Targeted, pirate attacks against trade vessels are crimes that transcend our understanding of physical borders. Piracy, perceived to be a crime not just against the bearer of goods, but to the rest of the world in international waters, is prosecuted by universal jurisdiction. No matter where the crime was committed, any country holds the legitimate right to prosecute and put pirates before the full force of their domestic legal system.
Why then, should environmental crimes not see the same level of global response? We share one planet, the same oceans, the same atmosphere – a crime against the environment, is in many ways, a crime against humanity.
Let’s take a step back first. What exactly is universal jurisdiction? The global collective, whether through treaties or international law, choose to designate crimes of a very particular nature, to be prosecutable under universal jurisdiction. No matter where the location of the crime took place, what the criminal’s nationality happens to be, or what the differences in laws exist in different states, a country anywhere around the world can prosecute a criminal by this principle. What then, are environmental crimes? The vagueness of the term is, ironically, self-defining in a sense. The idea of an “environmental crime” is deeply subjective, but broadly refers to egregious violation of environmental protection laws, ranging from dumping harmful chemicals into bodies of water, to dramatically unsustainable foresting.
Intuitively, the case for universal jurisdiction against environmental crime seems incredibly strong. Morally, environmental crimes affect people all around the world – when Western corporations over-release emissions into the atmosphere, that is the same atmosphere shared by the developing world. They are culpable for hurting countries other than the one they are from, and the one in which they committed the crime. In a more practical sense, what greater deterrent to environmental abuse could there be? In an age of rising sea levels and mass despeciation, it seems that universal jurisdiction might be what it takes to finally put a halt to the destruction of corporate abuse of the environment. When powerful, wealthy companies can simply uproot operations to countries with more lax regulations, how can we possibly hold them accountable?
However, there is a problem – this is an incredibly idealized conception of how environmental crimes would actually be prosecuted. Predominantly, it is likely to be firms and leaders from developing countries that will be prosecuted. Empiricism points to this conclusion, where warlords and crimes against humanity that have been targeted by the ICC have been overwhelmingly from African states, despite the equal prevalence of targettable leaders in places such as South America. Logically, it also follows that developing countries cannot afford to prosecute businesses and companies that move operations into their countries, even if they hurt the environment in the process. To put the nail in the coffin, the international laws that dictate when and where environmental crimes are subject to universal jurisdiction will be designed in large part by Western scholars and elites, who have vested interests in prohibiting economic growth in many parts of the developing world.
There is also a moral dilemma. As guilty and horrible some environmental crimes may be, is it fair for them to be arbitrarily subject to a different set of laws, dependent by chance on which country they are caught by? While environmental crimes most definitely carry international impacts, they still often have disproportionate impacts on countries that, for example, are most proximate to environmental crime. Should that country not deserve to subject the criminal to their laws?
As has likely been made clear simply through my thoughts, there is no clear weigh up between whether universal jurisdiction is worth it. There is a tradeoff to be made when considering its potential for the world, but in a time of increasing environmental destruction by the day, it might just be one we should be ready to take.
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