Forging a Socio-Legal Approach to Environmental Harms

Environmental harms exert a significant toll and pose substantial economic costs on societies around the world. Although such harms have been studied from both legal and social science perspectives, these disciplinary-specific approaches are not, on their own, fully able to address the complexity of these environmental challenges. Many legal approaches, for example, are limited by their inattention to the motivations behind environmental offences, whereas many social science approaches are hindered by an insufficient grounding in current legislative frameworks. This edited collection constitutes a pioneering attempt to overcome these limitations by uniting legal and social science perspectives. Together, the book's contributors forge an innovative socio-legal approach to more effectively respond to, and to prevent, environmental harms around the world. Integrating theoretical and empirical work, the book presents carefully selected illustrations of how legal and social science scholarship can be brought together to improve policies. The various chapters examine how a socio-legal approach can ultimately lead to a more comprehensive understanding of environmental harms, as well as to innovative and effective responses to such environmental offences.

Autorentext

Tiffany Bergin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Kent State University, USA. Previously, she was Sutasoma Trust Research Fellow and Director of Studies in Politics, Psychology and Sociology at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.

Emanuela Orlando is Lecturer in Environmental Law at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology of the University of Sussex. Her main research interests lie in the area of EU and international environmental law. Prior to fully engaging in an academic career, she worked for major international law firms and the European Commission, and served as legal adviser for the Italian Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea (IMELS) in the framework of its bilateral cooperation activities in the Balkan countries.

Inhalt

PART I: CONCEPTUALISING A SOCIO-LEGAL APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS 1. Forging a Socio-Legal Approach to Environmental Harms, Tiffany Bergin and Emanuela Orlando 2. Environmental Crimes and Harms: a Green Criminology Approach and Socio-legal Challenges, Nigel South 3. The EU and the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law, Ludwig Kramer 4. Green Criminology and the Prevention of Ecological Destruction, Ruth E. McKie, Paul B. Stretesky, Michael J. Lynch and Michael A. Long 5. A Law and Economics Approach to Environmental Crime, Michael Faure PART II: ASSESSING THE LIMITATIONS OF CURRENT APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS 6. International Financial Institutions as Facilitators of Environmental Crimes, Dawn Rothe and Victoria E. Collins 7. Learning Lessons from Deepwater Disasters: Common Ground in Oil Exploration in Brazil and the US, Daniel Jacobs and Marcelo Varella 8. The Legal and Social Context of Wildlife Trafficking, Tanya Wyatt 9. Toxic Ships, Environmental Crimes, and the North-South Discourse, Jona Razzaque PART III: FORGING SOCIO-LEGAL SOLUTIONS TO ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS: LESSONS FROM AROUND THE WORLD 10. Determining the Public Interest in Environmental Enforcement, Sanctioning, and Prosecution, Anne Brosnan 11. Eco Crime and Green Activism, Reece Walters 12. The Criminalisation of the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage, Ana Filipa Vrdoljak 13. Towards a Theoretical and Empirical Agenda on Environmental Harms, Tiffany Bergin and Emanuela Orlando