Posted: August 14th, 2022

Environmental Deviance: Investigating Environmental Offenses and Their Impacts

Environmental Deviance: Investigating Environmental Offenses and Their Impacts
Environmental Deviance: Investigate environmental offenses like illegal logging, wildlife trafficking, and pollution and their impacts on ecosystems and communities.

Environmental Deviance: Investigating Environmental Offenses and Their Impacts

Environmental deviance is the term used to describe acts that violate environmental laws or norms, such as illegal logging, wildlife trafficking, and pollution. These acts have negative impacts on ecosystems and communities, as they degrade natural resources, threaten biodiversity, and endanger human health and well-being. This paper aims to explore the causes, consequences, and responses to environmental deviance, using examples from different regions and contexts.

Causes of Environmental Deviance

Environmental deviance is often driven by a combination of factors, such as economic incentives, weak governance, social inequality, and cultural values. For instance, illegal logging is motivated by the high demand and profitability of timber products, especially in the global market. However, it also occurs due to the lack of effective law enforcement, corruption, land tenure conflicts, and poverty among local communities. Similarly, wildlife trafficking is influenced by the lucrative trade in exotic animals and their parts, as well as by the low risk of detection and prosecution. Moreover, it is facilitated by the loss of habitat, the involvement of organized crime networks, and the demand for traditional medicine and status symbols. Pollution, on the other hand, is often the result of industrial activities, agricultural practices, and urbanization that generate waste and emissions without adequate regulation or management. It also reflects the unequal distribution of environmental costs and benefits among different groups and regions.

Consequences of Environmental Deviance

Environmental deviance has serious implications for both nature and society. It contributes to the loss of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and natural capital that are essential for human survival and development. For example, illegal logging reduces forest cover and carbon sequestration, increases soil erosion and landslides, and disrupts hydrological cycles and climate regulation. Wildlife trafficking depletes wildlife populations and genetic diversity, alters food webs and ecological balance, and increases the risk of zoonotic diseases and invasive species. Pollution contaminates air, water, and soil quality, affects human health and productivity, and exacerbates environmental injustice and vulnerability.

Responses to Environmental Deviance

Environmental deviance requires a comprehensive and coordinated response from various actors and levels. Some of the strategies that have been implemented or proposed include:

– Strengthening environmental laws and policies that define environmental offenses, set standards and limits, impose sanctions and penalties, and provide incentives and rewards.
– Enhancing environmental governance and enforcement that ensure compliance with environmental laws and policies, monitor environmental conditions and activities, detect and deter environmental offenses, prosecute and punish environmental offenders, and prevent corruption and collusion.
– Promoting environmental education and awareness that raise public knowledge and understanding of environmental issues and values, foster pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors, mobilize public participation and support for environmental action, and expose environmental crimes and harms.
– Supporting environmental justice and empowerment that address the root causes of environmental deviance, such as poverty, inequality, marginalization, and exclusion. This involves empowering local communities to manage their natural resources sustainably, ensuring fair access to environmental benefits and opportunities, protecting the rights of indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups, and providing compensation or restitution for environmental damages.

Conclusion

Environmental deviance is a complex phenomenon that poses a major challenge for environmental sustainability. It has multiple causes that vary across contexts
and situations. It has significant impacts that affect both ecosystems
and communities. It requires a holistic response that involves legal,
institutional,
social,
and economic measures.
By investigating
environmental offenses
and their impacts,
this paper hopes to contribute to a better understanding
and
resolution
of environmental deviance.

References

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A.,
& South,
N.
(2013).
Green cultural criminology: Constructions of environmental harm,
consumerism,
and resistance to ecocide.
New York,
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Elliott,
L.
(2017).
Transnational environmental crime: Applying network theory to an investigation of illegal wildlife trafficking.
In R.
Hufnagel,
T.
Harfield,
& S.
Bronitt (Eds.),
Cross-border law enforcement: Regional law enforcement cooperation – European,
Australian
and Asia-Pacific perspectives (pp.
171-188).
New York,
NY:
Routledge.

Gibbs,
C.,
Gore,
M.,
McGarrell,
E.,
& Rivers III,
L.
(2010).
Introducing conservation criminology: Towards interdisciplinary scholarship on environmental crimes
and risks.
British Journal of Criminology,
50(1),
124-144.

White,
R.
(2018).
Green criminology: An introduction to the study of environmental harm (2nd ed.).
New York,
NY:
Routledge.

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