Two reasons Green Crime might be difficult to control

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Last Updated on June 6, 2024 by Karl Thompson

Two reasons green crime might be difficult to control are:

green crime is socially constructed, thus there is no agreed definition of what counts as green crime.

Green crimes are often committed by the powerful, thus there is no political will to prosecute.

This is a possible 10 mark question for the AQA’s A-level sociology paper 3 (7192/3).

A very similar question came up in June 2022 as a short answer, 4 mark question.

Question: analyse two reasons green crime may be difficult to control (10)

ITEM B.

One of the problems with controlling green crime is that there is no single agreed definition of what kind of acts constitute green crime. Another reason is that Green Crimes are global in nature and often perpetuated by the powerful.

Using material from Item A and elsewhere analyse two reasons why green crime is difficult to control (10).

Analyse two reasons why green crimes are difficult to control: answer

Point 1: Green crimes are socially constructed

The first reason green crime is difficult to control is because there is no internationally agreed definition about what counts as green crime. What counts as green crime is socially constructed and definitions of what environmental harms are allowed (and are NOT criminal) vary from country to country. People within countries also disagree.

For example Kenya may be dumping toxic waste in a river which flows into Tanzania and damages Tanzania’s ecosystems and makes its people sick, even though dumping toxic waste is illegal in Tanzania.

However it might be difficult for Tanzania to control the green crimes being committed in Kenya because Kenya might not have any laws banning the dumping of toxic waste in rivers, thus the act isn’t illegal there. Thus Kenya would have no record of it doing anything illegal.

In the international political system, nation states have the right to set laws in their own countries. There may be international treaties banning the dumping of toxic waste, but there are no enforceable international laws relating to green crime.

Moreover, in the above example, Kenya may even deny it is dumping toxic waste. Tanzania may not even be able to verify that the pollution is coming from Kenya as Kenya doesn’t have to allow access to other countries to check whether it is actually them who are doing the polluting.

Point 2: the powerful commit green crimes

A second reason green crime (defined as environmental harm) may be difficult to control is that the rich and powerful often benefit from committing green crime while it is the poor who suffer the harms.

From a Marxist point of view the powerful establish the laws to benefit them, and if they benefit harming the environment, they are unlikely to make harming the environment a criminal act.

Exploitation of the natural environment has long been part of making a profit in the capitalist system: extracting oil, mining minerals, harvesting wood from forests, all of these destroy local environments and create pollution.

For example, look at Shell in Nigeria. Shell and the Nigerian elite didn’t see pollution in the Niger Delta as illegal. This was because the pollution didn’t harm them, it only harmed the poor locals.

It is only in the last few decades that people have started to campaign to make the worst acts of environmental harm illegal, but it is cheaper for corporations and countries to not regenerate land after they’ve extracted it, and to not bother clearing up their waste.

Developing countries, mainly India and China, think they are justified in using fossil fuels to develop to catch up to the West, because this is what Western Europe and America did to generate wealth over the last two centuries!

Companies have to pay fines if they pollute today. However, companies often choose to carry on polluting and just pay the fines. Companies can make more profit this way because fines are rarely high enough. There is no political will to impose high fines for pollution because the political class think profit is more important.