Environmental Crime and Social Conflict

Contemporary and Emerging Issues

Avi Brisman, Nigel South, Rob White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317142294
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

This impressive collection of original essays explores the relationship between social conflict and the environment - a topic that has received little attention within criminology. The chapters provide a systematic and comprehensive introduction and overview of conflict situations stemming from human exploitation of environments, as well as the impact of social conflicts on the wellbeing and health of specific species and ecosystems. Largely informed by green criminology perspectives, the chapters in the book are intended to stimulate new understandings of the relationships between humans and nature through critical evaluation of environmental destruction and degradation associated with social conflicts occurring around the world. With a goal of creating a typology of environment-social conflict relationships useful for green criminological research, this study is essential reading for scholars and academics in criminology, as well as those interested in crime, law and justice.

Chapter 1
Toward a Criminology of Environment-Conflict Relationships¹

Avi Brisman, Nigel South and Rob White

Introduction and Overview

This collection includes chapters that range across a variety of forms or examples of conflict related to environmental matters.² This is deliberate in order to achieve several goals. First, we wished to pull together such disparate examples to provide a baseline resource for a criminology concerned with environment and conflict relationships. Although well explored in fields like political ecology, political science, geography and conflict studies, this is not a topic that has received much attention within criminology, despite the fact that crimes and harms of considerable seriousness and significance are intertwined with these conflicts. Second, we wanted to continue to highlight the international compass of a green or environmentally sensitive criminology (South and Brisman 2013; White 2010, 2011; White and Heckenberg 2014). The contributors to this volume exemplify this global engagement and they bring to bear on their chosen topics a keen intellectual interest, academic rigour and passionate concern. Finally, we wanted to explore our own thinking about a typology of environment-conflict relationships. In this introductory chapter, we start by outlining and filling out in a preliminary way what such a typology might look like. We then move to an overview of the chapters that follow.

A Typology of Environment-Conflict Relationships

At the outset, it should be acknowledged and emphasised that linkages between conflict and the environment are varied and not all are negative. Or, to put it another way, some factors, such as contested resource wealth, that in some circumstances may precipitate or support or subsidise conflict, may, in other circumstances, provide a route out of, or insulation from, conflict (see Butts and Bankus 2013; Conca and Dabelko 2002; see generally Gelling 2010; Greenberg 2010; Milburn this volume; Risen 2010; Romero 2009a). Muffett and Bruch (2011: 4), for example, observe that ‘well-managed resources can help fund reconstruction efforts and help bring order from chaos’, while Lujala and Rustad (2011: 19) argue that ‘[h]igh-value natural resources have the potential to promote and consolidate peace’ and that valuable resources can help jump-start development, secure sustainable growth, raise living standards, and increase economic equality. While the notion that growth can be endlessly sustainable is contradictory (Ruggiero and South 2013), in the short term, it is true that such resources can serve as an important means of generating foreign currency for cash-strapped governments, can reduce dependence on international aid, and can support compensation and post-conflict relief for war-affected populations (see generally Polgreen 2009). Indeed, sometimes it is the prior conflict over resources, and disadvantages flowing from these, that provide the setting and impetus for later political and economic settlements. For instance, in the context of post-colonial relationships, it is notable that substantial benefits may occasionally accrue to formerly dispossessed or adversely affected parties through contemporary resource re-allocation. For example, in Australia such processes have resulted in the (albeit limited) hand-over of certain lands, rivers and iconic sites to indigenous people, such as Uluru – a massive rock that sits in the desert in the very heart of the nation – that local indigenous people now manage as park rangers and tourist guides.

Having made this point, we turn now to the main focus of this volume and of this introductory chapter: providing examples of conflicts that produce negative/damaging environmental consequences. From those examples, it is our intention to create a typology of conflict-environmental relationships useful for green criminological research. We propose the following headings for our typology:

• conflict over natural resources possession;

• conflict over declining resources;

• conflict that destroys environments;

• conflict over natural resource extraction processes.

