Eco-Crimes and Ecocide at Sea: Toward a New Blue Criminology

• Date: 01 March 2022
• Author: Nigel South,Ascensión García Ruiz,Avi Brisman
• Published date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/0306624X20967950
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X20967950

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2022, Vol. 66(4) 407 –429

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0306624X20967950

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Article

Eco-Crimes and Ecocide

at Sea: Toward a New

Blue Criminology

Ascensión García Ruiz1, Nigel South2,3 ,

and Avi Brisman3,4,5

Abstract

This essay adopts an interdisciplinary approach to consider the meaning of

“eco-crime” in the aquatic environment and draws on marine science, the study of

criminal law and environmental law, and the criminology of environmental harms. It

reviews examples of actions and behaviors of concern, such as offences committed

by transnational organized crime and the legal and illegal over-exploitation of

marine resources, and it discusses responses related to protection, prosecution and

punishment, including proposals for an internationally accepted and enforced law of

ecocide. One key element of the policy and practice of ending ecocide is the call to

prioritize the adoption of technologies that are benign and renewable. Our essay

concludes with a description of the “Almadraba” method of fishing to illustrate that

there are ways in which the principles of sustainability and restoration can be applied

in an ethical and just way in the context of modern fisheries.

Keywords

Almadraba, blue criminology, ecocide, green criminology, illegal, unreported and

unregulated fishing (IUU), transnational organized crime

1Spanish University for Distance Education, Madrid, Spain

2University of Essex, Colchester, UK

3Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

4Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY, USA

5University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Ascensión García Ruiz, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law, Spanish University

for Distance Education (UNED), Obispo Trejo 2, third floor, room 3.40, 28040, Madrid, Spain.

Email: ascensiongarcia@der.uned.es

967950IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X20967950International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyGarcía Ruiz et al.

research-article2020

408 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 66(4)

Introduction

The challenges associated with what we can call “eco-crimes” are growing.

“Humanity’s self-ordained mandate to subdue and dominate nature,” as Bearzi

(2020) puts it, has affected the planet so much that it is, arguably, entering a new

geological epoch—the Anthropocene (Brisman & South, 2018). These actions and

effects occur across a wide variety of locations and the resulting impacts may mate-

rialize far from their source, in terrestrial, atmospheric or aquatic ecosystems

(Zalasiewicz et al., 2019). Referring to the vital role that recognition of the

Anthropocene will play in the context of international law, Vidas (2015, p. 2)

remarks that it “will bring a fundamental shift . . . in which the challenges are

increasingly recognized as the consequences of natural, not only political, change.”

This factor may exacerbate already “existing tensions in the regulation of inter-

state relations under international law,” and present serious challenges to fledgling

international environmental criminal law. Despite the well-documented state of the

planet—the degradation of land, destruction of forests, pollution of air, and endan-

germent of the seas and aquatic life—political and popular opinion and action have,

for various reasons, not addressed the challenges with the urgency they deserve

(South, 2016; see also Klein, 2019).

In this essay, we consider the case of the world’s seas, often overlooked in com-

parison to the attention paid to air quality or loss of forests due to wildfires and

agricultural clearance (see Sheppard, 2019). Jouffray et al. (2020, p. 46) refer to the

increasing human pressures now being placed on the worlds’ oceans as “the blue

acceleration,” noting that while human claims to marine “resources,” such as for

food and materials, are not new, “the extent, intensity, and diversity of today’s aspi-

rations are unprecedented.” Crimes and harms affecting the marine environment

might, we suggest, be considered as part of a new “blue criminology” which

embraces, for example, the concept of transnational organized crime at sea which

can be found in operation in differing ways across the world’s maritime regions (see

generally Paulson, 2018). Bueger and Edmunds (2020) identify three focal catego-

ries of relevance here: crimes against mobility (modern piracy, cybercrime), crimi-

nal flows or transit crime (smuggling, human trafficking), and environmental crimes

(e.g., fishing, waste dumping at sea, unregulated activities). To consider all these

together suggests the need for international criminal law that is holistic and that can

provide the basis for a comprehensive response.

Today, the social and natural sciences need to be more sophisticated, without being

more compartmentalized: in other words, they need to be intellectually receptive and

sympathetic to each other in order to synthesize useful knowledge regarding environ-

mental threats (see Bearzi, 2020). Adopting an interdisciplinary approach to findings

from marine science opens a window of opportunity for the study of criminal law, and

for a criminology concerned with environmental harms to consider the meaning of

“blue crime” and possible interventions (Bueger & Edmunds, 2020). Both the crimi-

nology of the environment—referred to as “green criminology” (Brisman & South,

2019b, 2020)—and environmental criminal law (Boyle, 2012; García Ruiz, 2017;