Visit https://ebookfinal.

com to download the full version and

explore more ebooks

Victims of Environmental Harm Rights Recognition

and Redress Under National and International Law
1st Edition Matthew Hall

_____ Click the link below to download _____

https://ebookfinal.com/download/victims-of-
environmental-harm-rights-recognition-and-redress-
under-national-and-international-law-1st-edition-
matthew-hall/

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookfinal.com

Here are some suggested products you might be interested in.
Click the link to download

The Right to Vote Rights and Liberties under the Law

Donald Stephenson

https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-right-to-vote-rights-and-
liberties-under-the-law-donald-stephenson/

International environmental law 1st Edition Elli Louka

https://ebookfinal.com/download/international-environmental-law-1st-
edition-elli-louka/

Recharacterizing Restructuring Law Distribution and Gender

in Market Reform The Erik Castren Institute Monographs on
International Law and Human Rights on International Law
and Human Rights V 3 1st Edition Kerry Rittich
https://ebookfinal.com/download/recharacterizing-restructuring-law-
distribution-and-gender-in-market-reform-the-erik-castren-institute-
monographs-on-international-law-and-human-rights-on-international-law-
and-human-rights-v-3-1st-ed/

The Law and Ethics of Medical Research International

Bioethics and Human Rights 1st Edition Aurora Plomer

https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-law-and-ethics-of-medical-
research-international-bioethics-and-human-rights-1st-edition-aurora-
plomer/
Internet child pornography and the law national and
international responses 1st Edition Yaman Akdeniz

https://ebookfinal.com/download/internet-child-pornography-and-the-
law-national-and-international-responses-1st-edition-yaman-akdeniz/

Cultural Rights in International Law Article 27 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Beyond 1st
Edition Elissavet Stamatopoulou-Robbins
https://ebookfinal.com/download/cultural-rights-in-international-law-
article-27-of-the-universal-declaration-of-human-rights-and-
beyond-1st-edition-elissavet-stamatopoulou-robbins/

Principles of International Environmental Law 2nd ed

Edition Philippe Sands

https://ebookfinal.com/download/principles-of-international-
environmental-law-2nd-ed-edition-philippe-sands/

Human Rights in International Investment Law and

Arbitration 1st Edition Pierre-Marie Dupuy

https://ebookfinal.com/download/human-rights-in-international-
investment-law-and-arbitration-1st-edition-pierre-marie-dupuy/

Environmental Crime and Its Victims Perspectives Within

Green Criminology Toine Spapens

https://ebookfinal.com/download/environmental-crime-and-its-victims-
perspectives-within-green-criminology-toine-spapens/
Victims of Environmental Harm Rights Recognition and
Redress Under National and International Law 1st
Edition Matthew Hall Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Matthew Hall
ISBN(s): 9780415677004, 0415677009
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 2.51 MB
Year: 2013
Language: english
Victims of Environmental Harm

In recent years, the increasing focus on climate change and environmental

degradation has prompted unprecedented attention on the criminal liability of
individuals, organizations and even states for polluting activities. These develop-
ments have given rise to a new area of criminological study, often called ‘green
criminology’. Yet in all the theorizing that has taken place in this area, there is
still a marked absence of specific focus on those actually suffering harm as a
result of environmental degradation. This book represents a unique attempt to
substantively conceptualize and examine the place of such ‘environmental
victims’ in criminal justice systems both nationally and internationally.
Grounded in a comparative approach and drawing on critical criminological
arguments, this volume examines many of the areas traditionally considered by
victimologists and relates these areas to victims of environmental crime and,
more widely, environmental harm. These include victims’ rights, compensation,
treatment by criminal justice systems, and participation in that process. The book
approaches the issue of ‘environmental victimization’ from a ‘social harms’ per-
spective (as opposed to a ‘criminal harms’ one), thus problematizing the defini-
tions of environmental crime found within most jurisdictions. Victims of
Environmental Harm concludes by mapping out the contours of potential further
research into a developing green victimology and how this agenda might inform
criminal justice reform and policy-�making at national and global levels.
This book will be of interest to researchers across a number of disciplines
including criminology, international law, victimology, socio-�legal studies and
physical sciences, as well as to professionals involved in policy-�making
processes.

Matthew Hall obtained a PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2007, having
previously graduated from Sheffield’s MA in International Criminology Pro-
gramme. He is now senior lecturer in Law and Criminal Justice at Sheffield,
where he teaches many aspects of criminology, as well as criminal law and the
law of evidence. He is an editor for the International Review of Victimology.
Routledge Frontiers of Criminal Justice

1 Sex Offenders: Punish, Help, Change or Control?

Theory, policy and practice explored
Edited by Jo Brayford, Francis Cowe and John Deering

2 Building Justice in Post-­Transition Europe

Processes of criminalisation within Central and Eastern European societies
Edited by Kay Goodall, Margaret Malloch and Bill Munro

3 Technocrime, Policing and Surveillance

Edited by Stéphane Leman-­Langlois

4 Youth Justice in Context

Community, compliance and young people
Mairead Seymour

5 Women, Punishment and Social Justice

Human rights and penal practices
Margaret Malloch and Gill McIvor

6 Handbook of Policing, Ethics and Professional Standards

Edited by Allyson MacVean, Peter Spindler and Charlotte Solf

7 Contrasts in Punishment
An explanation of Anglophone excess and Nordic exceptionalism
John Pratt and Anna Eriksson

8 Victims of Environmental Harm

Rights, recognition and redress under national and international law
Matthew Hall

9 Doing Probation Work

Identity in a criminal justice occupation
Rob C. Mawby and Anne Worrall
Victims of
Environmental Harm
Rights, recognition and redress under
national and intemationallaw

Matthew Hall

R~~~;!;~~;"P
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Matthew Hall
The right of Matthew Hall to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data
Hall, Matthew (Criminologist)
Victims of environmental harm: rights, recognition and redress under
national and international law/Matthew Hall.
pages cm. – (Routledge frontiers of criminal justice)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Offenses against the environment. 2. Victims of crimes–Legal status,
laws, etc. 3. Reparation (Criminal justice) 4. Liability for environmental
damages I. Title.
K5278.H35 2013
344.04′6–dc23
2012033403
ISBN: 978-0-415-67700-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-08344-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
For Kate
Contents

Foreword ix
Acknowledgements xii
List of abbreviations xiii

1 Victims, environmental harm and international law 1

1.1 Introduction and goals of this book 1
1.2 Theoretical perspectives 11
1.3 The role of the state and of international law 19
1.4 Summary and book structure 22

2 Identifying and conceptualizing the victims of

environmental harm 25
2.1 Investigating environmental victimization and its
impacts 26
2.2 Victims as offenders, offenders as victims 38
2.3 Inequalities in the impacts of environmental
victimization 41
2.4 Environmental victims as victims of abuse of power? 47
2.5 Ways forward 48

3 Environmental victims across jurisdictions: criminal law

and state responsibility 50
3.1 The challenges of incorporating environmental harms into
criminal law 51
3.2 Victims of environmental harm in domestic criminal
justice systems 54
3.3 Victims of environmental harm in European criminal
justice 57
3.4 Beyond Europe: the 1985 UN declaration and international
law 61
viii   Contents
3.5 International criminal law: prospects for the International
Criminal Court 64
3.6 State responsibility for environmental degradation under
international law 66
3.7 Conclusions and ways forward 71

4 Human rights, victim rights, environmental rights? 73

4.1 Conceptualizing victims’ rights 75
4.2 The human rights of environmental victims 80
4.3 Victim participation? 87
4.4 Discussion and ways forward 92

5 Responding to environmental victimization: compensation,

restitution and redress 96
5.1 What do victims of environmental crime want?
What do they need? 97
5.2 Mechanisms of redress 100
5.3 International influences on compensation and restitution
for victims of environmental harm 118
5.4 Restorative options 123
5.5 Conclusions and ways forward 126

6 Mapping out a green victimology 132

6.1 Is criminal justice the solution? 132
6.2 What are the limitations of current provisions for
environmental victims? 137
6.3 Environmental victims: the need for an interdisciplinary
approach 140
6.4 Green victimology 144
6.5 Final conclusions 154

