Environmental crimes and green criminology in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is an environmentally vulnerable country, where environmental crimes are massive and common. However, the environmental crime prevention mechanism in the country is very weak, and traditional policing is utilized to stop these crimes. Therefore, the green criminological approach to prevent environmental crimes in Bangladesh is underdeveloped in many ways, with a total absence of the green policing model. Hence, this study focuses on attaining a critical understanding of environmental crimes in Bangladesh by exploring the key underlying factors of environmental crimes. It also attempts to contribute to the environmental crime prevention mechanism by recommending a green policing model, while identifying the key weaknesses of the existing environmental crime prevention approach. This article implements the qualitative technique of data collection, and the analysis is based on an in-depth interview of 25 respondents, belonging to different categories of stakeholders, and participant observation. It also analyses the content of newspapers to understand the patterns of environmental crimes in Bangladesh. This article finds that environmental crimes are propagated by several political, economic, institutional, and social elements, such as the political affiliation of criminals, economic profit from natural resources, absence of institutional collaboration, and lack of social consciousness. The issue has become further aggravated due to the weakness of the crime prevention mechanism. Thus, the findings of this study suggest that environmental crimes in Bangladesh should be considered and understood from green criminological perspectives and the development of a green policing model would be effective in reducing environmental crimes in the country.

Understanding Wildlife Crime from Eco-Existential and African Perspectives: A Psycho-Philosophical Investigation

Wildlife crime has huge consequences regarding global environmental changes to animals, plants and the entire ecosystem. Combatting wildlife crime effectively requires a deep understanding of human–wildlife interactions and an analysis of the influencing factors. Conservation and green criminology are important in reducing wildlife crime, protecting wildlife and the ecosystem and informing policy-makers about best practices and strategies. However, the past years have shown that wildlife crime is not easy to combat and it is argued in this article that there are underlying existential “givens” and culture-specific aspects that need to be investigated to understand why wildlife crime is still on the rise. This theoretical article explores (eco-)existential perspectives, Greening’s four givens and selected African philosophical concepts, aiming to understand the complexities behind the prevalence of wildlife crime within global and African contexts.

Green Criminology–Law Interdisciplinarity Towards Multispecies Justice: The Case of Wildlife Trafficking in Vietnam

Green criminology provides a significant opportunity for interdisciplinary engagement to address the many environmental problems of the twenty-first century that are too complex to be solved through a single disciplinary lens. Hall (2014) has called for increased collaboration between green criminologists and legal scholars while also acknowledging that this form of interdisciplinarity is more challenging than for more traditional forms of criminology. This paper adopts Hall’s call as a starting point for a critical exploration of two areas that offer ground for collaboration: positioning analyses of environmental harm within wider regulatory frameworks and considering the ways human and non-human victims interact with ‘the mechanisms of justice’ to exercise ‘environmental rights’ (Hall 2014: 105). We examine these areas drawing on the case of wildlife trafficking in Vietnam. We argue that ‘multispecies justice’ presents a useful framework to progress green criminology–law collaborations in the Vietnamese and other contexts.

Primatology, Green Criminology, and the Impacts of Science on the Non-Human World: A Debate from Japan

Primatology was initiated in Japan in 1948 by Kinji Imanishi and his colleagues. A distinctive feature of Japanese primatology is adopting the technique of ‘anthropomorphising’ non-human primates and establishing friendly relationships with them through feeding and other means. Following the anthropomorphic stance of primatology in Japan, yielding many scientific findings, succeeding generations turned to ‘biocentrism’, which holds that all life, including humans, has equal value. While biocentric values emerged, researchers were also faced with the conflict of having to euthanise wild hybrids per legal mandates to maintain the Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata) ecosystem. This article analyses the ethical conflicts in Japanese primatology throughout history.