Article

International Review of Victimology

2014, Vol 20(1) 129–143
Environmental harm and ª The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0269758013508682
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out a ‘green victimology’

Matthew Hall
University of Sheffield, UK

Abstract
The study of environmental victimization has been notably absent from the vast majority of aca-
demic and policy discussions surrounding victims of crime, despite the growing prevalence of
‘green’ issues and ‘environmental harms’ in the 21st century. This article presents a forward-
looking examination of the possibilities for a ‘green victimology’ to complement the developing
field of ‘green criminology’ mapping out possibilities for its theoretical context, likely scope and
key research questions. In sum, the article presents the case for a critical, interdisciplinary
approach to the question of environmental victims that takes careful note of developments in the
field of human and environmental rights. The article also examines the scope of ‘environmental
harm’ and ‘environmental victimization’, concluding that, like other victim groups, environmental
victims are far from homogeneous. In particular, the article calls for empirical work to ascertain the
views and needs of environmental victims themselves.

Keywords
Critical victimology, environmental harm, green victimology, interdisciplinarity

In this article I intend to discuss the adaptability of victimological study to the question of
‘environmental victimization’. The impact on those affected by environment crime, or other
environmentally damaging activities, is one that has received scarce attention in the mainstream
victimological literature. The role or position of such victims in criminal justice and/or other pro-
cesses has likewise rarely been the topic of academic debate. I have recently expanded upon var-
ious aspects of this subject and surrounding issues at greater length (Hall, 2013), but for the
purposes of this article I wish to expand specifically on what a so-called ‘green victimology’ might
look like, together with some of the particular questions and challenges it will face. To this end

Corresponding author:
Matthew Hall, University of Sheffield, School of Law, Bartolomé House, Winter Street, Sheffield S3 7ND, UK.
Email: m.p.hall@sheffield.ac.uk

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authors such as Williams (1996), and more recently White (2011) and Spencer and Fitzgerald
(2013), have all issued resolute calls for serious development of the study of environmental victims
and victimization.
This article in effect takes up this challenge by discussing some likely parameters for such a
field of study and what its key challenges might entail. Underpinning much of this debate is the
general point that environmental crime and environmental victimization do not sit well with tra-
ditional models of criminal justice and, therefore, traditional modules of victimology, which
as critiqued by McBarnet (1983) have tended (at least in recent years) to revolve around offi-
cially proscribed notions of crime and victimization. As argued by Kauzlarich et al. (2001: 173):

The criminological study of immoral, illegal, and harmful state actions has not developed as fully as
would have been expected from the explosion of research in the late 1980’s to mid-1990’s, which lifted
the optimism about criminology’s interest in understanding state malfeasance.

In acknowledging this critical critique of the present literature, this article argues that green vic-
timology must be equally critical in nature, with a particular emphasis on how state actors, in con-
junction with powerful corporate interests, proliferate environmental victimization whilst also
ensuring such victimization does not fall within officially accepted notions of ‘criminal’ activity.

Conceiving ‘environmental victimization’

The 20th anniversary of the leading international journal in victimological thought seems a fitting
place to discuss developments in the burgeoning study of environmental harm, principally because,
as discussed below, a focus on victimization beyond that which is officially recognized as crimin-
ally perpetrated evokes perspectives which in fact characterized much of the earliest victims’
movement. A key question raised at a preliminary stage in most debates concerning the place of
environmentally destructive activities within the corpus of criminology and victimology is whether
those harmed by such events are truly victims of crime, given that polluting practices are frequently
not only state sanctioned but are often in fact actively promoted by states pursuant to their indus-
trial, financial and development goals. As noted by Skinnider (2011: 2):

[M]any environmental disruptions are actually legal and take place with the consent of society.
Classifying what is an environmental crime involves a complex balancing of communities’ interest
in jobs and income with ecosystem maintenance, biodiversity and sustainability.

