PCWG) and a Wildlife Crime Working Group (WCWG). The activities of the two Working Groups were bolstered in 2005 by the secondment of an officer from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and funding provided initially by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and then complemented by funding from Environment Canada and the EPA. From its modest beginnings in 1992, at which time there were only one or two key staff, the INTERPOL Environment section has grown to between 40 and 45 individuals. Whereas the bulk of the early funding (roughly 80%) for its activities came from NGOs, the environment crime 7 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/20/former-interpol-chief-meng-hon gwei-put-on-trial-for-bribery-in-china.

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section now receives over 60% of its funding from governments. In 2008, INTERPOL established a dedicated Environmental Crime Programme (the ECP). The key “streams” at the center of the Environmental Crime Programme are biodiversity (illegal trade in wildlife), natural resources (illegal logging and illegal fishing), and environmental quality (illegal transport and trade in hazardous waste). NGO funding, especially from NGOs such as the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Humane Society International, and the Wildcat Foundation, has played a vital role in expanding INTERPOL’s interest and operations in relation to the illegal wildlife trade. In 2014, the Environmental Crime Committee was evolved into the Environment Compliance and Enforcement Committee. The establishment of this committee represented a significant step up in terms of organizational presence and influence. It coincided with the establishment within INTERPOL of an Environmental Security Sub-Directorate. Both developments, one representational (i.e., member country participation) and the other organizational (i.e., internal deployment of people and resources within INTERPOL), reinvigorated the fight against environmental crime to a strategic level, with various working groups retaining the operational and tactical focus of past practice. INTERPOL’s Working Groups on Wildlife and Fisheries Crime support the creation of channels of communication between member countries and could provide a home for an expanded database of information on transnational organized environmental crime. The role of the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) could also be enhanced. This initiative was launched in 2010 as a collaboration amongst several intergovernmental organizations: CITES, INTERPOL, UNODC, the World Bank, and the World Customs Organization (WCO). Its purpose is to bring coordinated support to the national wildlife law enforcement agencies and to the sub-regional and regional networks. Other existing international institutions and networks could provide interesting models such as the Environmental Network for Optimizing Regulatory Compliance on Illegal Trade (ENFORCE) which was established in 2011 by the eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention. In addition, the role of regional agencies is essential. For instance, EUROPOL, whose mandate includes the fight against different forms of environmental crime, created EnviCrimeNet in 2011. It is an informal network of practitioners sharing information, best practices and methods, and covering wildlife crime as well as pollution crime.

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A concrete example of how effective a role INTERPOL can play is the outcome of Operation Thunderstorm, which targeted illegal wildlife trafficking in 2010; the month-long operation (May 1–31) was coordinated by INTERPOL and the World Customs Organization, with the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime. Thunderstorm involved 92 countries and resulted in close to 2000 seizures of illicit items, including several tons of timber, more than 1200 kgs of raw or processed ivory, and 43 tons of wild meat, including bear, elephant, crocodile, eel, whale, and zebra; 27,000 reptiles, including 869 alligators/crocodiles, 9590 turtles, and 10,000 snakes; and almost 4000 birds, including pelicans, ostriches, bats, parrots, and owls. In Canada, Officers intercepted items such as finished products made of Rosewood, shark fins, controlled snakes, and commercial products such as briefcases and handbags made with endangered species. Canadian authorities detained 18 tonnes of suspected European eel meat arriving from Asia, which is designated as endangered and has been banned for export, by the European Union, since 2010. (Press release: June 20, 2018, https:// www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/news/2018/06/can adas-enforcement-officers-work-with-international-partners-to-combat-wil dlife-crime-and-illegal-trade-of-protected-species.html)

INTERPOL currently has several ongoing projects in collaboration with other agencies and various national governments, and they all have implications for sustainable development initiatives in host countries where environmental crime has become a major burden. Collaboration between the UN Environment Programme and INTERPOL has also resulted in some important research and publications that have contributed immensely to public and policy knowledge on TEC (see Nellemann et al. 2014, 2016; and Nellemann 2012). On-the-ground law enforcement collaboration has also taken place. For example, Project Leaf is devoted to curtailing illegal logging, long associated with organized crime, government corruption, and conflict and discussed in Chapter 5. Project Scale, meanwhile, is focused on illegal fisheries, one of the major contributions to the current oceans crisis discussed in Chapter 4. Project Eden, on the other hand, is designed to limit the illegal trade and disposal of hazardous waste, discussed in Chapter 3: Operation Enigma Phase I targeted the

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movement of electronic waste between Europe and Africa, and Operations Haz and Haz II targeted the illegal transport of waste between the United States and Canada. We isolate two others, Project Wisdom and Project Predator, below. Initially, all of these projects had a core goal of establishing effective National Environmental Security Task Forces (NESTs), which provide direct liaison between national bureaucracies and INTERPOL National Central Bureaus. While these projects have limited resources and influence, they can be seen as foundational to the emergence of a web of regulatory enforcement that is deemed by most observers as highly necessary, if fraught with the usual complications experienced by global governance agencies and national governments (see also Halley and Shearing 2016). At its most basic level, a NEST is a task force of a firmly established team of experts who can work together to address specific issues, comprised of senior criminal investigators, criminal analysts, training officers, prosecutors, financial specialists, forensic experts, and others, drawn from police, customs, environmental and other specialized enforcement agencies, and also involving non-government and regional organizations as appropriate (Fig. 7.1). Alas, the NEST idea might not take root in many places; so far it has failed to gain much traction. As of 2020, the concept has yet to be implemented to any substantive degree. It could be viewed as highly intrusive, cast unwanted light on corruption, and seen as a facile attempt to set up the eventuality of conditional aid or as some sort of standard qualification for foreign funding. And surely so-called developed states—Western industrialized advanced capitalist liberal democracies and or autocracies—need NESTs too? Sovereignty is always a factor in multilateral arrangements. The heart of a polity, many would agree, is the judicial system, and law enforcement is not an issue many government representatives like to see discussed openly with international agencies. The experiences of dealing with structural adjustment programs cannot be a strong incentive to engage in a process that opens government policy to scrutiny, especially if the shadow of corruption is cast over everything a government does.

