Green criminology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Green criminology - Essay Example These new categories are crimes of air pollution, crimes of deforestation, crimes of species decline and against animal rights, and crimes of water pollution. Crimes of deforestation Our area of consideration will focus on deforestation a category of green crime and we subject it to green criminology test. Deforestation as a crime against environment can be defined as the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a non forest use for example conversion of forestland to agriculture or urban use. Deforestation is often misused to include any activity where all trees in an area are removed but in temperate climates, the removal of all trees in an area in conformance with sustainable forestry practices is correctly described as regeneration harvest (Butler, 2009). People engage in deforestation for many reasons but the removal of trees without sufficient reforestation has resulted in damage to habitat, biodiversity loss and aridity it also causes ext inction, changes to climatic conditions, desertification, and displacement of populations. Disregard or ignorance of the value, weak forest management and lack of environmental laws are some of the factors that contribute to deforestation. deforestation has a number of causes, including corruption of government institutions, the inequitable distribution of wealth and power, population growth and overpopulation, and urbanization. Globalization is viewed as another root cause of deforestation. In 2000 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that deforestation can result from "a combination of population pressure and stagnating economic, social and technological conditions. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat, the direct cause of deforestation is agriculture. The degradation of forest ecosystems has also been traced to economic incentives that make forest conversion appear more profitable than forest conse rvation. Many important forest functions have no markets, and hence, no economic value that is readily apparent to the forests' owners or the communities that rely on forests for their well-being. From the perspective of the developing world, the benefits of forest as carbon sinks or biodiversity reserves go primarily to richer developed nations and there is insufficient compensation for these services. Developing countries feel that some countries in the developed world, such as the United States of America, cut down their forests centuries ago and benefited greatly from this deforestation, and that it is hypocritical to deny developing countries the same opportunities that the poor shouldn't have to bear the cost of preservation when the rich created the problem. This is one of the major problems with green crimes where the developed nations are reluctant in implementing them (Patel-Weynand, 2002). Logging operations, which provide the world’s wood and paper products, also cut countless trees each year. Loggers, some of them acting illegally, also build roads to access more and more remote forests which lead to further deforestation. New crimes and criminals here would include those who deal in the destruction of rainforests and valuable lands; those who exploit natural resources for their own ends; and ‘black markets’ that develop around the sale of many of these valuable commodities. An example of a new kind of environmental crime may be