Come and meet Dr Alison Hutchinson and Dr George Iordachescu at the Eurocrim2022 conference in Malaga on 21-24 September
The conference is organised by the European Society of Criminology together with Instituto de Criminologiá, and the theme of this XXII edition is ‘Challenges and opportunities in a virtually and physically changing Europe: The need for criminology’.
Dr George Iordachescu will present the paper Green Collar Crimes and the Illegal Wildlife Trade in Europe in session 46GREEN2 – Confronting harms against animals scheduled to take place on September 24th from 9:00.
Abstract
Europe’s role in the illegal wildlife trade (IWT) as a source, transit and demand region needs to be better acknowledged. One way of analysing the dynamics and drivers of this phenomenon is to explore how legal and illegal trade can be interwoven. This paper integrates political ecology and its long-standing interest in deconstructing power dynamics with green criminology’s preoccupation for illuminating the distribution of environmental harms. IWTs are approached here as green-collar crimes, which are environmental crimes committed by legally registered companies involved in illegal activities or which use their infrastructure to facilitate the illicit wildlife trade. It further argues that deploying the analytical toolkit from green-collar crime can enable the accurate identification of the drivers of IWT and analysis of the complex, yet hidden, role of business actors who may knowingly, or unknowingly facilitate and sustain IWT. The paper will take brown bear trafficking within Europe as a starting point to investigate how environmental harms are produced as green-collar crimes at the intersection of power, elite consumption and wildlife conservation by a range of complex actors (sport-hunting companies, outfitters, ecotourism operators, etc.). The paper is based on over six months of field research in Slovakia, Romania and Brussels, including expert interviews with stakeholders working across brown bear conservation and management sectors. This contribution is timely and theoretically resolute, as approaching IWT through the lens of green-collar crime can enhance the focus of policy and enforcement initiatives by examining overlooked actors in IWT in Europe.
Dr George Iordachescu will also participate in a seminar on Environmental Crime and Gender with an intervention about ‘Gender-based violence in the illegal logging and timber trade’. This side-event is scheduled to take place on September 21st starting from 10:30.