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Fig. 7.1 National environmental security taskforces (Source Higgins and White [2016], INTERPOL [2014])

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Two Quick Examples: Predator and Wisdom Project Predator was launched in 2011, at the 80th INTERPOL General Assembly in Hanoi, Vietnam. It is focused exclusively on building law enforcement capacity for the conservation of Asian big cats, most notably the tiger. (Notable diplomatic initiatives include the St. Petersburg Tiger Declaration and the Bishkek Declaration on the Conservation of the Snow Leopard.) Though estimates oscillate, wild tiger populations are falling at a precipitous rate, down from over 100,000 at the start of the twentieth century to less than 4000 today—the most recent estimates from the IUCN put it at between 2154 and 3159 across 13 range states (Goodrich et al. 2015). The main threat is habitat destruction; tigers are large carnivores needing abundant prey, and they are highly territorial and need large ranges to survive each other. Poaching, however, remains a serious problem throughout the range states. Predator’s “Operation Prey” of 2013 was conducted across Asian big cat range countries and collectively led to 42 arrests and the seizure of live tigers, tiger and leopard skins and bones, and other protected wildlife and flora products. As with all the INTERPOL projects, Predator seeks the creation of NESTs (see above; this has not materialized in any permanent manner to our knowledge); it also seeks to strengthen SAWEN, the South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network. Its main partners include DEFRA (the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), Environment Canada, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the Smithsonian, USAID, and the Global Tiger Initiative. The latter is an umbrella formed in 2008 by the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility, the Smithsonian, and the Save the Tiger Fund. It is related in turn to the International Tiger Coalition, which is comprised of some 40 NGOs in thirteen tiger range countries; the CITES Secretariat is a formal partner. It is too early to tell whether Predator will prove successful, but it has certainly established an initial credible record as a crime-fighting network. Project Wisdom has an equally, if not more impressive, track record at this early stage, specifically targeting illegal trade in two of the most profitable and highly visible commodities: elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn. These species are both central to the image of CITES as an effective mechanism to control trade. But they also play key roles in ecotourism and scientific research, both components of sustainable development projects across Africa. African elephants are found across 37 range states on that continent. The vexing question of how to reduce the ivory

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trade has been with us for decades, inspiring a long debate over CITES Appendices, the informal market in ivory, the precautionary principle, the preservationist-conservationist divide, and other points of departure (see Stoett 1997b). Project Wisdom operates within the broader context of the African Elephant Action Plan as outlined in the London Declaration of 2014. Two major operations have defined the success of Wisdom so far. Operation Wendi (2013), an INTERPOL-IFAW collaborative effort, was devoted to combating the trafficking in elephant ivory and other illegally traded species in West and Central African countries. Along with 66 arrests, nearly 4000 ivory products and 50 elephant tusks were seized, along with 148 animal parts and derivatives and 88 firearms. Additionally, 222 live animals were released back into the wild. Earlier in 2012, Operation Worthy focused on the illegal trade in elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn in 14 African countries. Seizures included nearly two tons of contraband elephant ivory, more than 20 kg of rhinoceros horn, various other wildlife products, and more than 30 illegal firearms. While it is easy to dismiss these operations as proverbial “drops in the ocean” against the illegal wildlife trade, they can serve as prototypes for future cooperation between governments and international agencies. One of Project Wisdom’s stated goals is to “ensure that assistance delivered contributes to broader civil objectives, including conservation and rule of law”. This broader mandate implies that INTERPOL is moving beyond simply tracking and arresting poachers and traders and into the more controversial area of national legal development. This will be the ultimate test of whether INTERPOL can play a supporting role in sustainable development initiatives by contributing to the fight against illegal trafficking in endangered species through Wisdom, Predator, and its other target projects. A robust research agenda is necessary to delve into the impact these operations are having on local communities on the ground in Africa and Asia; their impact so far on legal infrastructure development and the adoption of germane technology; and their collaboration with other agencies, national and international, working in conservation and development. A familiar lament will be heard among conservation biologists and local community leaders engaged in CITES-related activities: both Predator and Wisdom, built on the foundation of Western involvement and fundraising initiatives, can be seen as reflections of a “first-world” agenda,

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devoted to the conservation of the typically framed charismatic megavertebrates that so often drive campaigns originating in the United States and Europe, and challenging the legal autonomy of select African and Asian states. No doubt, tigers, elephants, and rhinos are three of the iconic species of conservation today (and have been for the past several decades), but focusing on one iconic species, even a keystone species, devalues the importance of taking an ecosystems (including socio-ecological systems) approach. Operations Leaf, Scale, and Eden represent broader efforts at habitat conservation and inject a much-needed ecosystemic perspective into antiTEC operations. And there is a practical bent to this preference: it is quite beyond the scope of INTERPOL or any other agency such as UNDOC to focus separate energy on all the species listed in Appendix I of CITES. So while Predator and Wisdom may serve as specific cases, they might not be seen as a useful reference point for future action by conservationists. It is possible that similar consortium-inspired collaborative operations will form for other species that generate concern and dollars, including other great cats, primates, and marine species, but most scientists and community leaders tend to view the problems associated with species decline in a much broader manner, and the popularity of the One Health concept, promoted formally by the CBD, attests to this (see WHO-CBD 2015). It can be argued that the prevalence of ecoviolence in many areas necessitates its thematic inclusion in any habitat conservation effort, and that the complex links between environmental crime and human and livestock disease are especially worthy of exploration and action. Should they actually gain traction in political terms, NESTs should pursue these discussions at various levels, including the local input of citizens in rural and urban areas.

International Courts, Real and Imagined International criminal law (which can entail the prosecution of individuals) has evolved considerably over the past several decades. Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court, also criminalizes, as a war crime in international armed conflict, “[i]ntentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause … widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated”. As Mark

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Drumbl notes, “other war crimes in the Rome Statute could incidentally address environmental harms. Examples include article 8(2)(a)(iv) (prohibiting extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out wantonly and unlawfully), article 8(2)(b)(xvii) (prohibiting the use of poison and poisoned weapons), and article 8(2)(b)(xviii) (prohibiting the employment of asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases). These, however, are not environmental crimes stricto sensu but are “anthropocentric”—that is, they criminalize things or practices that principally are inhumane and only incidentally have devastating effects on the environment” (Drumbl 2009: 9). The ICC has not taken on environmental destruction as a crime at this point. However, on September 15, 2016, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda published a Policy Paper announcing a shift in focus toward assessing crimes that result in “the destruction of the environment or of protected objects”.8 There has been some confusion about this: while the Policy Paper does indicate a willingness to investigate crimes that are related to ecocide or land grabs (which we discussed in Chapter 6), the ICC is “not expanding the number of core crimes it will prosecute. Thus, any case brought before the ICC must still constitute a violation of one of the four existing crimes within the ICC’s jurisdiction” (Durney 2018: 415) which include genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes of aggression. It is conceivable, even without the expanded priorities introduced in 2015, that an individual could be charged with crimes against humanity if they purposefully destroyed the natural environment (i.e., engaged in ecocide) to harm a specific group (Megret 2011; Durney 2018). The Special Tribunal for the Charles Taylor trial referred specifically to pillage in the list of indictments, since the illegal timber trade played a key role in financing his bloody intervention in Sierra Leone, though this jurisprudence took place outside the ICC context. Durney looks at the cases of the Rohingya expulsion from Myanmar and land grabs in Cambodia, concluding that: 8 OFFICE OF THE PROSECUTOR, POLICY PAPER ON CASE SELECTION AND PRIORITISATION, para. 40 (hereinafter “2016 Policy Paper”): https://www.icc-cpi. int/itemsDocuments/20160915_OTP-Policy_Case-Selection_Eng.pdf [https://perma. cc/UY3N-C62R]. The paper actually says that “The Office will also seek to cooperate and provide assistance to States, upon request, with respect to conduct which constitutes a serious crime under national law, such as the illegal exploitation of natural resources, arms trafficking, human trafficking, terrorism, financial crimes, land grabbing or the destruction of the environment.”