We flesh out and offer examples of each of these in turn, while stressing the fluidity of these categories and instances of overlap between them.³

Conflict over Natural Resources Possession

This type of conflict is concerned with issues of access to, control over and use of natural resources, including the abundance of natural resources and greed-motivated violence. There is, of course, nothing new about territorial disputes. The desirable nature of land owned by others may be based on ambitions to extend power, to improve or ensure security, to punish, or to repatriate, but almost always, there is a consideration regarding the resources that such land – or waterbodies – can yield. So, for example, currently, tensions between China and Japan may reflect a long history of rivalry, suspicion and conflict, dating back centuries and exacerbated during and since the Second World War. But they also have a forward-looking dimension spanning the next few decades and the rest of this century, anticipating a resource-hungry future in which competition will intensify. He (2007: 14–15) explains that, ‘Territorial controversy over offshore islands is [a] major issue of bilateral contention. The phrase often used to describe the East China Sea separating China and Japan, ‘a narrow strip of water’, conveys the geographic proximity and thick cultural connections between the two countries. But recent years have seen an intensification of political disputes in this sea area, especially regarding the sovereignty of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands’. These disputes have a history, but the prospect of conflict over maritime resources in the East China Sea becomes ever more material in an age of resource depletion. According to He (2007: 15), ‘China and Japan disagree on the delimitation of their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), with China adhering to the principle of continental shelf and Japan regarding the midpoint as the boundary’. These tensions have continued and in late November 2013, ‘China suddenly and unilaterally declared administrative control over a swath of airspace in the contested East China Sea, sparking an international crisis. Japan, South Korea and the US defied the rising superpower by spontaneously sending aircraft into its newly formed ‘air defence identification zone’; China scrambled fighter jets in retaliation. Tensions are still simmering’ (Kaiman 2013: 40; see also Takenaka 2014; see generally Buckley 2014; Wong and Ansfield 2014). The context is a need for resources as both populations and competition increase, as analysed by Xu (2014) in a report for the US-based non-profit Council on Foreign Relations:

There are roughly half a billion people who live within 100 miles of the South China Sea coastline, and the volume of shipping through its waters has skyrocketed as China and ASEAN nations increase international trade and oil imports. The need for resources, especially hydrocarbons and fisheries … has intensified economic competition in the region, particularly given the rapid coastal urbanization of China.

Enormous oil and natural gas reserves are at stake and are, of course, of interest not just to China and Japan, but also to smaller nations, such as Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Conflict, then, may be fuelled by competing claims: ‘In December 2012, China’s National Energy Administration named the disputed waters as the main offshore site for natural gas production, and a major Chinese energy company has already begun drilling in deep water off the southern coast. Competitive tensions escalated when India’s state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp announced it had partnered with PetroVietnam for developing oil in the disputed waters’ (Xu 2014 [citing Perlez 2012; Reuters 2011]). Similar contests are apparent in other places as well, from the Arctic to Africa to the Timor Sea. For example, since its independence in July 2009, South Sudan and Sudan (from which the former country split) have been at loggerheads over how to share oil that is largely found in South Sudanese territory but which is pumped north through Sudan for export (see Kron 2012), while the newly independent country, East Timor (also known as Timor Leste or Timor-Leste), recently engaged in international court proceedings against Australia, accusing the latter of ruthlessly and unethically negotiating a mutual agreement over Timor Sea oil reserves by employing strong-arm tactics that included the coercive appropriation of confidential documents (see, e.g., AAP 2014; Allard 2014; Lamb 2014a, 2014b; Gearin 2014; International Court of Justice 2014).

Many other conflicts arise in relation to possession of natural resource wealth. Katunga (2006–07: 16) refers to the role of natural resources (specifically, minerals and forests) in the violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as ‘engines of chaos’. There and elsewhere, the damaging and divisive exploitation and trade in diamonds, gold, timber and wildlife have generated funds that have spurred, supported and perpetuated internal conflicts, corruption and the externalising of economic surplus (Boekhout van Solinge 2008ab, 2010a, 2010b; Brack 2002; Brisman and South 2013b; Burnley 2011; Butts and Bankus 2013; Clark 2013; Duffy 2010; Elliott 2007; Gamba and Cornwell 2000; Green et al. 2007; McGrath, 2012b; Milburn, this volume; Romero 2011; South 2010; Soysa 2000; Wyatt this volume; see also Berdal and Malone 2000: 8; Chow 2013; Collier 2000: 106; Gelling 2010; Reno 2000: 57; Shearer, 2000: 195). So, in countries such as Angola, Cambodia, Liberia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, as well as in the DRC, rather than deriving broad benefit from resource wealth, local populations have instead suffered from sharp political discord, stunted growth and glaring inefficiencies – what has been called the ‘resource curse’ (see, e.g., Auty 1993; Herringsaw 2004; Le Billon 2011; Lujala and Rustad 2011; Romero 2009b; Soysa 2000; see generally Bearak 2010; Eviatar 2003; LaFraniere 2006; The New York Times 2004; Sullivan 2013a, 20103b; but see, for example, Laudati, 2013, who argues for a comprehensive ‘economies of violence’ analysis of the DRC’s divergent natural-resource wealth, rather than a mineral-based explanation for conflict in the DRC).⁴