The expansion of victimology to cover those harmed by such ‘non-criminal’ activities is in fact
far from unprecedented. Pointing and Maguire (1988), for example, discuss how the victims’
movement in the US was originally driven by a diverse group of advocates concerned with differ-
ent aspects of victimization in its broadest sense. These ranged from feminists and mental health
practitioners to survivors of war and atrocities such as the Nazi concentration camps (Young,
1997), as well as victims of the apartheid regime in South Africa (Garkawe, 2004). Divergence has
also developed within the (sub)discipline between ‘positivist victimology’, which employs scien-
tific methods (such as victimization surveys) to examine criminal victimization specifically, and
‘general victimology’, which encompasses wider victimization; of particular relevance to the pres-
ent discussion, this has included the victims of natural disasters (Cressey, 1986; Spalek, 2006).
Indeed, it was only later in the development of victimology that, despite the initial divergence

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of foci and aspirations amongst those within the field, the study of victims of (officially recog-
nized) crime took centre stage (Maguire, 1991). Even by this point, the 1985 Declaration of Basic
Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power (still a key inspiration for many recent
official documents concerning victims of crime) focused specific attention on victims of ‘acts or omis-
sions that do not yet constitute violations of national criminal laws but of internationally recognized
norms relating to human rights’ (United Nations, 1985: para. 18). It is notable that this aspect of the
Declaration has still received very little attention when compared to the provisions aimed at more ‘tra-
ditional’ understandings of criminal victimization (Kauzlarich et al., 2001; Reese, 2000).
In more recent years in-depth consideration of victims of acts which are officially classified as
non-criminal has been the preserve firstly of zemiology (the study of social harms) and of so-called
‘critical victimology’, with its expanded notions of victimhood beyond simple, criminal classifica-
tions (Dignan, 2004; Hough, 1986). Hillyard and Toombs (2003) have also championed a so-called
‘social harms’ approach to criminology and the study of victims, as opposed to narrowly focusing
on ‘criminal harms’. In many ways those suffering environmental harm fall squarely within the
category of ‘real, complex, contradictory and often politically inconvenient victims’ (Kearon and
Godey, 2007: 31) with which the critical critique is so concerned. This is particularly so given the
reality that not only do environmental harms often derive from entirely legal activities, as noted
above, but there may in fact be very sound economic and/or political justifications for a company
or a state to passively allow such activities to continue, or even actively promote them (Walters,
2006). Thus, as observed some time ago by Schnaiberg (1980), states are often willing to undercut
environmental concerns to facilitate the ‘treadmill of production’. Of course, as noted by Ruggiero
and South, such political and economic decisions are heavily influenced by power inequalities,
which are another key feature of the critical school:

[T]he high status of those causing the most [environmental] harm who (like other powerful offenders)
frequently reject the proposition that criminal definitions should apply to them while constantly striv-
ing to persuade legislators that the imposition of norms of conduct on them would be detrimental to all.
Powerful actors whose conduct impacts on the environment possess the ready-made rationalization that
a law imposing limits to the harm they cause would implicitly endanger the core values underpinning
economic development and therefore be damaging to the collective wellbeing. (Ruggiero and South,
2010: 246)

Nevertheless, even amongst the critical school, victims of environmental harms have largely
been overlooked in the literature, although the first call for the development of what was then
turned ‘environmental victimology’ came as early as 1996 in an article by Christopher Wil-
liams. Williams begins his argument by acknowledging the ‘limits of law’ in addressing envi-
ronmental victimization and, much like Hillyard and Toombs later followed (albeit in more
general terms), notes the ‘obvious need for social justices to parallel formal legal processes’
(Williams, 1996: 200). Williams calls for a move away from prevailing concepts of ‘environ-
mental justice’ (see White, 2011), which he views as subjective and swayed by activism in the
field to embrace victimology as a means of addressing environmental victimizations. For Wil-
liams, ‘environmental victims’ are:

those of past, present, or future generations who are injured as a consequence of change to the chem-
ical, physical, microbiological, or psychosocial environment, brought about by deliberate or reckless,
individual or collective, human act or omission. (Williams, 1996: 35)