Notes 156
References 167
Index 188
Foreword

The field of ‘green criminology’ has grown remarkably in recent years and will
no doubt continue to expand rapidly as environmental conditions deteriorate.
Climate change, in particular, is set to fundamentally transform the present
world. The impact of global warming is already being felt, and rises in the
Earth’s temperature will continue to generate increasingly profound shifts in
weather conditions and climatic events. The devastation wrought by Superstorm
Sandy along the eastern seaboard of the United States in October 2012 was not
simply a once-­in-a-­generation phenomenon; it marks part of the beginning of
regular chaotic events, the predicted result of anthropogenic contributions to
greenhouse gas emissions.
Meanwhile, the demise of plant and animal species, both through legal and
illegal means, the growth in human population, and the shrinking of natural
resources (such as drinking water) and non-­renewable resources (such as oil and
gas), all add up to enormous pressures on the environment generally. With bio-
diversity under threat, global resilience to the impacts of climate change is being
reduced. Yet the commodification of nature ensures that economic value is, iron-
ically, best realised in conditions of advancing scarcity. Environmental degrada-
tion and destruction is, for some, profitable.
Simultaneously, the global pursuit of the Western consumer lifestyle daily
adds to the pollution of air, water and land. Factories belch out smoke, as do
cars, buses and trucks designed to transport people and goods. Illegal transfer of
electronic waste is fast becoming one of the biggest environmental crimes, while
vast areas of the planet continue to suffer deforestation in the global scramble
for new mega-­mines, for coal-­seam gas, for GMO crops and for pastures for
cattle and sheep. Changing land uses are creating new toxic towns; new forms of
recycling of ships and electronic products are producing contaminated commu-
nities. And the planet continues to heat up.
The study of environmental crime and harm has been the core focus of green
criminology for more than two decades. Who is doing what, where, and how
have been the key questions of those working in this area. The main focus has
been on offenders and perpetrators of harm, and on detailing specific instances
of environmental vandalism. The pursuit of social and ecological justice has
informed much of this work, yet aside from that literature specifically linked to
x   Foreword
and stemming from the Environmental Justice movements, little has expressly
been written about environmental victims.
This is now set to change. As our collective knowledge of global environ-
mental harm increases, there is an appreciation that those who suffer from envi-
ronmental victimisation deserve sustained analysis and strategic interventions in
their own right. As Matthew Hall demonstrates in this book, however, this is not
a straightforward task. Environmental victimisation is, indeed, an extremely
complicated and multifaceted issue. The complexity is much further com-
pounded if we include the non-­human in addition to the human as victim.
As with ‘ordinary’ victims within criminal justice, there are persistent
issues of recognition, acknowledgement, participation, redress, compensation
and restoration that pertain to matters of justice for victims of environmental
crime. Unpacking the myriad issues that obtain in such cases is a key task of
the present work by Hall. Insights are needed, for example, into the impacts of
environmental harm on human victims, including the inequalities in these
impacts among diverse population groups. It is vital to gain a picture of how
such harms are or could be dealt with within existing criminal laws, and of the
potential for human rights law to offer protection and newly conceptualised
rights in relation to the environment. What is to be done with and for victims
and survivors of environmental harm takes us into the realms of restitution,
compensation and restoration, and is likewise in need of illumination.
Dealing with issues pertaining to environmental victims takes the reader
into murky legal waters, abstract theoretical matters and substantive areas of
application. Offenders are victims, and victims are offenders. The state is per-
petrator of harm, and giver of solace and recompense. The Janus nature of
criminalisation and victimisation means that there are often more than two
sides to specific questions. It is for this reason that calls for a ‘green victimol-
ogy’ include assertions of the importance of a critical, holistic approach to the
subject matter. Not all is as it seems.
Yet the need for recognition and redress is substantial and urgent, and
demands action in the here and now. The intertwining of academic and activist
projects are thus crucial to the further development of green victimology.
This book provides a broad conceptual canvas upon which dedicated dis-
cussion and debate about the victims of environmental harm take place. It is
the first book of its kind. While providing a sophisticated and careful analysis
of existing laws and policy applications in this area, it constantly affirms the
need for further refinement and continued development of the criminological
imagination. Accordingly, it provides the platform for analysis of what is,
what could be, and what should be when it comes to the situation of victims of
environmental harm. In this regard, it is intended to provoke and stimulate as
much as to establish conceptual precision and summarise existing institutional
responses. This, too, is what makes the book foundational for those of us inter-
ested in the study of environmental harm and in actively supporting those
most affected by the processes and institutions that are destroying life as we
know it.
 Foreword   xi
Analysis of who or what is being harmed ultimately leads to consideration of
environmental victims. This, in turn, highlights the need for a green victimology.
In this respect, Matthew Hall has provided a path-­breaking initiative that will
help to guide research and action in this area for many years to come.
Rob White
University of Tasmania, Australia
Acknowledgements

I owe a large debt to numerous individuals who helped make the following
volume a reality. I would particularly like to thank my colleagues from the Uni-
versity of Sheffield Centre for Criminological Research, and from the University
of Sheffield School of Law, for innumerable discussions, consultations and
brainstorming sessions on every aspect of this project. Dr Richard Collins and
Dr Russell Buchan in particular have always been on hand to help this criminol-
ogist understand and appreciate the subtleties of international law and its schol-
arship. I would also like to thank Professor Stephen Farrall for his important
advice and insights into numerous aspects of criminological theory and research
and how they might apply to climate change and environmental degradation
more widely. My thanks also to Professor Rob White of the University of Tas-
mania for his invaluable advice at the early stages of this project and for penning
the foreword to this volume: which of course is to say nothing of his enormous
contributions to the development of green criminology as a whole.
A special mention must be made here of Professor Duncan French of the
University of Lincoln School of Law. Professor French was the international
environmental lawyer who initially asked me what, if anything, criminology had
to say about environmental victims. It is hoped that this volume will go some
way to providing an initial, if somewhat belated, answer.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife Claire, my son Edward and my daugh-
ter Kate, whose support and love – as ever – are reflected on every page of this
volume.
Any errors or omissions remain my own.
Abbreviations

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

CERCLA Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and
Liability Act, 1980 (USA)
CIViTAS Institute for the Study of Civil Society (UK)
CNTV Chinese Network Television
CVRA Crime Victims’ Rights Act 2004 (USA)
ECHR European Convention on Human Rights
ECtHR European Court of Human Rights
FCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
FTA Freight Transport Association (UK)
ICC International Criminal Court
ILC International Law Commission
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
NGO Non-­governmental organization
RSPCA The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (UK)
TSDF Treatment, storage and disposal facilities
UNECE United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
UNHRC United Nations Human Rights Committee
WHO World Health Organization
1 Victims, environmental harm and
international law

1.1 Introduction and goals of this book

In the twenty-­first century, criminal victimization has become a major area of
academic debate and policy movement across most of the developed world. One
of the most significant consequences of this has been the light that has been shed
on the needs and suffering of a multitude of victims who were previously all but
invisible in the eyes of both criminal justice systems and the public at large.
Such victims include those affected by domestic violence; child and other vul-
nerable victims; the friends and family of murder victims; and both male and
female victims of rape.1 Recognition of the problems faced by these distinct
groups, both within and beyond criminal justice processes, has undoubtedly led
to significant improvements in their treatment and support in many jurisdictions
(Hall, 2010). Yet the victimological literature increasingly recognizes that other
groups have to some extent been left behind the main vanguard of this ‘victims’
movement’. Among these still neglected groups are those victimized by actions
of the state, corporate victims, the corporate and individual victims of white
collar crime, and those harmed by the effects of environmental degradation per-
petrated or brought about by individuals, corporations and states. It is with this
last group, which I will refer to as ‘environmental victims’, that this volume is
primarily concerned.2
In recent years, the enduring problem of environmental pollution and climate
change3 has become an accepted reality for most scholars and practitioners
working in both the physical and social sciences.4 The progress made in our
understanding of the causes of environmental degradations of all kinds has pre-
sented a number of challenges for lawyers in particular, as questions are increas-
ingly raised concerning the responsibility of individuals, corporations and states
for environmental harms. Given the transboundary nature of the issue, interna-
tional law has also been obliged to adapt itself rapidly to meet these new chal-
lenges, with the development of international environmental law.5 Surprisingly,
however, there has been almost no attempt by commentators to combine an
analysis of these developments in the domestic and international legal orders
with some of the relatively well-­established lines of critical criminological and
victimological enquiry.
2   Environmental harm and international law
In light of the above observations, the present volume addresses the issue of
environmental victimization: representing the first broad-­scale attempt to apply
ideas and concepts developed by victimologists over the last 30 years to this rel-
atively new field. The book will also explore the question of who are the victims
of such environmental harms and how such victimization is often unequally dis-
tributed among the world’s populations (see White, 2008a). The resulting analy-
sis will be grounded in the author’s long-­term interest in the legal position and
rights of victims of crime and other social harms (Hall, 2009, 2010) coupled
with the growing field of green criminology (Edwards et al., 1996) and the
development of international environmental law.
In combining these areas of analysis, and thereby approaching the issue of
environmental crime and environmental victimization from an interdisciplinary
and comparative perspective, this volume will offer fresh insight into the impor-
tant questions raised by such victimization. In particular, because international
(environmental) law has tended to exclude consideration of the individual in
favour of the state, the approach taken by this volume will offer a rare, unified
consideration of both structure and agency as they relate to such matters. Given
the growing interest from governments and international organizations in the
harms caused by environmental pollution (spurred on by the developing evidence
of the full impact of environmental degradation of all kinds), such an analysis is
long overdue, and should prove an important contribution to the on-­going policy
debate now occurring in all jurisdictions on how they can adapt their justice
systems (and other forms of conflict redress) to address these matters. To this
end, this volume will present a theoretical framework for understanding and
approaching the issue of environmental victimization through criminal (and
other) justice mechanisms.
With the above aims in mind, the principal research questions to be addressed
in this volume are these:

1 Can criminal justice play an effective role at the national and international
levels in providing official recognition, support and redress for victims of
environmental harm?

This necessitates two secondary questions:

2 What are the limitations to current provisions for official recognition,

support and redress for victims of environmental harm6 through criminal
justice, both within individual jurisdictions domestically and at the interna-
tional level?
3 What does an interdisciplinary approach (encompassing socio-­legal analysis,
criminology, victimology and international law) teach us about how to
effectively address these limitations?

