How E-waste challenges environmental governance

This article examines how e-waste – waste from electronic and electrical equipment – poses a challenge for environmental governance. The amount of e-waste generated globally has been estimated to reach about 72 billion tons annually by 2017. This article discusses how e-waste challenges the control of illegal trade as well as the prevention of environmental harms. By focusing on the role of state, corporate and civil society actors, insights are gained into the strengths and limitations of the governance framework. These suggest the need for reflection about both practical and theoretical implications that arise for environmental governance

Flows of transnational environmental crime: case study research on e-waste and timber

Despite growing interest in green criminological issues, a need remains to develop research that grasps the complexity and transnational nature inherent to the phenomenon of transnational environmental crime. We hope to contribute to this in our PhD-study which focuses on transnational environmental crime and more in particular on the illegal transport of e-waste and timber. Both of these transnational environmental crime phenomena are inherently linked to globalisation and to transferences of levels or geographies. Therefore we explicitly took the transnational dimension into account and perceived both phenomena as flows. We present the first results of a case study about illegal transports of e-waste and timber, for which a Belgian port served as the research setting. Based on a triangulation of data from document analyses and in-depth interviews, we try to de-anonymize the origin, intermediary and destination locations of these flows. We illustrate the characteristics of illegal transports of e-waste and timber as transnational environmental crime flows. We look at the environmental problems at the basis of their criminalization: what actors are involved, what the nature of the phenomena is and what its impact, harm and vulnerabilities are. This will provide meaning to the second goal of our research which focuses on the governance of transnational environmental crime flows. This second aim is to map governance nodes and networks and pay attention to different actors involved, to their interactions and potentially different finalities. This presentation focuses on the characteristics of illegal transports of e-waste and timber (goal 1) and hints towards the study of their governance (goal 2)

Is it all going to waste?: illegal transports of e-waste in a European trade hub

This article responds to the call for more empirical knowledge about transnational environmental crime. It does so by analysing the case of illegal transports of electronic waste (e-waste) in a European trade hub. Given the complexity and global nature of transnational environmental crime, it is difficult to determine which actors are involved. In this regard, a local research setting allows the actors involved in illegal transports of e-waste to be identified. This research tries to determine whether these actors and their roles can be considered legal or illegal and illustrates the legal-illegal interfaces in e-waste flows. Moreover, this case study analyses the push, pull and facilitating factors and therefore looks at what motivations and opportunities shape the flows of e-waste in locations of origin, transit and destination. The results show that the social organisation and emergence of transnational environmental crime is on a thin line between legal and illegal which needs to be contextualised within the global reality of the locations of origin, transit and destination

Illegal transports of e-waste: preliminary results of a case study research

This research aims to illustrate the characteristics of illegal transports of e-waste as a transnational environmental crime flow. It looks at the environmental problems at the basis of its criminalization: what actors are involved, what the nature of the phenomena is and what its impact, harm and vulnerabilities are. This will provide meaning to the second goal of our research which focuses on the governance of transnational environmental crime flows. The aim is to map governance nodes and networks and pay attention to different actors involved, to their interactions and potentially different finalities. We try to answer to these research goals by means of a case study research into illegal transports of e-waste. This presentation focuses on the characteristics of this phenomenon (goal 1), and briefly discusses preliminary results about its governance (goal 2)

Transnational organized environmental crime

Based on three case studies of transnational organized environmental crime, this chapter, on the one hand, aims to illustrate some direct and indirect harm caused by environmental black markets. On the other hand, it aims to critically assess the often artificial distinction between organized and corporate crime in environmental crimes. Since the 1990s, so-called green criminologists have critically studied the environment in the broadest sense of the word, focusing on various forms of environmental harm, crime and regulation, often drawing parallels between ecological and socioeconomic or political inequalities. Waste crime is the trade, treatment or disposal of waste in ways that breach international or domestic environmental legislation and cause harm or risk to the environment and human health. Wildlife crime is one of the areas that have long been recognized as a key environmental crisis. Many species, both big and small, are on the brink of extinction or have gone extinct because of trade and poaching