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This definition embodies intergenerational justice (Hiskes, 2008) and, importantly for
Williams, is grounded on the notion of ‘injury’ rather than ‘harm’. Williams’ argument is that this
is a more useful starting point for victimologists if the goal is to promote the development of func-
tioning legal systems around environmental victimization, especially in criminal justice, as the
concept is more objective and measurable than ‘harm’.
It is clear that the further development of victimological study in this area has been slow to
progress from this point, even as green criminology as a whole has generally gathered pace. Thus,
when South and Beirne compiled one of the first major collections of writing on green criminology
in 2006, Williams’ (1996) work was still the only piece included which was specifically focused on
the victims of environmental crimes in their own right. That said, this collection also contained a
section entitled ‘Rights, victim and regulation’, which included another important intervening con-
tribution from Lynch and Stretesky (2001) on toxic crimes and what they called ‘corporate victi-
mization’. In that article the authors present evidence of the significant health effects (mainly to
humans) of corporate practices, specifically the production of pesticides, leading them to conclude:

[C]orporations and industries that produce pesticides and dioxins show a blatant disregard for the
effects of their products and by-products on human and animal populations. The fact that corporations
continue to choose to produce commodities and waste that generate such a potential threat is a sign of
their disregard for life that can only be equated with ordinary acts of crime such as robberies, muggings,
assaults, and homicides. (Lynch and Stretesky, 2001: 165)

Notably, in advocating this position Lynch and Stretesky reflect the critical school’s position
that harmful activities can (and should) be the subject of criminological analysis even when they
are not officially recognized as ‘criminal’. Following South and Beirne’s (2006) edited collection,
progress towards understanding environmental crime/harm from a victimological perspective
continued to stall. Indeed, when White (2009) produced another major reader on environmental
crime three years later, the only chapter dedicated to victimization was a second reprint of
Williams’ (1996) article. A further edited collection from White (2010) has no specific chapter
on victimization at all, although it does contain a chapter from South (2010), who in one section
reflects upon the unequal impact of climate change on various groups of (usually poor) victims,
and the possibility that some ‘environmental rights’ are being breached (see Hiskes, 2008). Nota-
bly this discussion contradicts one of Williams’ views that the impacts of environmental harm are
more evenly spread between rich and poor. White (2011) has more recently dedicated a chapter to
environmental victims in which he emphasizes the socio-cultural context of understanding and
responding to environmental harm:

Ultimately the construction of [environmental] victimhood is a social process involving dimensions of

time and space, behaviours involving acts and omissions, and social features pertaining to powers and
collectivizes. (White, 2011: 122)

As further noted by White (2011: 111), this state of affairs in relation to environmental victims
reflects ‘one of the truisms of victimology that being and becoming a victim is never socially
neutral’. Most recently, Spencer and Fitzgerald (2013) have offered fresh insight into green crim-
inology and victimology by essentially taking the argument beyond its (predominantly, they argue)
Marxist roots to apply more poststructuralist thinking. In particular, using the 2010 BP Oil spill in
the Gulf of Mexico as a case study, they employ Felix Guattari’s (2008) critique of what he called

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integrated world capitalism by applying his three ‘ecologies of transversity’ to the question of
corporate environmental offending and subsequent victimization. Thus, the authors argue, this vic-
timization event can be understood in terms of environmental, social and mental ecologies. In so
doing, the authors contribute not only fresh theoretical insight into the questions faced by any green
victimology but also expose the complex and multifaceted nature of such victimization itself,
which will be discussed in more detail below.

Moving towards a ‘green victimology’?

As noted already in this article, the lack of development in victimological literature surrounding
environmental harms may in part be explained by the preoccupation in this literature with criminal
victimization and criminal justice. Indeed, conceptually, ascribing criminal blame for environmen-
tal destructive activities is indeed a difficult proposition, even before one begins considering the
role of individual or collective groups of victims in such a process. Often it is difficult in such cases
to attribute direct (or even indirect) causation between the actions/inactions of a specific party (or
state) accused of bringing about the harm and the undesirable outcomes themselves. Du Rées has
commented on this issue in relation to methods of neutralization employed by supervisory agencies
concerning environmental crime, whereby any victim(s) and/or the harms caused are effectively
denied:

It is often claimed that environmental crimes have no directly or clearly defined groups of victims. It is
difficult, for example, to connect a specific discharge of a prohibited substance to a specific form of
damage to the environment or to people’s health. (Du Rées, 2001: 649)