The principal contention of this book is that closer collaboration between inter-
national legal scholars, criminologists interested in green issues generally, and
 Environmental harm and international law   3
those interested in victimization specifically, has the potential to markedly
advance our understanding of a wide range of under-­researched issues, includ-
ing: the support needs of those affected by environmental harms; the state’s
responsibility for the adverse impacts of climate change; and the mechanisms of
redress and compensation available to those suffering the impacts of man-­made
environmental disasters at the national and international level.
To clarify the intended scope of this volume, two points need to be made
from the outset. First, as mentioned above, this book is primarily concerned
with the victims of man-­made environmental disasters as opposed to the ‘casu­
alties’ (Williams, 1996) of natural catastrophes. Of course, the distinction
between what is ‘natural’ and what is ‘man-­made’ may be at the heart of any
dispute over the obligations of the state or other parties to provide compensa-
tion, restitution and support to victims. An analysis and comparison of the
state’s responsibility in both cases forms an important component of Chapter
5. The second preliminary point is that this volume is chiefly concerned with
the human victims of man-­made environmental degradation. This is not
however to deny or dismiss the wealth of arguments in the literature that such
an anthropocentric approach ignores the complex relationship between
humans, animals and the biosphere (Lynch and Stretesky, 2003), together with
wider notions of ecological justice (White, 2008a), and these issues will not be
excluded from my overall analysis. Indeed, White (2011) has also found it
necessary to confine his most recent chapter dedicated to victims of environ-
mental harm to human victims, as a way of situating his discussion within a
conception of environmental rights (as an extension of human social rights),
and also in the context of an argument7 that environmental victimization, like
other forms of victimization, is an active social process. The present volume
draws on a similar theoretical approach but, unlike White, factors in a more
legalistic analysis of the position of environmental victims at the national and
international levels. At the same time, however, I fully acknowledge (along
with White) that a book of this length can inevitably offer discussion of only
one part of a far wider problem.
Three further terms require explanation before proceeding further. First, as
I have already noted, individuals or groups harmed by the effects of environ-
mental degradation perpetrated or brought about by individuals, corporations
and states will be referred to as ‘environmental victims’ in this volume. It is
important to note that this term is deliberately wider than ‘victims of environ-
mental crime’. It will be seen later in this chapter that the question of whether
any given environmental victimization is officially criminalized within a given
jurisdiction (or internationally) will be an important theme for this volume as
a whole.
Second, throughout the course of this book I will often draw contrasts
between both environmental victims and victims of environmental crime on the
one hand with ‘traditional victims’ on the other. ‘Traditional victims’ here refers
broadly to all classifications of victims of crime which have received extended
attention by criminologists and victimologists, and by policy-­makers, in most
4   Environmental harm and international law
developed jurisdictions (see Goodey, 2005). These include those usually covered
on crime surveys (victims of acquisitive and violent crime, the latter comprising
both ‘public’ violence and domestic violence) and victims of sexual crimes. I am
also including within this category secondary victims (‘survivors’) of homicide.
The term is not used in a prescriptive sense, and will usually be used to draw
comparisons between the availability of services, support and redress mechan­
isms for other kids of victims and the relative absence of such facilities for envi-
ronmental victims.
Finally, this volume will use the term ‘environmental degradation’. This has
been variously defined (see Lonergan, 1998), but is used here in the same sense
as the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (2007): ‘the reduction
of the capacity of the environment to meet social and ecological objectives and
needs’ (unpaginated). Note that this definition includes the effects of climate
change more broadly. In light of the above definition of ‘environmental victims’,
in practice this volume will often be discussing environmental degradation
brought about by human actions or inactions, albeit of course the question of
culpability will often be key to any associated legal debates.
The remainder of this chapter has two key purposes. First, it will set out the
academic and conceptual background informing the above research questions.
Second, the chapter will highlight at various points the potential contribution of
an interdisciplinary approach (advocated by this volume) to these issues, both as
a means of taking forward this established literature and, perhaps more impor-
tantly, of converting the theory into something practical that can be utilized by
legal practitioners and policy-­makers. It seems logical to begin this discussion
with an introduction to a number of the key literatures that will be drawn upon,
starting with the developing field of ‘green criminology’ and moving on to the
growth of the victims’ movement; cultural victimology; ‘green victimology’;
and the role of the state in environmental harms.

1.1.1 Green criminology?

‘Green criminology’ is defined by White (2008a) as ‘basically refer[ing] to the
study of environmental harm, environmental laws and environmental regulation
by criminologists’ (p. 8). Although the term ‘environmental criminology’ is
sometimes used interchangeably with ‘green criminology’,8 the former label has
more traditionally been associated with the study of crime patterns as they relate
to particular locations. For this reason the terms ‘green criminology’ and ‘green
victimology’ are generally employed throughout this volume. Indeed, on the
question of terminology Ruggiero and South (2010) have argued:

[F]or all that it invites criticism as lacking precision and possibly being open
to interpretation as aligned with a ‘green political party’ position, the term
‘Green Criminology’ has become the most familiar and suggestive term, and
also serves well as the most comprehensive conceptual umbrella.
(p. 247)
 Environmental harm and international law   5
As hinted by this extract, the use of such terminology is still contentious in some
quarters. On this point, Lynch and Stretesky (2003) have refined the use of the
term ‘green’ in this context to include environmentally damaging outcomes
brought about by actions that are not necessarily illegal9 or in contravention of
regulatory frameworks, or even at odds with public morals. As noted by Skin-
nider (2011):

[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 eco-
system maintenance, biodiversity and sustainability.
(p. 2)

Or, as Gibbs et al. (2010) have put it:

A grey area emerges for environmental risks that are not currently subject to
regulation or criminal enforcement but where further understanding of the
risk may lead stakeholders to argue for regulation and/or criminalization.
(p. 133)

Halsey (2004), in criticizing Lynch and Stretesky (2003), has argued that the
label ‘green criminology’ is in fact too simplistic to adequately reflect the com-
plexities of the issues at hand:

Indeed, I want to suggest that the term ‘green’ should be jettisoned from
criminological discourse, primarily because it does not adequately capture
the inter-­subjective, inter-­generational, or inter-­ecosystemic costs which
combine to produce scenarios of harm.
(p. 247)

For Lynch (1990) ‘green criminology’ was a product of the coming together of
at least three movements. First, ‘ecofeminists’ (as Lynch understands this label)
from the mid-­1970s began arguing that the effects of environmental degradation
fall disproportionately on women compared to men10 (Griffin, 1978; Nash,
1989). Lynch attributes the second foundation of green criminology to growing
discussions of what has come to be known as ‘environmental racism’. This is the
suggestion that the impact of environmental degradation falls disproportionately
on some races (Collin, 1994). Finally, Lynch draws on what he calls ‘red/green
alliances’, by which he means forms of ecological socialisms, the adherents of
which sought to emphasize the inequalities of wealth and power in society which
lead to increased environmental degradation while also ensuring it is the poor
and socially excluded who bear the brunt of its negative effects (Pepper, 1993).
What is significant about Lynch’s conception of the growth of green crim­
inology for the purposes of the present volume is that all three of his pillars are
essentially commentaries on the victims of environmental degradation. Particular
6   Environmental harm and international law
discussion of the unequal impact of environmental victimization (by socio-­
economic status, nationality and race as well as by gender) is presented in
Chapter 2. Given the absence of debates focusing on environmental victims in
the modern literature, it is notable that such discussions were in fact at the heart
of green criminology in its earliest forms.
Gibbs et al. (2010) provide an excellent overview of the various classifica-
tions and definitions of green criminology, starting with the ‘legalistic’ under-
standing of environmental crimes as violations of criminal laws11 designed to
protect the health and safety of people, the environment or both (p. 126). The
legalistic position is contrasted to the socio-­legal approach, which acknowledges
that the differences between ‘crime’, ‘deviance’, ‘civil wrongs’ and ‘regulatory
violations’ are all socially constructed. Both perspectives are contrasted to the
concept of ‘environmental justice’, which is discussed in greater detail below
and is generally distinguished by being less anthropocentric. The final classifica-
tion drawn upon by Gibbs et al. is the notion of ‘biocentric’ or ‘deep green’ per-
spectives, which construe environmental crime as ‘any human activity that
disrupts a biotic system’ (p. 127).
One of the key contentions of Gibbs et al. (2010) is that ‘[g]reen criminology
needs an interdisciplinary framework’ (p. 129).12 As noted above, the present
volume is very much a response to such concerns. For these authors, the diffi-
culty with much of the existing literature in this field is that it is value-­laden and
presupposes set conclusions to environmental problems (criminalization, regula-
tion etc.). Their ‘conservation criminology’ is research-­based and draws on three
specified disciplines: criminal justice and criminology; risk and decision analy-
sis; and natural resource conservation and management. The advantages and key
principles of this approach are worth reproducing here:

The explicitly stated need to integrate perspectives – within and across dis-
ciplines – forces the inclusion of multiple stakeholders, theories, methods
and interventions rather than focusing exclusively on any one. Theoretical
integration forces theoretical elaboration as insights regarding the strengths
and weaknesses of current perspectives are shared across disciplines. As a
result, the integration of disciplines increases knowledge of the relationship
among and between factors that shape human interactions with the environ-
ment and choices to influence sustainability of resources. Conservation
criminology also calls for scholars to avoid a priori assumptions about the
causes and solutions to environmental risks, attempting to avoid an overly
anthropogenic or ecocentric definition of the problem or of potential inter-
ventions. In addition, conservation criminology calls for scholars to be
dynamic and adaptive. Scholarship should evolve as technical assessments
are updated, public perceptions and regulatory interventions to address
envir­onmental risk change and new issues emerge. Finally, conservation
criminology encourages scholars to be guided by principles of inductive
reasoning.
(p. 139)
 Environmental harm and international law   7
The present volume is intended to reflect many of the epistemological values
expressed in the above statement. It could be argued that, by incorporating a spe-
cific focus on international law (which Gibbs et al. do not), this work inherently
assumes that such law is the key to the dilemmas presented by environmental
harm. In fact, an important goal of this project is to expose areas where law of
any kind may indeed be insufficient to tackle such issues. The argument that,
ultimately, the criminalization of environmental harms is unlikely to achieve a
great deal is made by Mares (2010), who advocates an alternative civilizing or
‘shaming’ approach13 consistent with developments in wider criminology around
the notion of ‘restorative justice’ (Bottoms, 2003):

Rather than relying on strict criminalization of behaviors harming our carry-

ing capacity,14 I would suggest that we emphasize both collective and indi-
vidual responsibility for our actions and that we underline their negative
impact by employing a shaming approach (Braithwaite 1989). This would
require a cultural shift in thinking about the environment and take the form
of a ‘civilizing offensive’, or ‘civilizing spurt’.
(p. 289)

Notwithstanding these views, there are arguably negative implications to com-

pletely divorcing social harms of any type from the ambit of law, in that this
might represent or lead to a divesting of responsibility by the state. The criminal
law is the principal means by which victims of any harm can acquire the recog-
nition we know they desire from official sources (see Miers, 1980). Hall and
Shapland (forthcoming) have argued that the concept of ‘social harm’ runs the
risk of a further side-­lining of victims by officials (fixated with ‘criminal harms’)
and by those with power in society. This issue will be returned to later in the
chapter. At this stage it seems expedient to introduce the development of the
‘victims’ movement’ and of ‘victimology’ more generally.