In the case of the DRC, rich in mineral resources such as coltan/tantalum, gold, tungsten and tin ore used for jewellery, mobile phones and laptops, the country has suffered ceaseless conflict for nearly two decades, as well as ‘highly organised and systematic exploitation’ of its resources (UN 2002: 10, 52; see also Butts and Bankus 2013; Cuvelier 2013; Duffy 2010; Lovgren 2006). Factional warfare between the Congolese army, ‘defence forces’ and ‘rebel units’, and genocide in neighbouring Rwanda have been devastating, with rebels and government forces profiting from the trades in mineral ores, subjecting civilians to massacres, rape and extortion, using forced labour and coercing children into the role of soldiers (Burnley 2011). The deaths caused by conflicts of this kind are not limited to combatants but include civilians, and in the DRC, it has been estimated that around 40 per cent of ‘war casualties’ have been women and children (Montague 2002; see also King 1993).

The combination of environmental resources and associated wealth can give rise to conflict and crime for various reasons, but as Kuijpers (2012) points out, one of the classic – and most basic – criminal motivations at work as a driver of conflict and war is greed. As Kuijpers (2012: 14) explains, ‘Although it is often assumed that conflicts occur because of grievance, driven by high inequality, a lack of political rights, or ethnic and religious divisions … many conflicts can better be explained by economic variables and … greed is a better explanatory factor for conflict than grievance’ (see also Peterson et al., 2011; Soysa 2000). Pečar identifies similar motivations for much environmental crime, asserting that ‘environmental crime results from selfishness, which is determined by the need for profit associated with the control of nature’ (1988: 116, cited in Eman, Meško and Fields 2009: 578). Similarly, Christy (2012: 38), in his investigative report on the illegal slaughter of elephants for ivory, remarks:

Seen from the ground, each of the bloated elephant carcasses is a monument to human greed. Elephant poaching levels are currently at their worst in a decade, and seizures of illegal ivory are at their highest in years. From the air too the scattered bodies present a senseless crime scene – you can see which animals fled, which animals tried to protect their young, how one terrified herd of 50 went down together, the latest of tens of thousands of elephants killed across Africa each year. Seen from higher still, from the vantage of history, this killing field is not new at all. It is timeless, and it is now.

Yet, even this most basic of motives requires contextualisation. For instance, there is a need to ask: Whose greed and why? In our view, greed cannot be reduced simply to an essentialist notion of humanity or to a characteristic that applies to specific populations or to particular individuals;⁵ rather, greed is socially and materially constructed, and it emerges as a significant motivation for specific reasons (see generally McGrath 2012a). Scarcity is certainly one factor influencing its manifestation, as is gender and particular constructions of masculinity, given the male dominated composition of the main protagonists (see Seager 1993a). So, too, is the way in which the ‘free market’ has been reshaping ‘human nature’ through its restructuring of opportunities on a world scale. An era in which greed flourishes has been grounded in concrete social, economic, political and military processes. Three decades of neo-liberalism basically sends a strong message to look after oneself first, to protect what you have and take what you can, because there is no collective solidarity and precious little welfare otherwise (see Brisman 2013; Giroux 2004, 2012; White 2014; cf. Ervine 2011, discussing market-based conservation)...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Green Criminology
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Toward a Criminology of Environment-Conflict Relationships
• Part I Conflict over Natural Resources Possession
• Part II Conflict over Declining Resources
• Part III Conflict that Destroys Environments
• Part IV Conflict over Natural Resources Extraction Processes
• Index