Furthermore, as noted by Bell and McGillivray, the extended range of perpetrators of environ-
mental crime can seem hopelessly wide:

A diverse range of individuals and corporate bodies carry out the activities that lead to breaches of
environmental law, from solo fly-tippers, to huge multinational corporations. (Bell and McGillivray,
2008: 264)

In the absence of a generally recognized right to a clean and unpolluted environment (on
which see below), the basis of any criminal liability for such activities and their resulting harms
at a jurisprudential level is often unclear. Indeed, Passas has highlighted the particular difficulty
in relation to cross-border practices that are legal in one country but not in another:

Asymmetries in legal definitions and law enforcement enable corporations to do what is prohibited at
home in other jurisdictions without breaking any laws. Processes of globalization have multiplied the
opportunities for that. (Passas, 2005: 773 774)

Although Passas is not primarily concerned here with either environmental crime or wider
notions of environmental harm, it is clear that the asymmetries he speaks of are precisely what
render specific parts of the world and specific groups within society especially vulnerable to
environmental victimization, a fact that will be discussed in more detail below.
In light of such jurisprudential difficulties, there are plenty of sound arguments as to why crim-
inal justice may be ill suited to dealing with environmentally destructive activities as a whole, or
certainly with environmental victimization. For example, fundamentally the majority of criminal

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justice systems across the world are not accustomed or adapted to deal with ‘mass victimizations’
of the kind that are often a feature of environmental offending (Skinnider, 2011). Furthermore, the
wide and eclectic scope of possible harms that can be associated with environmental victimization
(discussed below) go well beyond those with which criminal justice systems are traditionally con-
cerned or indeed, one might argue, can ever be concerned given the necessarily high standard of
proof that is required to convict defendants in a criminal court.
On a related point, we may be concerned that any encouragement of a greater role for criminal
justice in matters of environmental degradation might well have a net-widening effect, bringing
more people and corporations within the scope of criminal justice (and state control) than ever
before (McMahon, 1990). Here, academic (green) victimologists must be wary of the concerns
expressed by Elias (1986) and others (see Miers, 1997; Rock, 1990) that the widening acceptance
of broader categories of crime victims by governments is in fact often a means of justifying the
expansion of retributive criminal justice policies. From a critical perspective it is interesting to note
on this point that in other areas notably anti-social behaviour the UK government in particular
has been keen to expand the remit of criminal justice mechanisms beyond actual criminal activity,
earning criticism from a number of commentators (see Brown, 2004).
For such reasons some authors, notably Mares (2010), dismiss the idea that criminal justice can
effectively deal with environmental victims or indeed that law of any kind is capable of doing so
as a misnomer, preferring instead a system based on civilizing and shaming. The situation
appears even further removed from traditional criminal justice principles if one approaches the
issue from a less anthropocentric perspective to consider victimization to non-human animals, the
ecosystem and so on (see Cazaux, 1999; White, 2011; Zimmerman, 2003). Whilst it is not my
intention in the present article to explore the issue of non-human victims of environmental harm
in detail, it is important to acknowledge here the firm conviction of many in the developing field of
green criminology that adopting a purely anthropic perspective to such study is fundamentally
flawed. Thus ideas of ‘species justice’ (Nurse, 2013), ‘animal justice’ and ‘ecological justice’
(White, 2008) have all been discussed in the literature. Even if one prefers to remain human-
focused, the connections between the destruction of environments and resulting harms to the peo-
ple living in those environments are hard to deny (Brown et al., 1997). To give one example, Mares
(2010) has drawn clear links between the erosion of soil used as farmland in parts of Africa with the
displacement of local inhabitants, who in turn then find themselves vulnerable to human trafficking
(Jasparro and Taylor, 2008).
The above points notwithstanding, a key role for any green victimology, it is submitted, will lie
in unpicking the extent to which formal justice mechanisms are incapable of dealing with cases of
environmental victimization and the extent to which this alleged incompatibility in fact reflects
cultural reticence amongst legal practitioners and others involved in delivering those justice
systems. Victimologists have, of course, long been concerned with the extent to which criminal
justice practitioners as a matter of occupational culture construct ideas of their roles within
the criminal justice system and whether such presumed roles include consideration for more tra-
ditional victims of crime (Shapland et al., 1985; Hall, 2009). For its part, in a review of the English
and Welsh criminal justice system’s handling of environmental crime (in which, notably, no ref-
erence to victims was made), the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (2004)
emphasized a lack of awareness of environmental crime issues amongst judges and prosecutors
rather than any fundamental incompatibility with criminal justice per se. In the same report, the
Law Society of England and Wales labelled this state of affairs as ‘clearly unacceptable’, indicat-
ing that the problem lay with attitudes amongst the legal professions rather than with the law itself.