1.1.2 The ‘victims’ movement’

Most discussions centred around the broad concept of ‘victimization’ begin with
some historical introduction to the global spread of activist, academic, and policy
interest in this issue across jurisdictions, which is often described collectively as
the ‘victims’ movement’. It is clear, however, that what different groups mean
by ‘victims’, and their respective views about which types of victimization merit
particular attention, differ markedly. Thus labelling this as a ‘movement’ at all is
to some extent misleading,15 in that it suggests a clarity and consistency of
purpose that was (and is) often not present, certainly not among jurisdictions and
often not within them.16 For example, Pointing and Maguire (1988) discuss how
the victims’ movement in the US was originally driven by a host of ‘strange bed-
fellows’ concerned with different aspects of victimization in its broadest sense.
These ranged from feminists17 and mental health practitioners, to survivors of
war and atrocities such as the Nazi concentration camps (Young, 1997) and
8   Environmental harm and international law
victims of the apartheid regime in South Africa (Garkawe, 2004). Notwithstand-
ing such complexities, it is important in the context of the present study to
examine the background to these developments in an effort to explain why
victims of environmental harm appear to have been overlooked throughout much
of this history.
Reviews of the development of the victims’ movement are almost as diverse
in scope and aims as the movement itself (see Maguire, 1991; Kirchhoff, 1994;
Jackson, 2003). In view of this, any attempt to summarize these developments
should be approached with caution and with due regard to Kearon and Godfrey’s
(2007) warning against the academic tendency to ‘force social phenomena into
false chronologies’ (p. 30). With such warning labels firmly in place, I have pre-
viously conceptualized the development of the movement in terms of three dis-
tinct waves (Hall, 2009). The first of these waves was characterized by a growth
of academic interest in victims. The second saw the development of victim
assistance organizations in many jurisdictions, while the third corresponds to the
acceptance of victims as the topic of mainstream policy-­making and legal reform
in the criminal justice systems of such jurisdictions.
This set of ‘third-­wave’ developments is demonstrated by the publication of
service standards for victims of crime in many jurisdictions and, in most cases,
the enactment of primary legislation. Of course, these stages did not develop in
any jurisdiction in a neatly chronological fashion. In reality there has been much
overlap and continuing development on all three fronts up until the time of
writing, which will almost certainly continue beyond it. Moreover, any discus-
sion of policy-­making in this area must be read with reference to the specific
point made by Rock (1986, 1990, 1998) in a number of contexts that reforms
presented as ‘victim policies’ may derive from quite different political agendas
and serve other ends.18 Perhaps one of the most telling observations, made by
Furedi (1998), is that victimization is an issue which is able to galvanize support
from both sides of the political spectrum:

Unlike traditional conservative contributors, who treated individuals as

victims of evil, feminist and leftist writers portrayed them as victims of a
system of patriarchy. But although there were differences in the interpreta-
tion of aspects of the problem, there was a shared assumption that people
are victims. It was this unexpected ideological convergence between left and
right around the celebration of the victim, which has given this cult so much
influence in British society.
(p. 83)

As such, it is perhaps this bridging of political divides that ultimately best

explains the pervasiveness of the victim issue for policy-­makers in so many
jurisdictions in recent years.
The term ‘victimology’19 as an academic label is usually attributed to Freder-
ick Wertham (1949) or sometimes to Benjamin Mendelsohn (Kirchhoff, 1994).
Rather than entering into an exaggerated debate concerning victimology’s status
 Environmental harm and international law   9
as an individual ‘discipline’ in its own right,20 this volume adopts the term
simply as a convenient and well-­used descriptor for specialist investigations,
usually by criminologists and sociologists, into criminal and (more rarely) non-­
criminal victimizations. Early victimologists largely focused on the ‘precipita-
tion question’, whereby criminal victimization was attributed to the choices and
lifestyle of victims themselves. This perspective dominated academic discussion
of victimization up until the late 1950s and early 1960s (von Hentig, 1948; Men-
delsohn, 1956; Wolfgang, 1958; Amir, 1971; Fattah, 1992). Schneider (1991)
argues that at this point, victimology was set off in two directions: as a discipline
concerned with human rights, and also as a sub-­discipline of criminology con-
cerned specifically with victims of crime.
Indeed, like the victims’ movement itself, victimology as a sub-­discipline has
been far from unified. The 1970s saw further disputes between victimologists
who focused on the provision of services to crime victims, and those who were
interested in broader, research-­driven victimology (van Dijk, 1988). Conflict also
arose between ‘positivist victimology’, which employs scientific methods (such
as victimization surveys) to examine criminal victimization specifically, and
‘general victimology’, which encompasses wider victimizations, including war
and, of particular relevance to the present study, natural disasters (Cressey, 1986;
Spalek, 2006). Walklate (1994, 2007a) and Young (1997) have each highlighted
the continuing tensions between various groups of victimologists. In addition,
from its outset victimology has shared a common trait with the study of environ-
mental derogation in that its activist and academic branches have frequently
overlapped. Speaking of Gloria Egbuji, the Nigerian lawyer and campaigner for
victims’ rights, Jan van Dijk (1998), himself a major figure in the proliferation
of victimology across Europe,21 notes: ‘Like many of us, our Nigerian colleague
resists [being] qualified as either researcher or activist. Most of us are happy to
wear both hats’ (p. 2).
Despite the initial divergence of foci and aspirations among victimologists, as
the view gradually developed that victims of crime were being neglected in many
criminal justice systems throughout the world, the study of crime victims took
centre stage (Maguire, 1991). A major facilitator of this process was the Dutch aca-
demic Nils Christie (1977), who argued that the criminal justice systems of many
countries, having become over-­professionalized, effectively ‘stole’ conflicts from
their ‘rightful owners’, meaning victims and offenders.22 Over the next 20 years,
numerous research projects concerning victims’ marginalized role within the
criminal justice process would reinforce the prominence of victims of crime as the
key concern for most commentators (Shapland et al., 1985).
Although the field of zemiology has continued to address victimization
through social harms beyond crime and the traditional confines of criminology
(Hillyard, 2006), much of victimology (and criminology) continues to be centred
on notions of victimization espoused by official sources, often through the
criminal law. It is important to note that this focus is not based on any inherent
limitations of criminology23 as a discipline or of the theories it promotes. As
noted by Matthews and Kauzlarich (2007):
10   Environmental harm and international law
Most criminological methods and theories can be applied to behaviors inde-
pendent of whether those behaviors are officially defined as crimes. In short,
criminological theory attempts to explain behavior – and that behavior may
or may not be criminal, but is likely deviant in some way.
(p. 53)

For McBarnet (1983), it is victimologists themselves (rather than victimology or

criminology) who are partly to blame for this state of affairs. By concentrating
their attention predominantly on traditional notions of victimhood (with particu-
lar emphasis on rape victims) the author argues that researchers in the field have
somewhat played into the hands of governments wishing to derive political
capital from victims, and from punitive criminal justice responses:

Indeed, politically, victimology has contributed to the strengthening of the

state’s role. It has set itself up as engaging not just in academic debate but in
‘affirmative action for the victims of crime’, and, like traditional criminol-
ogy before it, its too-­ready acceptance of official definitions of criminal and
victim have reinforced rather than questioned the status quo.
(p. 302, emphasis in original)

These views take on an added dimension when applied to the issue of environmen-
tal harm, because such discussion may often relate to harms perpetrated (or at least
endorsed) by the state itself, or even to state crime. Elias (1983, 1986) and Rock
(1990) go further to argue that society’s narrow conception of victimization is
brought about by selective definitions of crime, construed for political purposes,
and in the case of environmental degradation, we might add economic purposes.
For Garland (2001), this is because the traditional measure of criminal justice
effectiveness, the system’s ability to control crime, has become redundant at a time
of falling public confidence in these systems. In the face of the growing public
concern that little can actually be done about crime, Garland argues that govern-
ments deny their failure by turning to ever more punitive policies, such as manda-
tory minimum sentences and ‘three strikes’ legislation. Victims, so goes the
argument, are used by governments to justify such measures by reference to their
‘need’ to be protected and have their voices heard. Such ideas may oversimplify
the complex interaction of social processes that lead to activities being labelled as
‘deviant’, but the point remains very significant in the context of the present dis-
cussion, which is grounded on the marked absence of environmental victims from
the academic and (as will be discussed in Chapters 3 and 4) policy agendas.
Such arguments have led to the development of ‘critical victimology’ and its
expanded notions of victimhood beyond simple, criminal classifications (Hough,
1986; Dignan, 2004). In many ways those suffering environmental harm fall
squarely within the category of ‘real, complex, contradictory and often politi-
cally inconvenient victims’ (Kearon and Godfrey, 2007: p. 31) with which the
critical debate is so concerned. This is particularly so given the reality that not
only do environmental harms often derive from entirely legal activities, but also
 Environmental harm and international law   11
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). Of course, as noted by Ruggiero and South
(2010), such political and economic decisions are heavily influenced by power
inequalities, which are another 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 def-
initions should apply to them while constantly striving to persuade legisla-
tors 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 rationalisation 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.
(p. 246)

Partly in response to such radical criticisms of the status quo, there has been a
marked expansion of official notions of victimhood over the last decade in many
jurisdictions,24 but even when this is taken into account, victims of environmen-
tal harm have received very little attention.

