Green Crimes

Do we really need “Green Criminology”?

 The recent few decades have seen many technological and economical changes and with these changes come attached some problems that affect the dynamics of our society. For example if a country is producing nuclear weapons to protect itself, that country should consider the outcome of the testing which has on the environment and then the society. Any other acts or processes that carry the danger of destroying our environment should be prohibited or have law on its correct usage of it. These acts or activities may be very harmless, like making more factories, increasing fishing, and producing more vehicles but they do have a huge impact on destroying our natural environments. There is a huge need for laws and regulation to protect the environment at local, regional, national and international levels. What we do does have a great impact on our environment, for example driving a car creates pollution which damages the environment. Like wise what ever a country does has a big impact on the environment.

 Unfortunately the environmental damages have not been considered seriously by the criminologist and therefore have not had the due attention. I believe damaging an environment is worse than damaging an individual. If you damage the environment, you are damaging many different species which should be classed as criminal. If we carrying on damaging our environment this would have a huge impact on global warming and collectively we will be responsible for causing the dramatics climate changes that are taking many lives. An example is the recent Tsunami that claimed many innocent lives. Though it is considered as a natural disaster but I believe it’s due to drastic climate changes because of global warming that brings about explosive natural disasters such as earth quakes and tsunami. Therefore it’s vital that our actions and activities are regulated in a way which minimises the environmental damages. For that reason it important to study and apply “green criminology”.

Green Social Movement is based on idea of protecting our environment and by educating our society and making them aware of their actions that are damaging the society. It’s based on models or organisations which create an awareness and understanding of our environment and show us the ways to minimise these damages to our environment and society. The example are such as recycling methods, using lower carbon dioxide emission vehicles, using alternative fuels, creating eco-parks, and also other ways of sharing information and experience with activists who are interested in saving the environment.

 Country like Japan is lacking in replacing its older policies regarding environmental issues, unlike in Europe where the green social movement is on the up rise. In Europe there is huge emphasis being placed on protecting our environment. Therefore the social movement in green issues are on the rise in Europe. Also in Brazil there are some successful social movements and urban youth organisation that have education program to train youth for green issues. The value of green social movement is great since its purpose is to have better communicating networks and cooperation between different sectors to put in place right legislations and laws to protect our environment from acts that are harmful.

 It is learnt from history of crime that as more laws are introduced, more chances of them being broken and therefore more crime being committed. In that view, if more laws and regulations are being enforced to protect our society and environment, this will create potential for these laws to be broken and green crimes being taking place. Because new law states that it would be criminal to fish in certain lakes which before was a just a normal activity. This would cause positional rise in green crime.