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For both the Rohingya crisis and the Cambodian land grab crisis, the actions against the environment—whether in targeted burning and destruction of land as an “extermination”, or the “deportation” of Cambodian citizens under threat of force—were used in tandem with other extreme tactics to either target a specific group or the general civilian population … these cases stand as possible ICC investigations in light of the recent Policy Paper’s intended shift to prosecuting crimes “committed by means of, or that result in, inter alia, the destruction of the environment, the illegal exploitation of natural resources or the illegal dispossession of land. (Durney 2018: 428)

However, it is highly unlikely that the ICC will habitually assume responsibility for prosecuting ecocide as a crime, and calls for the ICC to assume responsibility for corporate criminality are equally problematic (see Kremnitzer 2010); it may well be that there will be limited opportunities to integrate environmental concerns with international criminal law in the future. And of course the ICC has its own limitations: a virtual Security Council veto on specific cases, an overloaded set of extant demands, and limitations on funding and time. The International Court of Justice, also located in The Hague, Netherlands, has an equally limited mandate: it can only try cases if and when states request it to do so. A well-publicized case (Australia/New Zealand vs. Japan) on southern ocean “scientific whaling” is exemplary: Australia (and later New Zealand) and Japan both had to agree that the ICJ should look at the case, which essentially charged that Japan was whaling illegally in the southern ocean—in contravention of the International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling, which permits genuine “scientific whaling”; the Court decided against Japan on the basis not that whaling or even whaling for science was against international norms, but that Japan was not conducting Convention-regulated scientific whaling but was in fact running a small commercial whaling operation.9 Japan agreed to adhere to the decision, though it has since left the International Whaling Commission and has resumed small-scale commercial whaling within its own exclusive economic zone. But as in keeping with ICJ’s mandate, no individuals were charged with any form of crime, and no sanctions have been placed on Japan despite decades of misconduct. 9 Reference here is to the International Convention on the Regulations of Whaling of 1946, which created the International Whaling Commission. See Stoett (1997a), Fitzmaurice (2018).

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The ICJ offers no hope as a venue to pursue transnational environmental crime other than when the alleged crime is in contravention of a treaty or border dispute, though it can be (and often has been) called on to provide advisory opinions. The Court has issued multiple advisory opinions in the past, and it would be of benefit if the court were required to offer an opinion on the legal responsibility of industrialized states to reduce carbon emissions, for example (see Chapter 6). Small island states face an existential threat from rising sea levels (and many other problems related to climate change): the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has attempted to at least get an advisory opinion from the ICJ, but this has yet to move forth despite a relatively low bar (the threshold established for such an action involves either an authorized UN organ such as the Security Council or a simple majority of the General Assembly—UN Charter Article 96). Some analysts have suggested the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea would be a more realistic venue at this time (ITLOS Rule 138; see Gerrard and Wannier 2013). Others have suggested that the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage offers “an opportunity to start putting in place a facility for loss and damage finance under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” (Wewerinke-Singh and Salili 2019). By default, then, the establishment of a new world court mandated specifically by the UNGA to pursue charges of transnational environmental crime or ecoviolence would seem the only way forward here, even if it is not going to happen any time soon. But we need not couch this in such negative terms: it could be seen as a monumental step forward for both international law and environmental governance. This enticing possibility, in myriad forms, has been debated by scholars and jurists for decades (see Hey 2000; Hinde 2003; Westra 2004; Pederson 2012). An example of such an ideal vision would involve a permanent court, with universal jurisdiction, with reliable funding. Some have even suggested the construction of a court which will also be able to act preventively, by rendering preliminary measures … It will provide services of arbitration and advisory opinions … it will respond to requests of preliminary ruling by national courts, according to the successful example of the European Court of Justice. Civil remedies shall include interlocutory or perpetual injunction. The court will be able to issue orders for redress of an injured individual, for payment of the cost for the restoration of the damaged environment, or for payment into a World Environmental Fund. The UN Security Council will be entrusted with enforcement of the judgments. (Avgerinopoulou 2003: 16)

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This is what some would refer to as a wish list—one that would not have a remote chance of realization given the reluctance of governments to sacrifice sovereignty (the idea of a court able to pronounce a “perpetual injunction” is quite remarkable) and make commitments that could limit their ability to utilize natural resources. Even the ICC, which was quite a step forward for international criminal law, has come up against hard limits and lacks the support from the most powerful states that it would need to broaden its impact (it has also been accused of being a neo-colonial instrument unfairly targeting African governments, and of harming the peace process in several ongoing conflicts, but that is another set of issues). And the ICC had dedicated champions fighting for it (and a Democrat, Bill Clinton, in the White House). It is highly unlikely that the United States, China, or Russia—all permanent members of the Security Council, who would essentially have a veto on establishing such a court, and all of whom refuse to sign on the International Criminal Court—would support a robust international court for the environment as described above; the larger countries in the southern hemisphere, especially Brazil and India, are currently dedicated to the deregulation of environmental law and policy. As a first step, developing, signing, and ratifying a special protocol for the UNTOC would open room for governments to selectively apply universal jurisdiction in their own countries and try people accused of crimes against the environment, or to extradite the accused back to their home countries. There is also a growing body of case law on the international governmental level that can apply to environmental crime; as Durney writes, “three international human rights tribunals—the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the European Court on Human Rights, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights … have all started incorporating environmental damage into considerations of human rights violations. The African Commission in particular has adopted enumerated protections for the people regarding the environment. The European Court and the Inter-American Commission have used similar human rights protections to the Rome Statute and broadened their interpretation to incorporate environmental harms into the analysis” (2018: 419). Advancing domestic acceptance of an expanded UNTOC and supporting the work of regional tribunals (or, perhaps, regional tribunals specifically devoted to transnational ecoviolence) would seem the most feasible paths to take at the present and would not preclude future efforts to establish an actual court of international environmental

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justice once a more favorable (indeed, less openly hostile) political environment is formed. Given the gravity of transnational ecoviolence, and the forces amassed against it, this is not chimerical. But it will be a rough road ahead, and an empty one if we rely entirely on international institutions and courts to solve the problems outlined in this book. And any concerted effort to establish a stronger international regime would need to address the question of how to redress the victims of transnational ecoviolence (see Hall 2013a, b, 2014; Skinnider 2011). Problematically, some of those victims will be entire communities harmed by climate crimes, and this will be a highly contentious area of law in the future.