1.2 Theoretical perspectives

1.2.1 Cultural victimology

The ever expanding remit of criminology and victimology demanded by the crit-
ical school has in more recent years led to the promotion of literature which
attempts to analyse how cultural factors impact upon our ideas of victimhood
and official constructions of victimization (Cole, 2007). This development of so-­
called cultural victimology begs the question of whether we are to some extent
all victims now.
Mythen (2007) warns against the overuse of culture as a ‘magic explanatory
bullet through which the experiences of all victims can be deciphered’ (p. 479).
As the author correctly points out, the nature of victimization is diverse to the
point that any theory that purports to explain it in its entirety must be approached
with a high degree of scepticism: ‘whilst macro theories are important tools in
the development of Victimology, their generality affords them only partial utility
across different contexts and situations’ (p. 479). Nevertheless, Mythen remains
confident that the cultural lens is an important tool in modern victimology, and
his conclusion is one of cautious optimism as to the capacity of such cultural
perspectives to explain the rise of the victim in recent decades.
It should be said that not all commentators are willing to accept an ever-­
widening expansion of victimhood. Furedi (1998) expresses concern regarding
this development on a number of grounds, the most philosophical of which is
that it denies individual responsibility and self-­determination:
12   Environmental harm and international law
Recent events in Britain indicate that the cult of vulnerability goes beyond
the terms of the existing debate. This cult has emerged as a key element in a
moralizing project that touches upon every aspect of social life. Critics of
the culture of victimhood often direct their fire at its more mendacious and
self-­serving manifestations, such as the predictable demand for compensa-
tion or the evasion of responsibility for the outcome of individual action.
There is, however a more profound issue at stake. The celebration of the
victim identity represents an important statement about the human condi-
tion. It regards human action with suspicion. It presupposes that human
beings can do very little to influence their destiny. They are the objects
rather than the subjects of their destiny. Consequently the human experience
is defined by not by what people do but what has happened to them.
(p. 80)

Regarding the first part of Furedi’s argument, reports from England and Wales
highlight the problem of false claims being made to the UK Criminal Injuries
Compensation Authority (Verkaik, 2001). The ‘compensation factor’ has also
been the subject of discussions in the UK by the House of Commons Select
Committee on Home Affairs (2002), along with associated concerns of prompt-
ing false allegations. To give another example, the assertion of false or frivolous
claims similarly marred the operation of the World Trade Center Victims Com-
pensation Fund in the US after the terrorist attacks on New York and the Penta-
gon in 2001 (Mullenix, 2004).25
More specifically for present purposes, Furedi (1998) questions the authority
now apparently being afforded to victims, as ‘moral custodians’, to influence
policy debates:

Other victims, notably Mrs. Frances Lawrence, whose teacher husband was
murdered outside his school, were also elevated into ‘expert’ moral custodians
for the rest of society. So far no leading politician has dared to ask the question
of ‘why should a tragic bereavement confer the right to dictate public policy?’.
(1998: p. 84)

Importantly, Furedi’s discussion again goes beyond the traditional boundaries of

victimological or criminological thought to encompass wider societal develop-
ments. The question could thus be justifiably raised as to why victims of envir­
onmental harm should be allowed to exert any disproportionate influence over
political, economic and industrial decisions that carry an environmental impact.
At the more radical end of the spectrum, the Institute for the Study of Civil
Society (CIViTAS), a right-­wing think tank in the UK, has drawn on similar
themes to suggest that the ever-­widening cultural ambit of victim status26 affords
a degree of influence to such groups that is incompatible with liberal democracy
(Green, 2006). While this argument must be judged in the context of its specific
political perspective, it does demonstrate the application of the victim label
beyond traditional notions of crime.
 Environmental harm and international law   13
This book is in part a response to the challenges posed by the critical school
in its application of concepts usually reserved for ‘traditional’ forms of officially
recognized (criminal) victimization to environmental harm, as well as a practical
attempt to fill perceived gaps in knowledge on the victims of such harm. The
book also takes its lead from the cultural view of victimization discussed in the
preceding paragraphs. It is hoped that the above overview demonstrates that the
time is right for such a discussion as a natural extension of more recent theoreti-
cal debates. This is particularly the case given the overriding focus on ‘harm’ as
a central concept in modern literature and policy-­making concerning victimiza-
tion, which the next section will address in more detail. Some commentators
believe the extension of victimhood has negative connotations, and one can
easily appreciate the concern that ultimately this might lead to excessive litiga-
tion, frivolous compensation claims and the promotion of a ‘blame culture’.
Such warnings have particular resonance in relation to environmental harms, for
which there is arguably no single blameworthy party or legal entity. On the other
hand, it could be argued that more research into the actual impacts of environ-
mental crime on individuals and their respective needs could guard against the
form of ‘excessive’ claims which Furedi (1998) and others (see Miers, 1997)
fear.

1.2.2 Environmental harm, environmental victims

In the above paragraphs, as well as in the research questions for this project, I
have made mention of the concept of ‘environmental harm’. The concentration
in this volume on ‘harm’ as opposed to ‘crimes’ is an application of the critical
critique discussed above and, more specifically, the ‘social harms approach’
advocated by Hillyard and Toombs (2003: p. 2). These authors have argued that,
in recent years, the progress of both critical criminology and victimology has
stalled somewhat from their heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, giving way to an
empiricist ‘applied science’ orientation driven by the political issues of the day.
The authors advocate in response to this a return to a criminology based on
social harms, and it is in this tradition that the present volume situates itself,27
albeit the application of such ideas to environmental degradation is highly novel.
Again emphasizing the cultural context of these issues, one prominent com-
mentator in this field has been Hans Boutellier (2000), who argues that, as the
process of secularization goes on, common standards of morality decline, but
common appreciation and sympathy for those who have suffered harm remains.
Boutellier refers to this as the ‘victimalization of morality’. Furedi (1998) also
makes a similar point in terms of social solidarity in the UK context: ‘It is diffi-
cult to avoid the conclusion that, with British people feeling so fragmented, the
ritual of grieving [for victims] provides one of the few experiences that create a
sense of belonging’ (p. 82). The conceptualization of victims as those who have
suffered harm (as opposed to a more technical, legal or prescriptive definition)
has two key implications. First, as an underlying principle it gives scope for a
wide cross-­section of individuals, communities or organizations to be included
14   Environmental harm and international law
within the ambit of victimhood, especially given the inclusion of ‘emotional suf-
fering’ within such definitions. Second, this understanding of victimhood to
some extent allows victims to be self-­defined. In other words, such a definition is
not, on the face of it, confined to cases where prosecutors in a given state feel
there is an arguable case, but merely requires that victims feel they have been
harmed in some way.
Focusing on ‘harm’ rather than crime has, according to Hillyard and Toombs,
several advantages. In terms of the present volume, a number of these seem to
have particular resonance with the impacts of environmental pollution and
climate change. ‘Crime’, as argued by Hulsman (1986), has no ‘ontological
reality’ and hence ‘the criminal law fails to capture the more damaging and per-
vasive forms of harm’ (Hillyard and Toombs, 2003: p. 12). One may debate the
degree to which one agrees with the wider implications of such a sweeping state-
ment, but it remains clear that focusing on harm has the potential to include the
often legally ambiguous activities which foster environmental damage. Indeed,
even when such activities are criminal in the strict legal sense, focusing on harm
allows us to account for such activities in cases where whatever mechanisms of
justice which are available (at the national, transnational and international levels)
fail to adequately prosecute such transgressions. Another salient point made by
Hillyard and Toombs is that the social harms approach allows for the considera-
tion of ‘mass harms’. Again this chimes well with the problems inherent to man-­
made environmental degradation, where many thousands of people might be
affected. Traditional criminology, on the other hand, has struggled to fully
embrace the concept of mass victimization and, with the exception of limited
inroads into the fields of state crime and corporate crime, has largely remained
focused on the individual. For similar reasons, the authors argue that the social
harms approach poses a challenge to individual-­based conceptions of crime
grounded around notions of risk (Giddens, 1990).28
In relation to environmental harm, Hillyard and Toomb’s approach has much
resonance with some of the earliest literature from what has been termed ‘the
environmental justice movement’ (Williams, 1996: p. 200). Environmental
justice has been variously defined and is generally acknowledged as a wide
concept which emphasizes the involvement of people and communities in deci-
sions which might impact upon their environment: defined broadly to include
their cultural norms, values, rules, regulations and behaviours (Bryant, 1995:
p. 6; see also Hofrichter, 1993 and Čapek, 1993). One of the main commentators
on these issues (and on green criminology in general) is Rob White (2008a) who,
in following a more holistic approach, has criticized this understanding of envir­
onmental justice as being anthropocentric, ignoring the wider issue of ecological
justice (acknowledging that humans are just one part of a complex ecosystem)
and also animal and species justice.
White (2008a) also reflects on the concept of harm itself, offering four groups
of key ‘considerations of environmental harms’ (p. 92). The first of these consid-
erations is that of identifying the victims of such harm. Although in this volume I
am mainly concerned with human victimization, White makes the important
 Environmental harm and international law   15
point that victims of environmental harm include the biosphere and non-­human
animals. It follows that a further advantage of applying the social harms
approach in this field is that it allows commentators to explore the non-­human
consequences of environmental degradation beyond the highly anthropocentric
concept of ‘criminal victimization’.
The second of White’s considerations is geographical, encapsulating the fact
that environmental harm is often a regional, national, international or even global
problem. It is for this reason that the present volume advocates closer collabora-
tion between green criminologists and those studying international law: in an
effort to address those forms of harm which national legal systems alone may be
ill-­equipped to deal with. In a similar vein, White distinguishes geographical
considerations from considerations of ‘place’, by which he means the different
types of harm experienced in urban, built-­up centres of human habitation, com-
pared with harm caused to natural environments such as oceans, wilderness areas
and deserts. Finally, White conceives environmental harm in terms of temporal
considerations, meaning that the impact of environmental damage may be short,
medium or long-­term and may have immediate and/or lasting social impacts.
There is a key link here to be made with more mainstream victimology and its
growing acceptance that the impacts of harms to individuals (crime) vary con-
siderably over time (as well as between individuals), as do the support needs of
those victimized. Even in mainstream victimology there is an absence of longit­
udinal studies which truly encapsulate the progression of the impacts of individ-
ual victimization over time (Shapland and Hall, 2007). Discussion of the
temporal development of the impacts of environmental harm will be discussed in
Chapter 2.
White’s ‘considerations’ of environmental harm may in one sense be criti-
cized for failing to ‘pin down’ the concept to specific human or non-­human
impacts. Certainly Hillyard and Toombs (2003) are more explicit in their defini-
tion of social harm in that they conceive it as including physical harm; financial/
economic harm; emotional/psychological harm; and consideration of ‘cultural
safety’. Nevertheless, the counter-­argument can be made that to rigidly define
‘harm’29 would in a sense defeat the purpose of the critical exercise, which is to
be inclusive rather than exclusive. As such, for White (2008a) it is important for
commentators, especially those concerned with green issues, to move beyond
defining harm and on to debating harm, because only the latter can leads to real-­
life, operational developments:

Defining harm is ultimately about philosophical frameworks as informed by

scientific evidence and traditional knowledges; debating harm is about pro­
cesses of deliberation in the ‘real world’ and of conflicts over rights and the
making of difficult decisions.
(p. 24)

Of course, such a view presents real difficulties for those seeking to develop
legal systems for addressing environmental harms, as such a system must
16   Environmental harm and international law
ultimately be based on concrete and predictable definitions of victimization. This
apparent conflict between predictable legal rules and flexible notions of environ-
mental harm will be a recurring issue throughout this volume, and the tackling of
this debate an important outcome of this volume as a whole in Chapter 6.
While assigning a precise definition to environmental harm is problematic
(certainly with regard to legal systems) and perhaps undesirable, the evidence is
increasingly clear that whether such harms are criminalized or not, they are a
pervasive and significant problem of the modern world. Globally, for example, it
has been estimated that as many as 800,000 premature deaths can be attributed
to ambient air pollution, many in the developing world (Croall, 2010; Tombs
and Whyte, 2010). In the UK, the Department of Health estimates that 24,000
deaths each year can be attributed to poisoning by various forms of air pollution,
a figure which may well be an underestimate (Tombs and Whyte, 2010). Air pol-
lution is now also thought to reduce life expectancy by eight months (Walters,
2010). The implications of environmental harm for issues such as energy secur­
ity and food security across the globe are equally significant, and will be returned
to in Chapter 2, where the impacts of environmental harms on victims are also
discussed in greater detail. Having laid out the wider theoretical basis for this
book, this chapter will next turn to the existing literature specifically concerned
with environmental victimization.

1.2.3 A green victimology?

As noted previously, the application of criminological principles to environmen-
tal degradation is a new and emerging specialism, under which various issues
have been addressed by scholars from different backgrounds in a piecemeal
fashion.30 Specific focus within this literature on those actually affected by envir­
onmental degradation is relatively scarce. The first call for the development of
what was then termed ‘environmental victimology’ came as early as 1996 in an
article by Christopher Williams. Williams begins his argument by acknowledg-
ing the ‘limits of law’ in addressing environmental victimization, and notes the
‘obvious need for social justices to parallel formal legal processes’ (Williams,
p. 200), a theme that Hillyard and Toombs would later take up (albeit in more
general terms). Nevertheless Williams is keen to develop some form of predict­
able legal mechanism for dealing with environmental harms; he shares White’s
opinion that the environmental justice approach is limited, although for different
reasons. For Williams, the problems with notions of environmental justice are
three-­fold. First, he argues that the concept relies too heavily on subjective
understandings of victimhood and on self-­definition as a victim: ‘This may work
well in relation to activism, but ultimately the development of justice perspec-
tives, legal or social, requires objective benchmarks’ (p. 201). Leading on from
this, Williams makes the criticism that the environmental justice movement is
overly swayed by activism and lacks the academic objectivity which would put
it in a stronger position to effect real change. Finally, Williams is of the view
that environmental justice tends to be based around the stereotypes of relations,
 Environmental harm and international law   17
group identities, gender, class and ethnic structures found in mainstream crimi-
nology. In reality, he argues, the social majority, the rich and the powerful may
all become environmental victims alongside minority groups, the poor and the
weak.31
These criticisms prompt Williams to call for a move away from concepts of
environmental justice and to embrace victimology as a means of addressing
environmental victimizations, which for him is a discipline ‘broadly concerned
with human rights, abuse of power, and human suffering irrespective of whether
the circumstances are within the ambit of law’ (p. 202). While the present
volume essentially takes forward Williams’s suggestion, it can be argued that he
has perhaps placed rather a lot of faith in victimologists, given the fragmented
state of the ‘discipline’ described above. At best, Williams’s view represents
only one form of victimology, grounded in a legal tradition, which relatively few
commentators have since taken forward (Jackson, 2003; Doak, 2005; Hall,
2009). It has been noted already that victimologists have often embraced rather
than rejected an overlap of activist and academic viewpoints. That said, the
victims’ movement has also shown signs of maturing to the point of accepting
that pure activism is unlikely to foster political change. The most obvious
example of this in the UK context is the national charity Victim Support, which
over the years has achieved significant government backing principally by stick-
ing strictly to an apolitical philosophy (Rock, 1990). It is true that some vict­
imologists have embraced notions of human rights and abuse of power, the
application of which to environmental victims will be discussed in Chapter 4,
but it is less clear that victimology can provide the ‘objective benchmarks’ Wil-
liams is searching for when research in this (sub)discipline, like almost any other
area of social study, is inevitably tainted by subjective views of the researcher
(Sieber, 1998). Consequently, this volume will take a far more interdisciplinary
approach than Williams seems to envisage.
Williams’s understanding of the notion of environmental victims (discussed
in Chapter 2) also stresses the concept of intergenerational justice, which is often
cited as a core component of the anthropocentric environmental justice model
(Hiskes, 2008). Mares (2010) has also alluded to intergenerational justice in his
conceptualization of environmental degradation as compromising the ‘carrying
capacity’ of the Earth (that is, the planet’s ability to support a given number of
human and non-­human life forms):

The criminological question that arises is whether it is acceptable to artifi-

cially and temporarily inflate human carrying capacity in order to support a
growing population on finite resources. In other words, in our attempts to
shake our dependency on the unpredictable natural circumstances (local
crop failures, disease, local climate and so forth) we find ourselves in, we
have created dependency relations between humans which have ultimately
allowed the existence of so many people at such high levels of consumption
that it undermines our ultimate goal of human cooperation: human security.
(p. 282)
18   Environmental harm and international law
Williams’s view also includes omissions, leaving open the possibility that
failure on the part of the state to sufficiently regulate an activity could lead to
it being held responsible for any consequential environmental harms. While
Williams is clearly attempting to achieve a measure of certainty with this defi-
nition, the understanding of the exact links between harms to the ‘chemical,
physical, microbiological, or psychosocial environment’ may change over
time with scientific knowledge, possibly leading to lengthy court cases with a
great deal of complex expert evidence. One last point to make about Wil-
liams’s definition is that he clearly means for it to include the long-­term
victims of what he calls ‘creeping environmental disasters’, such as climate
change and changes in sea level, as opposed to one-­off events such as oil spills
or nuclear leaks.
It is extremely telling of the state of the literature in this field that when
White compiled a reader on environmental crime in 2009, the only chapter
specifically focused on the victims of such crimes was a reprint of Williams’s
1996 work. 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 Chapter 4). Notably this dis-
cussion contradicts Williams’s view that the impacts of environmental harm
are 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 collectivities’
(p. 122). As further noted by White, this state of affairs in relation to environ-
mental victims reflects ‘one of the truisms of victimology that being and
becoming a victim is never socially neutral’ (2011: p. 111).
At the end of his earlier book, White (2008a) calls for further research to
examine environmental ‘harm’ ‘in many contexts and guises, regardless of
legal status and existing institutional legitimations’ (p. 280). This volume
seeks to addresses this prevailing gap in our knowledge by drawing on differ-
ent sets of literature and investigating the relevant national and international
legal frameworks directly. The timing seems right for such an endeavour
given that, in the European context, in 2008 the European Commission issued
a Directive (2008/99/EC) on the protection of the environment through the
criminal law, to be implemented in member states by December 2010. Of par-
ticular note is the absence of any reference to the rights of victims in that
Directive, notwithstanding previous precedents in the 1998 Council of Europe
Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law,
developments in US law on this issue (2004 Crime Victims’ Rights Act), and
indeed in the EU’s own Stockholm Programme on an Open and Secure
Europe.
 Environmental harm and international law   19
1.3 The role of the state and of international law