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One particularly stark example of the impact of occupational cultures within a legal system on
the plight of environmental victims can be drawn from the oil extractions taking place in the Niger-
ian Delta. Here, Ebeku (2003) argues that judges have traditionally disregarded the position of
environmental victims in favour of the economic interests of the state. Although Ebeku’s discus-
sion of this issue is mainly based on civil courts, the point concerning judges as the ultimate ‘gate-
keepers’ to the justice system is well made. Ebeku (2003) has also argued that it is the culture of
judges in Nigeria that needs to change in this regard, and is in fact slowly doing so. Kotzé and
Paterson (2009) have, likewise, emphasized the key significance of differing attitudes taken by
judiciaries across different jurisdictions to environmental governance. Bell and McGillivray
(2008) have further argued that the operation and enforcement of a great deal of environmental
regulation and criminal law at present depends very much on the working practices and cultures
of enforcement agencies.

Identifying environmental victims and the heterogeneous nature of environmental harm

The argument that all victims of crime are not the same, do not react in the same way (or to the
same timetable) to their victimization and require different services and support from criminal jus-
tice and other agencies is another familiar tenet of mainstream victimology (Shapland and Hall,
2007), and one which may apply to an even greater extent in relation to environmental victims.
Theoretical musings, or even parallels drawn with more traditional and well-studied victim groups,
are, for this reason, insufficient as a basis for the continuing development of green victimology. As
with other areas of victimization, the voices and views of victims of environmental harm have
largely remained absent from the relevant literature, and indeed from policy debates. Given that
almost no empirical research has been carried out which takes into account the perspective of envi-
ronmental victims themselves, green victimology will face the arduous challenge of developing
methodological approaches to finding, sampling and drawing data from this diverse ‘group’.
The principal difficulty here lies in the apparent heterogeneous nature of environmental
victimization. In one of the few in-depth (literature-based) studies on this issue, Skinnider
(2011) extrapolates the following broad characteristics of environmental victims:

a. The victims are not always aware of the fact that they have been victimized.
b. The victimization is often delayed, with the victim becoming aware of the victimization
much later.
c. Victims are not sure about who victimized them or who exactly is responsible.
d. The victimization is often serious not so much because any individual victim was seri-
ously affected, but because numerous victims were affected by the crime.
e. Victimization can often include repeat offences.

Skinnider goes on to postulate that environmental victims can be classified by a number of dif-
ferent typologies, including: by wrongful act; by the nature of the harm; by the extent of the dam-
ages suffered; by the scope of the harm; or by the perpetrator(s) of that harm. Expanding on the
‘nature of the harm’ typology, I have previously argued that such harm may fall into four broad
categories: impacts on health; economic impacts; impacts on victims’ security; and social/cultural
impacts (Hall, 2013). Interestingly, these characterizations of harm bear some resemblance to the
environmental, social and mental ecologies proposed by Guattari (2008) and discussed by Spencer