Earth Jurisprudence A more robust approach to fighting ecoviolence involves changing the prevalent mind-set that narrates the human-nature relationship. It’s fairly clear that the market liberal approach to nature dominates today: a utilitarian perspective that sees nature largely as a resource bank, or perhaps as a life support system, for the human race, and as fuel for the processes of global capitalist accumulation and production. Nature has no rights, since it can be owned like any material good; its owners have rights, but that is not the same thing at all. Earth Jurisprudence is an effort, in its infancy at the present, but based on much older traditions of thought that precede the development of global capitalism and the modern state, to change this ontology. Many authors have advocated some version of “wild law” or “earth law” (see Burdon 2011; Cullinan 2003; Humphreys 2016; Koons 2012) and argued that legal systems should be constructed accordingly. But many indigenous perspectives also place nature at the center of life, and this was reflected in the Bolivian Law of Mother Earth (“Ley de Derechos de La Madre Tierra”) adapted in by the Bolivian Plurinational Legislative Assembly in late 2010 after a large international gathering in that country, and which draws on Andean spiritual traditions seeing Mother Earth (or Pachamama) as a sacred deity, and entitles nature with rights as a collective subject of interest …. [it] aims at preventing “human activities causing the extinction of living populations, the alterations of the cycles and processes that ensure life, or the destruction of livelihoods, including cultural systems that are part of Mother Earth” (Article 8); while people, and public and private

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legal entities, have the duty to “uphold and respect the rights of Mother Earth” (Article 9). Similarly, by granting legal status to the Whanganui River, New Zealand found an innovative way to honour and respect the Maori traditional worldview of nature as “an indivisible and living whole”. (Coscieme et al. 2020: 40; see also Hutchinson 2014)

Ecuador has also led the way in the application of these rights. Between 2011 and 2019, 32 trials were conducted in the interests of elements of nature, sometimes by civil society, sometimes by the state itself, and 25 were ruled in nature’s favor (Derechos de la Naturaleza 2019: https:// www.derechosdelanaturaleza.org.ec/). In March 2017, a court in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand granted the Ganges and Yamuna rivers the same legal rights as human beings (Safi 2017).10 One of the central animating ideas behind Earth Jurisprudence is that nature (and even specific ecosystems) should have inherent rights, and not just the right to exist presently, but the right to maintain healthy ecosystems and to exist in the future. Adopting this approach would mean that both formal and informal environmental crimes and all forms of ecoviolence are, inherently, violations of those rights, and individuals (not just poachers, or illegal miners or foresters or fishers, but anyone benefiting financially along the supply chain) should be charged accordingly. This does not exclude corporations or even governments. Some green criminology research is beginning to explore Earth Jurisprudence as a viable framework for analysis; for example, Lampkin and Wyatt offer a nicely constructed case study of unconventional hydraulic fracturing for shale gas in the United Kingdom (Lampkin and Wyatt 2019). We are not at the point where this approach has been widely applied in a transnational context, crossing borders in its application, though the Ecuadorian context is very complicated and clearly transnational, as indicated in our discussion in Chapter 3 on Chevron’s legal actions. While earth law initiatives are making headway at the municipal level, and there are visible shades of its precepts in European Union law and elsewhere, including the United Nations’ ambitious if still rather obscure “Harmony With Nature” programme (http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/env

10 See also the work of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance, which has been pushing for greater acceptance of Earth Jurisprudence for nearly a decade: https://www.earthlaws. org.au/.

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ironmentalProvisions/), it is not even on the radar screen of most transnational corporations and has received scant attention in international law circles, let alone in INTERPOL projects or other efforts to combat environmental crime. It is of course very difficult to entertain the notion that the IJC or the ICC will serve as a receptive cultural reference point or a magnetic source of legal authority which actively espouses Earth Jurisprudence. Perhaps the best one can hope for at this historical juncture is that those operating within this jurisprudential orbit are educated about transnational ecoviolence and the need to comprehend the environment as an ally, and not an enemy or simple utility, in the quest for collective survival. But could a new court, forged out of genuine concern for the immense threats to security and other risks posed by the climate, biodiversity, oceans, and other interconnected crises, adopt such a legal perspective from its point of origin? From its very inception? It would be nice to see this development, given the stakes involved, but if the court simply replicates the inter-state system in all of its current arrangements and trappings, it is difficult to see how this would indeed be a progressive development. And if such a legal movement is not matched with genuine efforts to conserve ecosystems and to promote the human security of the indigenous peoples whose wisdom animates it, then it is an empty shell. But this should not deter us from trying to reimagine the human-nature relationship in the anthropocene. On the contrary, we ignore serious efforts to move toward Earth Jurisprudence at our collective peril.

Conclusion There have been many responses to both formal and informal environmental crime and transnational ecoviolence and we have only touched on a few in this book and in this concluding chapter. Many of them have been tried and tested over the preceding century, while others are relatively immature and the jury is still out regarding their effectiveness. Some spheres of transnational ecoviolence, such as the illegal wildlife trade, have received quite a bit of attention in recent decades, owing primarily to Western public opinion, but it is fair to say that none of them have been treated with the seriousness their impact, both human and ecological, demands. This is, certainly and thankfully, starting to change.

