Nature, difference and the rejection of harm: Expanding the agenda for green criminology

This chapter extends previous work by the author to expand the agenda for a green criminology. It introduces a 'harms' approach and outlines a fourfold typology of harms or crimes causing and /or resulting from the destruction and degradation of the earth's resources. The true socio-political implications of environmental damage, climate change, and species decline have not yet been widely and fully appreciated. Resource wars, environmental refugees, ethnic tensions and conflicts, closure of borders, violent protests against polluters, could all follow. The notion of 'difference' and the ways in which it is used to justify numerous forms of exploitation, as well as the distinctions we draw between ourselves and 'the natural world', are key problems. Future work needs to take seriously the ways in which humanity is tied to nature. Criminology has a role to play in understanding and promoting how genuine global security can help preserve the planet, from cases of local law enforcement to protect fish stocks or wildlife through examination of pollution by corporations and governments to analysis of the environmental as well as human casualties of national and international conflicts. © 2011 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.