Protecting the environment through criminal law: a focus on state crime

Abstract

Environmental protection has gained particular significance as a global problem, drawing the attention of many thinkers and states people. However, given their legislative power, environmental protection responsibilities, and the requirements for protecting corporations, governments play a vital role in ensuring greater economic interests since, on the one hand, the global economic development has an undeniable impact on the modern world and, on the other, the significant damages to the environment caused by these activities may lead to irreversible harms including climate change and the decline in biodiversity. Therefore, the question is how states can strike a balance between these two opposing views. However, a deeper look into how states behave in this area clearly shows that they attempt to identify and define development-oriented economic value along the environmental values, making states and their related corporations the biggest force behind the criminal activities that seek greater profits at the expense of the environment. Given the first principle of the Stockholm Declaration (1972) and the principle of equality before law, efforts need to be made to properly and effectively protect the environment against state crimes while states must be held criminally accountable for their environmental crimes, because turning a blind eye on the environmental harms caused by wrongly formulated state policies and keeping states immunes from criminal prosecution will turn on the green line for further environmental pollution.