1.3.1 The role of the state

It was noted at the start of this chapter that traditional victimology has largely
ignored victimization of individuals or groups as a result of state actions or inac-
tions. Indeed, ‘state crime’ is itself a markedly underdeveloped concept even in
mainstream criminology. Green and Ward (2004) characterize state crime as
exhibiting two chief components: objective evidence of a violation of human
rights, and subjective evidence of one or more relevant social audiences (i.e.
civil society) negatively reacting to such actions or negligence. In this volume,
both aspects of this definition will be examined in relation to environmental deg-
radation, in Chapters 4 and 2 respectively. Nevertheless, although such theoriza-
tion of state crime has proved an important driving force to the development of
critical criminology, discussed above, Kauzlarich et al. (2001) have noted that

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 1980s to mid-­1990s, which lifted the optimism about
criminology’s interest in understanding state malfeasance.
(p. 173)

This is perhaps surprising in light of the point made by Matthews and Kauzlarich
(2007) that ‘the practice of states engaging in illegal and/or harmful behaviour is
as old as the concept of the state itself ’ (p. 43). Furthermore, the authors argue,
the neglect of state crime by criminologists is not born from any inability to
apply criminological theory to state crime as a concept.
One significant side-­effect of the increasing prevalence of ‘green’ debates
among criminologists is the rekindling of ideas and research concerning state
crime. Faust and Carlson (2011), for example, have labelled human rights viola-
tions in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans in 2005
as a state crime. Similarly, Lynch et al. (2010) have remarked on the complex
interaction between state and corporate liability following what they call the
‘politicalization of global warming’. White (2008b) has also discussed state
crime in relation to the environmental effects of the use of depleted uranium
munitions in the Gulf wars.
Clearly, the global nature of environmental derogation, coupled with national
factors in its precipitation and in its consequences, requires criminologists to
examine the issue at the level of the state, as opposed to restricting itself to
issues of corporate or individual crime and harmful behaviours. It is for this
reason that such discussion must also to some extent incorporate an analysis of
international environmental law. Indeed, such an interdisciplinary approach has
the potential to markedly advance our understanding of a still under-­researched
issue: that of a state’s responsibility for the adverse impacts of environmental
degradation, including climate change, on individuals. Such responsibility might
20   Environmental harm and international law
exist both internally, where the actions or inactions of a state lead to harm for its
own citizens, and also externally, where such harm occurs outside the state in
question. One of the foremost difficulties posed by climate change is that associ-
ated harms often occur in one state when the acts or omissions (lawful or other-
wise) leading to climate change occur in a separate state. To choose one
prominent example, the people of the Maldives are now facing significant risk to
their homes, economy and traditional ways of life as a result of sea-­level rises
apparently brought about by climate change, despite the fact that the country
itself is among the lowest contributors to the problem (Pernetta, 2002).
As might be expected from the absence of extensive literature on state crime as
a whole, academic focus on victimization by the state has been similarly limited.
This is all the more surprising because the United Nations General Assembly
acknowledged the concept of victimization at the hands of the state as early as
1985 in its Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and
Abuse of Power.32 One of the few exceptions at present is the attempt by Kauz­
larich et al. (2001) to develop a ‘victimology of the state’. The authors’ typology
effectively categorizes ‘state crime’ into four classifications. ‘Domestic-­
International Governmental Crime’ occurs within a state’s geographic jurisdiction
against international law or human rights. ‘International-­International Governmen-
tal Crime’ occurs outside a state’s geographic jurisdiction against international law
or human rights. ‘Domestic-­Domestic Governmental Crime’ occurs within a state’s
geographic jurisdiction against domestic criminal, regulatory, or procedural laws or
codes. Finally, ‘International-­Domestic Governmental Crime’ occurs outside a
state’s geographic jurisdiction against domestic criminal, regulatory, or procedural
laws or codes. The authors place environmental derogation under the category of
Domestic-­Domestic Governmental Crime, although it is possible to take issue with
this, given that actions by one state might well lead to environmental derogation in
another state, which could constitute International-­Domestic Governmental
Crime.33 Specifics aside, the models of Kauzlarich et al. models provide a rare
insight into the complexities inherent in the notion of being victimized by a state,
which will be discussed in greater depth in Chapter 3.

1.3.2 Broadening horizons: what international environmental

lawyers might learn from victimology and vice-­versa
Having established the significance of the state in any discussion of environmen-
tal victimization, one of the principal goals of this volume is to achieve a truly
interdisciplinary analysis of the issue that draws on both the fields of criminol-
ogy (victimology) and international law. The added value of collaboration
between these disciplines lies in the cross-­fertilization of structural ideas from
the field of international environmental law (concerning the operation of interna-
tional redress mechanisms, state liability, and human rights) and the more
agency-­driven ideas which inform much of victimology (focusing on the place
of the individual within the quantum of harm brought about by environmental
damage and climate change).
 Environmental harm and international law   21
There is from the outset a fundamental difficulty in trying to apply interna-
tional law to the harms brought about to individuals by environmental degrada-
tion, in that the international legal order is traditionally conceived as one devised
by states, for states.34 This conventional approach leaves little room for the con-
cerns of those individuals actually suffering harm within states, whether that
harm comes in the form of physical or health-­related issues or as the broader loss
of traditional ways of life, means of economic sustenance, or territory as a result
of environmental degradation. While the recent incorporation of human rights
within international law is improving the situation, reference to individuals in
the international legal order is still relatively scarce.35 Consequently, interna-
tional environmental law generally lacks reference to individual harm, or the
agency of individuals affected by that harm.
Agency here is given the conventional sociological meaning as a synonym for
undetermined human action (Abercrombie et al., 2006). In traditional sociology,
agency is contrasted with structure, which broadly means recurring social pro­
cesses, institutions and rules which limit the action of individuals and to some
extent determines them. Structure therefore generally includes the legal systems
put in place by society (Burns and Flam, 1987). This duality informs much of
traditional criminology, being the essential basis of debates between the rational-
­actor and deterministic views of criminality. Of greater significance to the
present volume, however, are the more recent debates concerning the interrela-
tionship, and possible interdependence, of these concepts. One of the most influ-
ential writers to offer such arguments is Antony Giddens (1984), who champions
the concept of a ‘duality of structure’ (p. 85) whereby the structural properties of
social systems are produced and reproduced by social practices (i.e. by human
agency). Bourdieu (1990) too proposes a model of closer integration between
structure and agency, essentially arguing that individuals become disposed to act
in a manner which promotes certain codes of behaviour and their associated
social structures. Hence structure becomes embedded within agency over time.
More recently, Mouzelis (2008) has commented and expanded upon both Gid-
dens’s and Bourdieu’s perspectives to incorporate the changing of social struc-
tures through agency (not just their production and reproduction as per Giddens)
and also for a ‘rational, calculative and reflective social actor’ (p. 57) endowed
with greater freedom of action than Bourdieu recognizes.
The full detail of these debates is beyond the scope of the present volume.
The important point is that the previous dualistic conceptions of structure and
agency, whereby one or the other is championed as the principal driver of social
phenomena (including law and legal systems), has been replaced by the under-
standing that both, variously configured, are necessary to understand society.
This returns us to the critique of the traditional international legal order regard-
ing environmental harms and its denial of individual (or indeed group) human
agency. At an operational level, many international lawyers defend this position
by reference to the supremacy of the state in the international legal order (Alston,
2005).36 This structural straightjacket has, however, led to a dearth of commen-
tary among international environmental lawyers on the issue of environmental
22   Environmental harm and international law
harm that also encompasses human agency. If Giddens, Bourdieu and Mouzelis
are correct, a full understanding of this issue can never be reached given such
limitations.
Here then lies the added value of victimological discussion in this debate, and
a key contribution of this volume, because victimologists have long concerned
themselves with the (usually criminal) harms perpetrated against individuals.
Victimology is also of course concerned with social structures and the place of
victims within them, particularly the place of victims within criminal justice
systems (Shapland et al., 1985). Nevertheless, one of the key limitations of
victim­ology is its failure to develop a structural and theoretically-­informed
debate as to how such victims could achieve official recognition by national and
international justice agencies (Walklate, 2007b). While there is now a great deal
more rhetoric in both academic and policy circles concerning the ‘rights’ of
victims, in fact their formal legal position is usually characterized by a general
lack of enforcement structures for their rights at the national and international
level, and the theory of victim rights is underdeveloped.37 Unlike most victimol-
ogists, international lawyers are well versed in arguments concerning enforcea-
bility, which is often much more contestable in the international arena than in
most other areas of legal scholarship (where the basic legal force of an instru-
ment is often a given). Indeed, Thirlway (2010) has described how international
lawyers (compared with lawyers in other fields) deal much more regularly with
‘secondary rules’ which determine the sources and authority of legal and quasi-­
legal rules. What this means is that international law can furnish victimology
with a ready-­made vocabulary in which to conceptualize victim-­orientated meas-
ures, as well as presenting victimologists with another dimension to the transna-
tional and international policy networks connecting such reforms (Hall, 2010).
In sum, international environmental lawyers can benefit from the individual-­
based and agency-­based discussion provided by the victimological literature
(incorporating the people who, after all, constitute states), whereas victimol­
ogists can draw from the structural frameworks developed by international
lawyers as a means of furthering official recognition and redress for victims of
harms brought about by environmental degradation (and perhaps other harms).
Such an approach not only benefits from the best of both academic traditions,
but also conforms to modern theoretical notions in social science concerning the
links between structure and agency. The remainder of this volume will be
devoted to applying this interdisciplinary approach38 to the key questions raised
by environmental victimization and the efforts (or absence thereof ) of states and
justice systems to address them, in an effort to answer the research questions
introduced earlier in this chapter.