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and Fitzgerald (2013). Needless to say, however, these classifications in all likelihood represent
only the tip of the iceberg.
What is clear about environmental victims themselves is that the overriding evidence now
points to endemic inequality in the distribution of environmental harms at local, national and glo-
bal levels (Dobson, 1998; Jasparro and Taylor, 2008). This inequality is in part geographically
based. So, for example, the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC)
acknowledges in its preamble the particular vulnerability of ‘low-lying and other small island
countries, countries with low-lying coastal, arid and semi-arid areas or areas liable to floods,
drought and desertification, and developing countries with fragile mountainous ecosystems’. This
notwithstanding, it is important that a focus on the inequalities of environmental harm fostered by
physical geography does not distract us from the more complex social, economic and cultural
aspects of environmental victimization. The unequal distribution of environmental degradation as
a whole has been commented on by South (2010), who sees this as reflecting wider tendencies
towards ‘social exclusion’ that have long been a topic of research and discussion in mainstream
criminology (Byrne, 1999). In relation to environmental victimization, Lee (2009: 3 4) has sum-
marized the situation in the following terms:

Poor people are usually excluded from the environmental decision-making process, and once a policy
is made, they are usually powerless to change it.

In sum, therefore, a further key challenge for any green victimology will lie in identifying the
nature of environmental victimization itself and the people (businesses, countries) affected. Per-
haps to a greater degree than for many other kinds of victimization, this is unlikely to be a cognate
grouping.

The human rights perspective

As a concept, ‘rights’ for victims of traditional crimes are now fairly well established, at least on a
rhetorical level, in a number of national and international instruments (Hall, 2010). Such rights
include a number of important service rights which have been largely uncontroversial (JUSTICE
Committee, 1998) and also a developing assortment of procedural rights of participation within
justice systems, which have attracted much fiercer debate (Ashworth, 2000). Human rights have
thus become one of the cornerstones of the discussion going on around traditional victims of crime
(as well as criminal justice in general) and, as such, will prove a vital component of green victi-
mology as well. This is all the more certain given the transnational nature of many environmental
harms and the likely involvement of the international legal order, under which human rights are at
present one of the few mechanisms by which individuals (rather than states) can seek recognition.
Indeed, the move towards greater recognition of human rights within the international legal order
(including the area of international environmental law) has been heralded by Birnie et al. (2009:
269) as ‘perhaps the most significant shift in the focus of international law’ of recent years.
As noted by Jackson (1990), talk of rights within more traditional victimological areas is
dominated by ‘balance’ rhetoric chiefly concerning the balancing of victims’ rights with
those of offenders. The same balancing exercise will need to be addressed by green victimologists
as well, although, in this case, there may well be more complex issues at stake. Whilst green
victimology must tackle the same concerns about (environmental) offenders being prejudiced
by more victim involvement in the justice system the so-called ‘zero-sum game’ (Jackson,

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2004) environmental crime also raises tensions between the economic needs of the broader com-
munity or the state as a whole and smaller groups or individual citizens within those communities
(Skinnider, 2011). Furthermore, to redress environmental harm for some victims may lead to
forced changes in industrial practices, potentially putting other victims out of work.1 Indeed, it
seems likely that, much more so than for many of the crimes traditionally receiving extensive
attention by victimologists and criminologists, the ‘balance’ to be struck in relation to environmen-
tal crime and justice may actually lie between one set of victims’ rights and those of another group
of victims, or potential victims, now or in the future.
If green victimology is to adopt the language of rights it must also, it is submitted, address
another key set of questions raised by more traditional branches of victimology concerning the
enforceability of such rights. Here there are definite parallels to be drawn between the fledgling
recognition of rights for environmental victims and those rights ascribed to more traditional
victims in that the enforcement mechanisms attached to these ‘rights’ remain in most cases mark-
edly underdeveloped and lacking true compulsive authority. One pertinent example is the 1998
‘Aarhus’ UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-
making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. This binding instrument requires
governments to bring individuals who may be affected into the decision-making process when
environmental issues are at stake. Significantly for an instrument of international law, under
Article 15 the Convention allows individuals within states to refer possible breaches of their rights
under the Convention to its Compliance Committee. In practice, however, so far there have been
few (63) applications made to the Compliance Committee. It is also the case that the body
cannot issue binding decisions, but rather makes recommendations to the full Meeting of the
Parties (Birnie et al., 2009; Brisman, 2013).
In fact, the broad consensus at present amongst international environmental lawyers appears to
be that no definitive right to an unpolluted, green environment can yet be said to exist in interna-
tional law (Birnie et al., 2009). Rather, the most progressive developments concerning rights for
environmental victims so far have come about as a result of interpreting existing, well established
rights such as the right to privacy and the right to a home life to include environmental harm,
especially by the European Court of Human Rights (Wilson, 2011). Nor in most cases can existing
‘rights’ for victims of crime be easily applied to victims of environmental harm given that the
definition of victims employed is often narrow. That said, one significant exception to this last
observation comes from the United States, where the Crime Victims’ Rights Act of 2004, which
introduced victims’ rights in to the US penal code (Doyle, 2008), has been interpreted (albeit in an
unreported and therefore non-binding decision) as encompassing environmental crime and its
victims despite the fact that such harm is not expressly mentioned in the Act.2
It is clear, therefore, that, like victimology as a whole, the study of environmental victimization
and environmental victims will inevitably raise many questions concerning the nature and scope of
such victims’ ‘rights’ (needs, entitlements, legitimate expectations and so on) and how those rights
relate to the rights of others: including the rights of corporations, states and other victims. Green
victimology therefore needs to apply itself to understanding these developments and how they
might be applied to wider groups of environmental victims.

