Social, Economic and Political Factors of Environmental Crime (original) (raw)

2018, The VIII International Scientific Conference Archibald Reiss Days

Environmental crime includes a variety of criminal offences directed towards the environment, i.e. its integral parts such as: air, water, soil, flora and fauna. In the past couple of decades, the number of criminal offences against the environment has been increasing, causing serious concern on a global level, especially if committed in organised and/or transnational form. The consequences of environmental crime are serious and affect both the environment and humankind, particularly poor local communities whose incomes depend on limited natural resources. There are several social, economic and political factors of environmental crime that are closely interrelated with one another. However, the experiences of different countries presented in an array of reports published by prominent international and local organisations and institutions as well as in a number of academic papers suggest that some of these factors can be considered the most influential. These comprise: the attempts of financially superior multi-national corporations to enlarge their profit by avoiding to invest money in the protection of the environment from their industrial activities, lack of financial resources and institutional capacities for efficient monitoring of activities that pollute the environment, lack of political will to integrate environmental protection issues into sectoral public policies, insufficient cooperation among relevant subjects on both local and international level for the purpose of prevention, discovering and sanctioning the perpetrators of these criminal offences, low level of environmental awareness, etc. Becoming familiar with key factors that enhance the commission of environmental criminal offences can play an important role in the prevention of this type of crime through the minimisation or, when possible, complete elimination of its causes. Therefore, the author of this paper analyses key social, political and economic factors of environmental crime, suggesting the ways to influence these factors in order to contribute to its efficient and prompt prevention.