1.4 Summary and book structure

Chapter 2 conceptualizes the scope of environmental victimization and its
impacts upon those who are victimized. The chapter examines in particular how
the impacts of environmental derogation and climate change are distributed
 Environmental harm and international law   23
among the world’s population and begins to explore the kind of support and
redress mechanisms they require. The chapter also offers a new conceptualiza-
tion of those affected by environmental harms: as victims of abuse of power,
under the UN 1985 Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of
Crime and Abuse of Power discussed above. Williams (1996) has argued that
the definition of such victims utilized by the 1985 Declaration can serve as a
useful starting point for ascribing rights to environmental victims, especially as
the 1985 Declaration was intended to encompass victimization by the state,39
making this definition particularly relevant from the perspective of victims of
environmental harms.
Chapter 3 looks at substantive legal avenues for recognition of environmental
victims in criminal justice systems at the domestic, European and international
levels. The chapter then examines state responsibility for environmental deroga-
tion and the various avenues of liability put forward by international legal schol-
ars through which states may be deemed responsible for the impacts of
environmental harms (especially climate change) on individuals. These include:
the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, its Kyoto Protocol, and the
Copenhagen Accord of 2009; the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea; the
obligation on states to ensure that activities within their territory do not cause
damage beyond the limits of their jurisdiction; the precautionary, polluter-­pays,
and sustainability principles; the concept of equity between generations; the
concept of due diligence; and the notion that the need to minimize the effects of
environmental harms give rise to obligations erga omnes. For each of these
mechanisms, the chapter offers a critique from a victimological perspective, con-
tending that none of them offers much scope for the individual victims of envir­
onmental harms to gain redress from states, either their own or that of another.
The victimological literature is then utilized to propose a way forward for devel-
oping state responsibility in this area.
Chapter 4 discusses in more detail the twin developments in victimology and
international environmental law linking the plight of victims with wider human
rights. The chapter considers the prospect of individuals gaining redress from
states for the impacts of environmental harms (both natural and man-­made)
through a supposed right to a clean environment, as well as the impact of the
1998 Aarhus Convention.
Chapter 5 examines the possible means by which (human) victims of environ-
mental harm might gain redress, with particular emphasis on receiving awards
from their own state and other states. It begins by examining the difficulties
faced by traditional redress mechanisms, both nationally and internationally, to
adequately address the issue of environmental harm, and draws comparisons
with the advent of compensation funds for other harms including violent crime,
terrorism and human trafficking. As in other areas of the volume, the victim­
ological literature has much to say: notably here on the subject of compensation
and restitution and, perhaps more significantly, the role of no-­fault compensation
mechanisms. Again, the analysis is informed by the prevailing philosophy
that compensatable environmental ‘harm’ need not necessarily equate with
24   Environmental harm and international law
environmental ‘crime’. Ultimately the chapter puts forward a new model of com-
bined redress for victims of environmental crime, drawing on both criminal and
administrative mechanisms,40 and argues the merits of this combined approach.
The final chapter summarizes the volume’s general argument that victimol­
ogists and international lawyers have much to learn from one another, and sets
out detailed answers to the two research questions posed at the beginning, with
particular emphasis on how policy-­makers and legal practitioners could adopt
these ideas and take them forward into operational practice. It is further argued
that developments in the recognition of victims of environmental harm by inter-
national law have to some extent reflected broader trends in the victims’ move-
ment as a whole. By borrowing concepts and language from each other, both
disciplines can advance in understanding. The chapter makes a first attempt at
this by offering a new framework for a ‘green victimology’, taking Williams’s
(1996) typology as a starting point but developing it in light of the discussions
throughout the volume.
2 Identifying and conceptualizing
the victims of environmental
harm

The previous chapter outlined a broad definition of environmental victimization

and, in particular, set out the ‘social harms approach’ to be adopted in the majority
of this volume. This approach is useful in this context principally because it allows
us to problematize the official recognition and labelling of such victimizations.
Nevertheless, the social harms approach has one clear disadvantage that, as noted
in Chapter 1, is especially problematic for commentators seeking the development
of legal (especially criminal) sanctions against those whose actions or inactions
result in environmental victimizations. This disadvantage lies in the apparently all-­
encompassing nature, and near-­limitless scope, of such victimizations. It is a diffi-
culty acknowledged by Williams (1996) who, as a consequence, purposely restricts
his own proposed definition of ‘environmental victims’ to those suffering ‘injury’:

those of past, present, or future generations who are injured as a conse-

quence of change to the chemical, physical, microbiological, or psychoso-
cial environment, brought about by deliberate or reckless, individual or
collective, human act or omission.
(p. 35)

In presenting this definition, Williams argues that to draw on the concept of

‘injury’1 as opposed to the wider notion of ‘harm’ ‘creates a much narrower
frame of reference than that used within the environmental justice debate’
(p. 205). Williams’s justification for this is a pragmatic one: in the context of his
overall aim to achieve a workable legal system which incorporates environmen-
tal victims, the author makes the point that

if an aim of a victim conceptualization is to change policy, then govern-

ments are more likely to respond in relation to tight, manageable definitions,
which may be stretched a little, than to ‘catch all’ concepts that might
appear to carry a host of hidden ramifications.
(p. 205)

Certainly one can appreciate the value of Williams’s perspective; nevertheless,

the purposeful underestimation of environmental victimization by academics
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Intracranial Hemorrhage

917

Appearances of old,

921

Clots, characters of, and changes in,

920

Definition of apoplexy,

917

918

Etiology,

957

Age,
927-929

Alcohol,

929

933

Apoplectic constitution, characteristics of,

930

931

Bright's disease,

930

Exciting causes,

931

Heart disease,

930
,

931

Heredity and sex,

929

Intellectual pursuits,

931

Narcotic poisons,

933

Obstruction to circulation,

931

932

Season,

931
 Situation of,

918-921

923

924

Traumatism,

932

Miliary aneurisms, causes, seat, and characters of,

921

922

Pathology of hemorrhagic apoplexy,

925-927

Symptoms,

933
 Consciousness, loss of, onset and degrees of,

933

temporary loss of, significance and causes of,

942

943

Eyes, state of,

939

941

Facial expression,

935

Headache and paræsthesia as premonitory signs,

946
 Hemiplegia,

940

Mental disturbances and aberrations of special senses,

945

Muscular relaxation,

935

939

Paralysis,

938

Pulse, state of,

939

944

Respiration,
935

Retinal hemorrhages,

944

Sensibility, state of,

942

Speech,

939

Sphincters, state of,

941

Swallowing,

935

Temperature,

935-938
 Tongue, state of,

939

Vertigo, significance of,

745

Vomiting,

935

Vessels, cerebral, state of, in,

922

Occlusion of the Cerebral Arteries

946

Diagnosis between hemorrhage, embolism, and thrombosis,

971

,
972

from apoplectiform attacks of intracranial syphilis,

967

from comatose form of pernicious intermittent fever,

966

from diabetic coma and sunstroke,

966

from epilepsy,

965

from hysteria,

966

968

from injuries to the head,

966

from meningitis of the vertex,

967

from narcotic poisoning,

964

from uræmia,

965

localization of lesions in,

969

Etiology,

950

Age, influence of,

951
 Heart and arteries, disease of,

951

Heart-weakness and hæmic dyscrasia,

951

Morbid anatomy,

946

Cerebral substance, changes in, produced by emboli and

thrombi,

949

Emboli and thrombi, seat of,

947-949

source of,

947

Regions of brain usually involved in softening,

949
,

950

Prognosis,

972-974

Symptoms,

952

Aphasia,

956-960

Arthropathies,

962

Atrophy, muscular,

962

Chorea, post-paralytic,

960
 Mental condition,

956

957

Motor paralysis, duration and course,

954

Reflexes, increased, rigidity and contracture,

962

963

Sensation, state of,

955

Temperature,

960

,
961

Urine, state of,

961

Word-blindness,

959

Treatment,

974

of cerebral embolism,

977

of attack,

977

Prophylaxis,

977
 of cerebral hemorrhage,

974

975

Artificial respiration,

976

Bleeding and purgatives,

976

Cleanliness, necessity of,

977

Prophylaxis,

974

Surgical measures,

977
 of cerebral thrombosis,

977

of paralysis and later symptoms,

978

Electricity, use of,

978

Iodide of potassium and phosphorus, use,

978

Massage, use,

978

Silver, gold, and strychnia, use,

978

Re-education of faculty of speech,

979
Softening of the Brain

918

949

989

Thrombosis of the Cerebral Veins and Sinuses

982

Diagnosis,

987

Localization of the thrombus,

988
 Etiology,

983

Age,

983

Anæmia, simple, as a cause,

984

Carbuncles and erysipelas as a cause,

985

Ear, diseases of,

985

of marantic form,

983

984
 Special diseases most likely to result from,

983

Prognosis,

988

Symptoms,

986

dependent on disturbances of cerebral function,

986

dependent on congestion and compression of other

structures,

986

987

Treatment,

988
 Ammonia, use of,

989

Prophylactic,

989

Surgical measures,

989

Iodide of potassium, use of, after intracranial hemorrhage and

apoplexy,

978

in acute spinal meningitis,

752

in Bell's palsy,

1207
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookfinal.com