The need for an interdisciplinary approach

By expanding here on the characteristics and challenges of a ‘green victimology’ there is, of
course, a danger that this article will be viewed as proposing a siloed approach to the study of

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environmental harm and its victims that is to say, promoting an exclusive or rigidly defined
discipline or subdiscipline of study. In fact, however, a key aspect of any successful study of
environmental victimization has to be a strong interdisciplinary, and indeed inter-sectorial, com-
ponent. The virtues of an interdisciplinary approach are, of course, widely touted throughout the
social and physical sciences (see Matthews and Ross, 2010), and for good reason. Drawing from
a variety of sources and perspectives almost inevitably provides a deeper understanding of any
given subject of the research exercise as well as providing the scope for transposing ideas and solu-
tions between subject areas (see Lury and Wakeford, 2012). The virtues of interdisciplinary
approaches are also well recognized by criminologists (Walsh and Ellis, 2007) and by victimolo-
gists specifically (Dupont-Morales, 1998). Indeed, at the time of writing, the British Society of
Criminology is preparing to host its summer (2013) conference under the title ‘challenging disci-
plinary boundaries within criminological discourses’.
The study of environmental victimization draws on a complex array of data, ideas and practices
from across the social and physical sciences. It calls into question the interface between science
and law, which Houck (2003: 1926) describes as a ‘tale from a troubled marriage’. Economic
matters are clearly raised (Helm and Hepburn, 2009). Perhaps more subtly, economic impacts of
environmental victimization are often inherently linked with more cultural and social factors, at
which point we move into the domains of sociology and anthropology. Thus, the loss of the
fishing industry in the Maldives owing to sea level rises caused, it now seems fairly certain,
by climate change (Brown et al., 1997; Domroes, 2007; Mörner et al., 2004) is as much a tale
of cultural destruction as it is of financial loss. As such, victimologists require the input of cul-
tural experts in order to fully appreciate and incorporate such events. Studies of environmental
victimization also inevitably touch upon healthcare issues (Chivian et al., 1993), the politiciza-
tion of the ‘green agenda’ (Helm and Hepburn, 2009) and the provision of insurance to those
affected (IASIE, 2009). I have argued elsewhere (Hall, 2013) that a key component of any
‘green victimology’ will also be a close interaction between victimologists and international
legal scholars (and practitioners), environmental pollution so often constituting a cross-border
issue (Passas, 2005). That said, given the breadth of possible contributors and perspectives rel-
evant to the debates at hand, the idea that law (much less criminal law) can or should constitute
the sole solution to the problems of environmental victimization is surely wrong. On this point
it is interesting to note in passing the gradual development of so-called ‘environmental media-
tion’ processes, which in many cases boast many of the features of restorative justice (Amy,
1983). Very little work has yet been carried out to assess the merits of such schemes, although
this was the subject of a mock ecocide trial sentencing event hosted at the University of Essex
in 2012. It involved representatives acting for nature (birds, wild spaces, etc.) in a restorative
justice forum with actors representing oil and industry polluters.3 Clearly, such a development
represents yet another important line of enquiry and will pose more challenges to green
victimologists.