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Governments have a principal role to play, not only in constructing regulatory regimes and enforcement measures, but in mitigating corruption, educating the public, and protecting defenders of the environment instead of persecuting them. The marketplace is also significant: consumer behavior will influence market dynamics and can discourage ecoviolence through the intelligent design of certification programs, though there are frequent lapses in our knowledge of the supply chain. Corporations have responsibilities: their actions on the international stage should be no less prone to critical evaluation (and where necessary condemnation and legal punishment) as their domestic behavior. Multilateral agreements continue to set the context for domestic environmental law and can influence the formation of international norms, though it would be chimerical to expect them to form a cohesive form of global governance that has immediate effect. Global policing is changing with time and technology, but lacks enforcement powers; it is more effective when it works with national governments and civil society groups to pursue the perpetrators of transnational ecoviolence, though there are limits to how much obtrusion governments and politicians will accept; thus, INTERPOL’s various projects (Scale, Eden, Wisdom, Predator, and Leaf) have seen early successes, but the NEST conception—embedding INTERPOL expertise in state legal system—has gained little traction. International courts also have limited impact, though there are potential avenues to have more court involvement and, in the long run, the need for an international environmental court might well outweigh the pronounced opposition to international law in some political circles. Finally, we examined Earth Jurisprudence as a deeper reform that might give nature a fighting chance by nudging governments toward the legal recognition of her inherent rights; no one is under the illusion that this would stop illegal fishing, wildlife trade, mining, forestry, pollution, or other spheres of transnational ecoviolence any time soon, but conceptualizing a seismic shift in the normative context is the first step toward its acceptance as a possibility. There is, obviously, much work to be done. The reader is strongly encouraged to delve further into the methods that can be employed in the fight against the many forms of violence against nature that continue to shape the dangerous anthropocene we have entered in recent decades. There are endless opportunities to make a difference and contribute to fashioning a better future. Of one thing we are sure: a more humane and sustainable global political economy would be buttressed by the common

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acceptance of human security and rights and environmental justice as cornerstones of the development of human society.

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Index

A Acidification, 104, 105, 112, 169 Adaptation, 4, 32, 158, 164, 167, 175, 179 Afghanistan, 14 Agency for the Supervision of Forest Resources, 141 Agreement Relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, 215 Ahimsa, 133 Alcoa, 16 Angola, 53 Animal food, consumers, 47, 48 Animal welfare, 12, 21 Anomie, 27, 94 Antarctic Treaty, 215 Anthropocene, 5, 21, 136, 234, 235 Anthropocentric, 9, 48, 49, 61, 129, 133, 137, 165, 228 Apam, 117 “Appalachian Outlaws”, 139 Aquaculture, 104, 110, 111, 116, 169 Aquatic invasive alien species, 104

Argentina, 87, 91, 177 “Artificial propagation”, 130 Asia Regional Partners’ Forum on Combating Environmental Crime (ARPEC), 217 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 86, 217 “Atmospheric justice”, 160 Australia, 110, 180–184, 213, 229 ‘Automatic Identification Systems’, 106 Aviation Carbon Exchange, 157 ‘Avocado Republics’, 143, 144 Axim, 117 B Basel Action Network (BAN), 80 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes (Basel Convention), 32, 76–78, 80, 81, 83, 215, 216, 221 Bauxite, 177 Belfast, 92 Berlin, 56

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 P. Stoett and D. A. Omrow, Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58561-7

291

292

INDEX

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs), 74, 86, 95 Bio-apartheid, 18 Bio-assault, 11 Biodiversity, loss of, 2, 18, 23, 27, 128, 142, 156 Bio-invasion, 11 Biology, 4, 134, 163 Biosphere, 2, 136, 195 Biotechnology, 134 Bird mules, 62, 63 “Bird racing”, 61, 62 Bitcoin, 44 Black-bellied pangolin, 56 “Black fishing”, 121 Blockchain technology, 210 Blood diamonds, 176, 177 Bolivia, 91, 134, 177 Bosnia and Herzegovina, 14 botanical gardens, 127 Botswana, 53 Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), 158 British Columbia, 81 British Petroleum, 16 Bureau of Meteorology, 181 Burma, 16, 128 “Business-as-usual”, 162 By-catch, 45, 46, 112

C Cacti, 128, 132 Ariocarpus, 128 California, 81, 82, 138, 139 California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), 138, 139 California Native Plant Society, 138 Cameroon, 52, 56 Camorra family, Italy, 85 Campania region, Italy, 86 Canned hunting industry, 49

Cap-and-trade system, 167 “Carbon colonialism”, 174 ‘Carbon criminals’, 169, 174 Carbon-dependent companies, 167 Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), 158 Caribbean diaspora, 61, 62 Caserta, Italy, 85 “Catastrophic convergence”, 168 Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), 141 CFC-11, 172–174 Chestnut-bellied (Sporophila angolensis) Seed-Finches, 60, 63 Chevron Corporation, 88, 89, 92, 95 Chiapas, 16 Chile, 177 Chile sandalwood, 137 China, 2, 128 Chinese pangolin, 56 Chitwan National Park, 210 Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), 172 Christmas tree farms, 158 Chronic Inc., 79, 80 Clean Development Mechanism, 158, 176 Clean Water Act, 81 Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (CAIT), 171 Climate change, and crime, 2, 10, 159, 178, 180, 181 ‘Climate divide’, 169 Climate justice, 27, 156, 158, 160, 161, 195, 196 “Climate vulnerability”, 168 Cobalt, 177 Colombia, 94 Combating Wildlife Trafficking Program (CWT), 130 Commercial harvesters, 45, 46

INDEX

Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), 51 Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE), 53 Community-owned conservation area (C.O.C.A.), 62 Community security, 23, 59, 63, 94, 142, 147, 179, 184 Comprehensive Conception of Violence (CCV), 8 Comprehensive Trade and Economic Agreement (CETA), 87 Conference on War and National Responsibility, 165 Conflict minerals, 174, 176 Congo Basin Forest Partnership, 217 Conservation, 4, 15, 16, 19, 20, 43, 46, 47, 51–53, 57, 58, 60, 62, 107, 108, 129, 130, 138–140, 174, 176–178, 202–205, 212, 225–227 Conservation International-Guyana (CIG), 62 Construction material, consumers, 47, 48 Consumer behavior, 198, 235 Consumption, 2, 42, 74, 111, 112, 133, 143, 146, 163, 166, 172, 176, 201 Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), 212–214, 216, 217, 231 Convention for Prevention of Maritime Pollution by Dumping Wastes and Other Matters, 215 Convention on Biological Diversity, 177, 215 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), 42–44, 49–52, 56, 58, 61, 109, 130,

293

131, 200, 210, 215, 216, 221, 225–227 Convention on Migratory Species, 216 Convention on the Law of the Sea, 215 Convention on the Regulation of Whaling, 215, 229 Convention to Combat Desertification and Land Degradation (UNCCD), 215 Copernicus satellite monitoring system, 179 Copper, 77, 176 Corporate-facilitated state crime, 170 Corporate-initiated state crime, 170 Corrosivity, hazardous waste, 76 Cote D’Ivoire, 15 COVID-19, novel coronavirus, 2, 21, 24, 42, 55, 86, 186, 217 Crawley, 160 Criminology, 3, 5, 26, 149, 211 Crude Malthusianism, 10 Crustaceans, 108 Crypto-currencies, 44, 209 Cultural, consumers, 47, 48 Cultural Transmission, 27 Cycads, 132 Cyclone Nigris, 16 D Dakota Access pipeline, 206 Dalian Mengxin Ocean Fisheries, 118 Dark web/darknet, 44, 209 Darwinism, and social Darwinism, 10, 11 Declaration of the United for Wildlife International Taskforce on the Transportation of Illegal Wildlife Products, 52, 57 Deep ecology, 20 “Defeat devices”, 155

