# Transcript

### Green Criminology: An interview with Reece Walters (part 1)

Dr. Deborah Drake

I'm Dr. Deborah Drake and I'm here with Professor Reece Walters. We are both criminologists at The Open University and today I'm interviewing Reece about an innovative area of critical criminology, that of Green Criminology. So Reece, I'd like to start by asking you what is Green Criminology, and how did it come about?

Professor Reece Walters

It’s an evolving and very exciting area for me of criminology that has its founding principles pretty much identified by Piers Beirne and Nigel South who are two leading figures, who have identified and I quote ‘those harms against humanity, against the environment (including space), and against non-human animals committed by powerful organisations’. So harms committed by governments, trans-national corporations, military apparatuses and so on against ordinary people as well as by ordinary people. So it’s a broad definition that’s acknowledging, you know, both governmental understandings of individual responsibility but is also capable of focusing on primary intention on acts of the powerful and causing sort of widespread and long-lasting environmental damage.

Where did it come about in terms of its coining and so forth, I mean it was first coined as a phrase in print by the American criminologist Michael Lynch. In 1990 he, he used the term in a published article as a way of harnessing green environmentalism and green political theories to examine things like environmental destruction as an outcome of modern capitalism. But it was really Nigel South, Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, who began using the term many years before that in the late seventies and indeed throughout the 1980s when he was speaking at conferences and bringing the whole issue of environmentalism to the criminological landscape.

Dr. Deborah Drake

So why did criminology, and the likes of Nigel South, start to take an interest in environmental matters?

Professor Reece Walters

I think very much shaped by the context at the time. I mean in the early 1980’s, and indeed the late 1970s, saw a proliferation of nuclear weapons and this combined with the ongoing cold war provided discussion around the dangers of nuclear energy, nuclear war, the extinction of the planet. And the UN began to pass resolutions about nuclear weapons, about chemicals that we used to make weapons and energy, and criminologists began to take an interest in these sorts of issues. I mean, we saw in 1983 Professor Richard Harding from Australia published in the ANZ Journal of Criminology a piece about nuclearism and criminology. You know, he was asking very broad searching questions such as ‘What does criminology have to say about issues that threaten the extinction of our planet and what can criminologists do about it?’ Big questions. And as a result we saw a flurry of some published work notably about toxic chemicals, contamination of water, contamination of soil, food and the impacts on both human and non-human species. So issues about pollution and deforestation, habitat and species decline sort of followed on, as a sort of environmental consciousness became part of criminological concern.

Dr. Deborah Drake

Mmm. So were there any noticeable crimes or events that galvanised or inspired Green Criminological scholarship?

Professor Reece Walters

There are. I mean in addition to the debates about the dangers associated with nuclear technologies, there are probably three that stand out for me notably Love Canal, Bhopal and the Rainbow Warrior, that all occurred around 1978 to 1984. I mean the first involved the dumping of toxic waste. In 1978 – 80 in LoveCanal near Niagara Falls in the United States, it emerged that a chemical company named Hooker Chemicals had disposed of thousands of drums of toxic chemicals into a shallow canal and covered it with soil and grass. And they'd sold this land to the Niagara Falls Board of Education and as a result a school was built on the site; developers moved in; houses were built and an entire community was established over this toxic dump. And over the years there was evidence of birth defects, significant skin diseases, deformities and cancers emerged in the people you know living in this area. And at the time, the United States Environment Protection Agency found that there was some 88 different toxic chemicals in the backyards of people’s homes. And they concluded that, you know, that 80 per cent of all lethal chemicals in the US at that particular time around the early 1980s were being disposed of illegally and that raised not only a public scare but an area that was very important for – for political intervention.

Dr. Deborah Drake

And you said the second one involved Bhopal in India?

Professor Reece Walters

Yeah, the tragic disaster that occurred in Southern India in 1984 where a poisonous gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticide factory instantly killed 2000 people when that factory exploded in the middle of the night. And then a further 200,000 was subsequently affected over the coming months and years. And in addition there were thousands of animals that were killed, soils and drinking water contaminated, and the entire community of 250,000 people were dislocated. It was a complete and utter disaster. And it revealed how – how this American company had gone abroad to make pesticides, using cheap labour and reduce costs, and in doing so ignoring a whole host of health and safety standards. And today, the chief executive officer Warren Anderson, remains unaccounted for for this action even though the Supreme Court of India have issued warrants for his arrest he’s never been brought to justice even though we know that he lives a long and healthy life in Long Island in New York.

The third one really is …er … something a little different I think in terms of an event that galvanised or inspired criminological scholarship in the area of Green Crim and that was the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand in 1984. This was a ship that was owned and operated by Greenpeace, and Greenpeace at that particular time had become something of a thorn in the side of the powerful nuclear nations and it gathered significant international exposure for their opposition to the ways in which nuclear resources were being used. And their vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, became the target of an espionage operation involving secret agents from France who bombed the vessel. And it demonstrated how eco-warriors, those who were opposed to powerful nations and companies that threaten the environment, they themselves had become targets. People, ordinary citizens, who protested were seen as a threat, which I think raised a lot of public awareness about issues these protestors were standing up for. If a secret service is travelling from France to New Zealand to blow up a protest ship, then why, and what's this whole environmental movement about? I mean, people began to take note and they got involved so you know they were three very, very big issues that galvanised public consciousness but also academics around a new area and criminology became involved.