A ‘green victimology’?
In the 21st century issues pertaining to the environment, climate change and atmospheric pollution
have become persistent and inexorable social issues attracting study and analysis from across the
physical and social sciences. As yet, however, victimologists have largely ignored in their theoriz-
ing the plight of those harmed by the destructive effects of these processes and events, even when
there is evidence that they are man-made. Nevertheless, the scope of officially recognized

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‘environmental crime’ is growing (Gibbs et al., 2010) such that, even if we restrict ourselves to
official notions of criminal victimization, the time has surely arrived for more detailed study of
these issues.
The aim of the present article has been a modest one, being largely to set out some key issues
and questions posed by the study of environmental victims and the directions such study might
take. If nothing else, the above discussion has highlighted the complexity of these issues, although,
interestingly, many of the questions raised have actually been extensions of the challenges faced by
victimologists for some time. So, from the outset, we have seen that any green victimology needs
to fully appreciate and emphasize the heterogeneous nature of ‘environmental harm’ and ‘environ-
mental victims’. Even in relation to traditional notions of criminal victimization, academics, and
certainly policy-makers, have often been in danger of treating ‘victims’ as if they were a uniform
group, when in fact we know that crime impacts upon different people in different ways and at
different times. If anything, the above discussion suggests that the breadth of likely impacts may
be even wider in the area of environmental harm.
The second key conclusion to be drawn from the above is that a green victimology is by its
nature necessarily a critical victimology. It is submitted that the social, political and economic
influences on the identification and recognition of ‘illegal’ or ‘harmful’ acts and omissions
necessitate fundamental questions being asked of what any given criminal justice system does
and does not accept as an ‘environmental crime’ and thus an ‘environmental victim’. State
interests clearly play a large role in this labelling process, as do powerful corporate and eco-
nomic interests within the state. The situation on the Nigerian Delta, discussed above, is a prime
example of the resulting victimization that occurs when these interests combine and are prior-
itized over and above those of individuals and communities. This interplay of corporate and
state interests of course affects not just what environmental crimes (or harms) are committed,
but also the very definition of such ‘official crimes’ in the first place. This critical approach is
in fact consistent with developments seen in many jurisdictions of defining victims by the harm
they endure rather than through set legalistic categories (Hall, 2010), and thus represents
another extension to debates already occurring within victimological circles rather than a com-
pletely novel area of concern.
Also, expanding upon existing debates in more mainstream victimological literature, green vic-
timologists need to consider carefully the advent of human rights, including environmental rights
and intergenerational rights (Hiskes, 2008). It is submitted that such an analysis will be largely
impossible without close cooperation with human rights experts, human rights lawyers and inter-
national legal scholars. This returns us to the points raised above concerning interdisciplinarity.
Whilst arguably all areas of study benefit from an interdisciplinary approach, the sheer breadth
of issues from both the physical and social sciences raised by environmental victimization, it is
submitted, make such interdisciplinarity an essential (not merely desirable) component of green
victimology. Furthermore, this must constitute true interdisciplinarity rather than multidisciplinar-
ity, with synergies being drawn between the knowledge and methods used by quite diverse groups
of researchers.
Finally, the most notable absentees from the vast majority of work carried out in relation to
environmental victimization so far are the voices of environmental victims themselves. Given the
heterogeneous nature of this (non)group, the methodological challenges of identifying and drawing
data from those harmed by environmentally damaging activities (whether or not officially defined
as ‘criminal’) may constitute the greatest test of all to a green victimology. The challenge must be
met, however, if we are to avoid the charge so often levied at states and criminal justice systems by

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140 International Review of Victimology 20(1)

victimologists of all descriptions: that of proceeding in a manner that at best assumes and at worst
ignores the stated views and needs of real victims.

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers of this article for providing information on this initiative.

Notes
1. Although see Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (2011) for a contrary view.
2. Re Parker; U.S. v U.S. District Court and W.R. Grace & Co., Nos. 09-70529, 09-70533 (9th Cir.), 27
February 2009.
3. See http://www.youtube.com/watch? feature=player_embedded &v=u2YmxwUnCEs.

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