294

INDEX

Democratic Republic of the Congo, 177 Department for Environmental Law and Conventions (DELC), 215 Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 130, 225 Depleted uranium, 14 Diamondback terrapins, 54 Differential Association, 27 Digitalization, 42, 44, 47, 128, 209, 210 Discrimination, 15, 18, 19, 23 DNA tracking, 208 Driftnets, 105 Drivers, 29, 41, 43, 55–57, 61, 64, 89, 110, 138, 139, 148 Dudleya, 137–139, 145 Dudleya verityi, 139

E Earth jurisprudence, 3, 135, 232–235 Eastern box turtles, 54 Echinoderms, 108 Ecocentric, 9, 28, 30, 133, 135, 165 Ecocentrism, 133, 135 Ecocide, 12–14, 93, 94, 137, 164, 165, 172, 195, 199, 228, 229 Eco-conflict, 6, 11 Eco-global criminology, 4 Ecological disorganization, 94 Ecological justice, 48 Ecological sabotage, 12, 13, 164, 166, 167 Eco-Mafia, 74, 84, 85 Economic security, 23, 43, 92, 93, 142, 146, 179, 182, 183 Ecopolitics, 5, 20 “Ecosabotage”, 166 Eco-scarcity, 11 Ecuador, 88–94, 134, 233 “Egg smuggling mafia”, 58

El Dorado, 83, 84 Elephants, 6, 24, 129, 199, 222, 225–227 Elmina port, 116 ‘Empty forest syndrome’, 60 Encrypted online communications, 44 Endangered Species Act, 130 England, 160 “Environmental defenders”, 205 ‘Environmental refugees’, 86 Environmental equity, 18 Environmental Investigation Agency’s (EIA), 44, 56, 172, 173, 200 Environmental Justice, 3, 13, 16–22, 24, 26, 29, 30, 33, 41, 48, 53–55, 57, 60, 62, 73–75, 81, 83, 84, 88, 90, 91, 96, 106, 109, 110, 113, 116, 120, 122, 139–141, 144, 145, 156, 159, 174, 178, 182, 185, 186, 195, 208, 219, 232 Environmental Law Institute, 200 Environmentally induced conflict, 9 Environmental science, 3 Environmental security, 5, 10, 16, 23, 27, 28, 59, 63, 64, 85, 86, 93, 136, 142, 147, 157, 183, 206, 219, 221 Environmental victimology, 4 Environment Canada, 139, 140, 220, 225 Equatorial rainforests, 141 Erosion control, 139 Ethnic conflict, 23, 59, 63 EU-Canada Comprehensive Trade and Economic Agreement (CETA), 87 EU Trade in Wildlife Information Exchange (EU-TWIX), 217 Excess sediment, 142 Exclusive economic zones (EEZs), 106, 229

INDEX

Exotic pets, 49, 55 Exploitation, and super exploitation, 2, 3, 9, 15, 16, 21, 29, 43, 53, 64, 74, 86, 122, 132, 196, 198, 199 Externality costs, 8 “Extinction debt”, 135 Exxon Mobil, 16 F Facebook, 44 “Fat plant”, 138 Fauna, 32, 44, 93, 135, 139 Faunal bias, 130 Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), 81 Fertilizer fish, 110 Fiat Chrysler, 156 Fisheries. Illegal, 5, 24, 32, 109, 110, 113, 116, 211, 222 Fishmeal and fish oil (FMFO), industry, 111, 112 “Flight shaming”, 158 Flora, 32, 61, 93, 127, 129, 130, 132–139, 148, 225 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 107, 113 Food, consumers, 48, 55, 56, 135 Food security, 23, 43, 58, 59, 63, 92, 93, 142, 146, 156, 179, 183 Forage fish, 113, 114 Ford, 156 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), 86, 89 Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Facility (FLEGT), 132 Forest Transport Permits, 141 Forum non conveniens (FNC), 88 Foucault, Michel, 8 Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), 143 Fuel, consumers, 47, 48

295

G Galtung, Johanne, 14, 15, 75 Gambia, West Africa, 111, 112, 118 Gatwick airport, 160 Gender-based violence, 15 Gene Technology Act (2004), 134 Geocide, 165 Geo-economy, 89, 90 Ghana, 15, 116–120, 177 “Ghost recoveries”, 86 Giant ground pangolin, 56 Gift, consumers, 48 Gigagrams, 173 Ginseng, 139–141 “Ginsenging”, 140 Glaciology, 163 Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, 135 Global Environment Facility (GEF), 218, 225 Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 16 Global warming, 21, 104, 105, 136, 163, 164, 166, 168, 171, 173, 177, 186 Global Wildlife Program, 129 Global Witness Report, 205, 207 Goal Attainment, 27 Government colluders, 46, 47, 60, 64 Gray Whale, 105 Great Barrier Reef, 104 “Green” conditionalities, 62 Green criminology, 4, 5, 22, 133, 165 “Green gold”, 144–146 Greenhouse gas emissions, 13, 105, 158, 166, 171, 172, 176, 178, 182, 184, 219 Greenpeace, 200 Green Resources, corporation, 175 Groundwater pollution, 76, 85, 177 Guatemala, 177, 205

296

INDEX

Guias de Transporte Forestal (GTFs), 141 Guinea, 118, 177 Gulf of Aden, 110 Gulf of Guinea, 110 Guyana, 60–64

H Harvester, 45, 46, 55, 58, 61–63 Hazardous waste, 14, 18, 27, 31, 32, 65, 73–86, 90, 92, 94–96, 110, 158, 204, 221, 222 HazMatMapper, 83 HCFC-141b, 173 Health security, 23, 59, 63, 64, 93, 142, 147, 179, 183 Hen Mpoano, 117, 119 Hinduism, 133 Homer-Dixon, Thomas, 2, 6, 11, 14, 19, 161 Homosapiens, 2 Hong Kong, 54, 55, 80, 207 Horn of Africa, 110 Horticultural trade, 128, 132 Huanaco, 141 Human geography, 3 Human rights, 3, 13, 20, 21, 23, 60, 64, 75, 115, 116, 143, 144, 147, 148, 161, 175, 176, 184, 196, 200, 203–205, 219, 231 Human security, 3, 5, 6, 13, 16, 21–23, 28–30, 33, 41, 53–55, 58, 60, 63, 73–76, 84–86, 88, 92–94, 96, 106, 109, 113, 116, 120, 122, 131, 141, 142, 144, 146, 147, 157, 161, 174, 175, 178, 182, 186, 195, 204, 206, 208, 209, 211, 219, 234 Hyacinth macaws, 58–60, 64 Hydrology, 163 Hypoxia, 104

I Ice plant, 139 Ignitability, hazardous waste, 76 Illegal logging, 25, 26, 132, 141, 142, 204, 221, 222 Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU fishing), 32, 107–113, 115, 116, 121 Illegal wildlife trade (IWT), 2, 24, 32, 41–57, 59–64, 129, 130, 204, 212, 216, 217, 221, 226, 234 Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund, 130 Impact, 1, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 27, 32, 41, 42, 48, 53, 54, 57, 59, 75, 87, 93, 96, 110, 119, 128, 130, 136, 142, 146, 149, 156, 157, 160, 163, 165–168, 173, 174, 177–179, 183, 197, 198, 209, 214, 218, 219, 226, 231, 234, 235 Imperialism, 9, 19, 201 Indian Ocean, 106, 110 Indian pangolin, 56 Indigenous peoples, 20, 21, 26, 53, 56, 62, 73, 88, 90–92, 128, 178, 204–206, 209 Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs), 52, 53, 57, 58, 62 Indonesia, 128 Industrial Revolution, 163, 164 Infectious diseases, 2, 21, 27, 41, 42, 93, 179 Instrumental violence, 9 Intergenerational justice, 18, 20, 30, 185 Intergovernmental organizations, 43, 74, 221 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2, 156, 157, 161–164, 167, 168

INDEX

Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), 136 Intermediary, 45, 46 Internal colonialism, 18 International Air Transport Association (IATA), 52, 157 International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), 158 International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC), 44, 131, 221, 222 International Court of Justice, 229, 230 International Criminal Court, 227, 229 International Fishmeal and Fishoil Organization (IFFO), 112 International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), 61, 200, 220, 221, 225 International Investment Agreements (IIAs), 86, 87 International Law, 3, 14, 29, 73, 107, 108, 132, 165, 195, 216, 230, 234, 235 International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 61 Internet commerce, 128 INTERPOL, 106, 131, 157, 195, 209, 220–222, 225–227, 234, 235 Project LEAF, 131 Project Scale, 121 Interspecies justice, 18 Invasive alien species (IAS), 41, 59, 63, 128, 136 Invertebrates, 108, 113 Investment, consumer, 47, 48 Investment Court System, 87 Investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS), 74, 86–95

297

Iraq, Gulf war, 14 Ivory carvings, 47 Ivory Sampling, 44

J Jainism, 133 Jalisco New Generation Cartel, 144, 147 Joint Implementation, 158 Juvenile fish, 117

K Kenya, 137 Knights Templar gang, 144, 147 Kuwait, and liberation, 14 Kyoto Protocol, 13, 166, 176, 215

L LAC countries, 90, 91 Lacey Act, 129 Lago Agrio, 88, 94, 95 “Land grabs”, 28, 174, 178, 228 “Land of Fires”, 85 Large-billed (Sporophila crassirostris) Seed-Fnches, 60, 63 Large-scale fishing, 110 Latin America, 87, 90, 94, 203 Launderers, 46, 47, 108 Lauraceae, 143 Law of the Sea, 107, 230 Lead, 16, 21, 24, 28, 30, 42, 53, 59, 60, 64, 75, 77, 79, 83, 85, 93, 104, 115, 135, 137, 162, 164, 165, 168, 172, 176, 179, 183, 186, 196, 197, 204 “Legal fictions”, 169 Legal Doctrine, 27 LGBTQ community, 205 Limbe, 52 Lithium, 177

298

INDEX

“Living dead”, 137 Local guides, 45, 46 Logging, illegal, 131, 132. See also deforestation, timber crime Logisticians, 46, 47 London Conference on Illegal Wildlife, 43 Lynch, M., 27, 29, 79, 94, 163, 208 M Malaysia, 54, 81, 95 Malthusianism, 10 Manganese, 177 Manila, 80, 81 Marine Harvest, 16 Marine Ingredients Organization, 112 Marxism, 3, 29 Mcdonald’s, 16 Medicinal, 42, 43, 47, 55, 56, 130, 135, 139 Medicinal and aromatic plant species (MAP species), 129 Mega-Regional Trade Agreements, 86 Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC), 62 Mexico, 16, 51, 83, 91, 94, 128, 143–148, 175 Michoacán, 143–148, 204 Militarization, 53, 203 Military juntas, 205 Minimalist Conception of Violence (MCV), 8 Missouri, 82 Mitigation, 27, 32, 160, 164, 167, 175, 176, 206 Mollusks, 108 Monsanto, 16 Montevideo Programme, 215 Montreal Protocol, 172, 173, 215 Mozambique, 53, 175 Multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), 50, 195, 215

Multilateral Environmental Agreements Regional Enforcement Network (MEA-REN), 217 Multinational corporations, 20, 74, 79, 87–90, 93, 219 Myanmar, 16, 115, 228 N Nagoya Protocol, 26 Namibia, 53 Narco-regimes, 205 National Fisheries Association of Ghana (NAFAG), 120 National Parks, 141 Natural resource management, 52 Natural resources, as causes of conflict, 2, 6, 11, 20, 30, 42, 74, 90, 107, 131, 136, 142, 143, 215, 221, 231 Nature, rights of, 3, 14, 24, 134 Neo-earth religion, 135 Neoliberal capitalism, 74, 162 Neoliberalism, 4, 211 Nickel, 176, 177 Nigeria, 56, 57, 92 Ninoy Aquino International Airport, 54 Nitrogen, 104, 183 Non-timber forest resources, 129 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 16, 83 North American Wildlife Enforcement Group (NAWEG), 51 North Dakota, 207 Norway, 121 Not In My Backyard (NIMBY), Nimbyism, 96 O Oceanography, 163 Oceans, in crisis, 2, 222

INDEX

“Offsetting benefits”, 171 Ontario, 54, 80, 139 Open Data Kits (ODKs), 210 Operation Amazonas II, 131 Operation G-Bird, 61 Operation Log, 131 Operation Putumayo, 131 Opportunist harvesters, 45 Orangutans, 49 Organismo de Supervisión de los Recursos Forestales (OSINFOR), 141 Ornamental, consumers, 47, 55, 56, 58, 132 Ozone-Depleting Substances (ODS), 25, 173 Ozone layer depletion, 2

P Pangolins, 42, 47, 55–58, 64, 129 Papua New Guinea, 128 Paris Accord, 13, 156 Pelagic fish, 105, 113 Permanent Court of Arbitration, 88, 94 Perpetrators, 44, 45, 172, 235 Personal security, 23, 59, 63, 113, 147, 179 Peru, 91, 115, 141–143 Petri-dish Ethics, 11 Philippine pangolin, 56 Philippines, 80, 81, 115, 205, 207 Pholidota, 56 Phosphorus, 104 Plankton, 104, 113, 168 “Plant blindness”, 129, 130, 148 Plant neurobiology, 134 Plant rights, 133, 134 Poaching, and poachers, 6, 43, 47, 52, 54, 59, 60, 131, 132, 138–140, 199, 200, 203, 204, 213, 225

299

Poison-for-cash industries, 80 Political ecology, 5, 19, 30 Political geography, 5, 9, 41 Political science, 3–5 Political security, 23, 60, 64, 94, 95, 142, 143, 147, 148, 179, 184 Portal sites, 44 Post-conflict and Disaster Management Branch, 14 Predicate offenses, 43 Pressures, 2, 6, 41, 59, 81, 94, 128, 147 Processors, 46, 47, 121 Project Leaf, 222 Project Predator, 223, 225 Project Scale, 106, 222 Project Wisdom, 223, 225, 226 Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, their Parts and Components and Ammunition, 214 Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, 214 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, 214 Q Queens, New York, 61, 62 Quiet institutional violence, 16, 86 R Racism, and environmental justice, 18, 19, 21, 91 Rainforests, 17, 88, 91 Reactionary harvesters, 45, 46 Reactivity, hazardous waste, 76 Recreational, consumers, 47, 48

300

INDEX

Recreational harvesters, 45, 46 Reducing Emissions from Reforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), 176 Reduction fisheries, 109, 112 Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), 86 Regional fishing management organizations (RFMO), 107 Republic of Ecuador, 88, 89, 92, 95 Resource capture, 11, 19 Resource development policy, 20 Rhino horns, 47 Ringed map turtles, 54 Rio Earth Summit, 132 Riparian vegetation, 142 Risk society, 18, 73 Riverbeds, 103 Rome Statute, see also International Criminal Court, 227 Rosewood trees, 131, 132 Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, 216 Royal Society, 44 Rule abusers, 45, 46 Russia, 128

S Sabotage, 13, 166 “Saiko”, 117 Saint Helena olive, 137 San Juan Parangaricutiro, 145, 146 San Martin, 141 Sarajevo, 92 Sea Shepherd Society, 201 Seaweed, 104 Second World War, 127 Securitization, 4

Sekondi, 117 Shark fins, 47 Shell, 16, 92 Shorelines, 103 Situational Awareness Geospatial Enterprise (SAGE), 208 “Slow violence”, 207 Small island states, 105, 156, 158, 230 “Smoking trowel”, 148 “Smoky Mountain Money”, 139 Social control, 27, 199 Social Darwinism, 10 Social legalist perspective, 26, 74, 133 Sociobiology, 10 Somalia, 14 Songkla Canning Public Company, 114 Sources, 14, 41, 44, 45, 47, 52, 55, 76, 81, 89, 104, 111, 113, 117, 130, 132, 135, 137, 139, 142, 143, 148, 158, 161, 167, 170, 174, 178, 183, 184, 210, 234 South Africa, 5, 49, 53, 56 South America, 58, 59 South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network (SAWEN), 217, 225 Spanish-Glacian region, 108 Specialized smugglers, 46, 47 Speciesism, 41, 64, 216 Species justice, 28, 49, 50 Sphere of transnational ecoviolence, 30 Spiny wild aubergine, 137 Standing Rock, 207 State-corporate crime, 169, 170 State-facilitated corporate crime, 170 State-initiated corporate crime, 170 Strict legalist perspective, 26, 133 Structural adjustment, 62, 223 Structural violence, 137 Subsistence harvesters, 45

INDEX

“Succulent fever”, 138 Sucumbios Province, 88 Sunda pangolin, 56 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 53, 103, 167 Swiss Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology, 134 Switzerland, 134 T Tancítaro, 145 Tanzania, 137, 175 Temminck’s ground pangolin, 56 Tepalcatepec Cartel, 144 Texaco Petroleum Corporation, 89 Thailand, 113, 115 Thai Union Frozen Products, 114 Third parties, 46, 219 Three-toed box turtles, 54 Tiger pelt, 47 Tigers, 129 Toxic criminology, 4 Toxicity, hazardous waste, 76 “Toxic tours”, 92 Toxic waste colonialism, 73 Toyota, 156 Trade Justice Network, 91 Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), 47 TRAFFIC, 51, 56, 200 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 87 Transhipment (in illegal fishing operations), 109, 117, 119 “Turf war”, 147 Turkey, 178–180 Typology, 6, 22, 28, 48, 56, 60, 64 U Ucayali, 141 Uganda, 175

301

United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 22, 23, 58, 59, 63 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 44, 131, 132, 209, 212, 221 United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 51, 225 United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 130 Uruapan, 147 V Vancouver, 81 Vendors, 46, 47 Venezuela, 91 Vesuvius region, Italy, 85 Viagras cartel, 144 Vidal Armadores, 108 Vietnam, war and ecocide, 115, 225 Violence, agential and structural, 3, 14, 16, 23, 75 “Violence triangle”, 14, 75 “Vocational Education and Training Centers”, 198 Volkswagen, 155, 156 W Wai Wai, 62 Wal-Mart, 81, 82 Waste, 14, 25, 27, 73, 74, 76–85, 87, 90–92, 94, 95, 110, 133, 167, 210, 223 Waste haven hypothesis, 82 Waste management treaties (WMTs), 80 Water, access to as a human right, 20, 63 West Sussex, 160 Weyerhaeuser, 16 Whales, and whaling, 104, 105, 109, 121, 200, 222, 229

302

INDEX

Whitby, 80 White-bellied pangolin, 56 White, Robert, 4, 25, 26, 48, 49, 93, 133, 155, 159, 165, 169–172, 174 Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System (WEMS), 210 Wildlife markets, 2, 51 “Wildlife trade hotspots”, 51 World Bank, 76, 78, 129, 131, 176, 209, 218, 221, 225 World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 200 World Conservation Union, 42, 50 World Customs Organization (WCO), 51, 131, 221, 222 World Health Organization (WHO), 12, 159

World Resources Institute, 171 World Wide Web, 42

X Xpansiv CBL Holding Group, 157

Z Zapatista, 16 Zero tolerance, 51 Zetas, 145 Zicuirán Cartel, 144 Zimbabwe, 53, 177 Zinc, 77, 176 Ziracuaretiro, 144 Zoological sciences, 135 Zoonosis, 2, 42, 55