Dirty Collar Crime and the Environment

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Conference sub-theme: Eco-Justice and Environmental Crime

Abstract In 2010, Vincent Ruggiero and Nigel South coined the term ‘dirty collar crime’ to define corporate entrepreneurs that monopolise waste disposal companies and profit from illegal environmental activities. This paper explores the ways in which ‘the environment’ has become big business for organised criminal enterprises. It draws on original fieldwork conducted in Italy and examines the exploits of the ‘eco mafia’. It concludes that the fluidity associated with term ‘environment’ and its cavalier usage in political and public discourse creates ambivalence for regulation and protection. Whilst trade continues to assert an international priority within the landscapes of global economics and fiscal prosperity; organized environmental crime takes advantage of growing markets. As a result, movements of environmental activism emerge as the new front in the surveillance, regulation and prosecution of organised environmental crime. Such voices must continue to be central to future green criminological perspectives that seek environmental, ecological and species justice.

Introduction The increase in globalised trade and the rapid industrialisation of developing societies continues to create ‘waste’ on an unprecedented scale. The wasteful bi-products of mass production have seen the emergence of ‘rubbish tsars’ who profit from illegal business activities. Such activity has been termed ‘dirty collar crime’ and demonstrates ‘how business can benefit from the very disasters it creates (Ruggierio & South, 2010: 259). Environmental related crime is currently one of the most profitable forms of criminal activity and it is no surprise that organised criminal groups are attracted to its high profit margins’ (Banks et al, 2008: 2).

Indeed, organised environmental crime is identified by the UN as a key factor in the impoverishment, displacement and violent conflicts of millions of people, notably in developing societies (UNODC, 2009). The theft of biodiversity and the demise of animal species have resulted not only in financial loss but to the increase of ‘environmental refugees’, people dislocated and forced to migrate due to loss of livelihoods. This paper explores the links between organized crime and the environment, notably offences involving waste disposal, and examines the regulatory and environmentalist responses to this growing issue of global concern.

Transnational Organized Environmental Crime The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Institute’s (UNICRI) has established a now widely used categorisation of transnational organised environmental crime based on various international protocols and multilateral agreements. Other organisations including Interpol, the UN Environment Programme and G8 also adopt the following five key areas when referring to transnational and organised environmental crime. The areas are: i) illegal trade in endangered species and wildlife (breach of the 1973 Washington Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES); ii) Illegal trade in ozone-depleting substances (breach of the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer); iii) Illegal dumping, trade and transport of waste and hazardous substances (breach of the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Other Wastes and their Disposal); iv) Illegal, unregulated and unreported commercial fishing; v) illegal logging and trade in protected woodlands (CITES) (see Hayman & Brack, 2002:5).

Illegal disposal of waste The excesses of globalised consumption and capitalism continue to produce harmful wastes that pollute and contaminate the environment (White, 2011). As mentioned above, the dumping and illegal transport of various kinds of hazardous waste is widely recognised by international law as an environmental crime. However, for decades the control and enforcement of the illegal movement in waste has proved inadequate as Rebovich (1992: 125) notes: ‘...it has been said that illegal hazardous waste disposal is very much like one long game of hot potato. The idea is to make as much profit as you can by being the temporary possessor of the hot potato before unloading it on some other person, organization, or place. In the end, the final recipient is the loser’.

The ‘losers’ in the illegal movement of waste are most often the poor and vulnerable. There continues to exist within political and policing circles, noticeably across Europe, complacency and lack of awareness regarding the seriousness of illegal waste disposal and its links to organised crime (Dimov, 2011). Nowhere is this more apparent than in Italy, which is worth exploring further here in some detail to understand organised environmental crime and its links with global trade and national governance1

Throughout the 1990s international headlines reported 11 million tonnes of industrial waste unaccounted for and large amounts of toxic waste dumped in Italy in what came to be known as acts of the ‘eco-mafia’ (Edmondson, 2003). Mafia related enterprises were reported to be monopolising waste disposal contracts from industries producing toxic residues and illegally dumping the pollutants in various areas of the Italian countryside (Ruggerio, 1996). Furthermore, the mafia or ‘rubbish tzars’ (South and Ruggerio, 2010) were bidding for, and successfully obtaining, provincial contracts to clean up the very environmental mess they themselves had created. This sort of organised criminal activity is not new. Block and Scarpetti (1985) documented the ways in which the mafia in the US monopolised the solid waste management, eliminated industry competition, bribed officials and routinely illegally disposed on toxic waste in the New York and New Jersey region. Interesting they note how the US Environment Protection Agency was obstructionist in regulating toxic waste. Indeed, Szasz (1986) argues that ‘lax implementation and enforcement’ were key factors in the expansion of organised crime monopolies over waste management contract and the concomitant illegal activity. An insight pertinent to southern Italy’s procurement of waste contracts and lack of regulatory oversight.

Italy continues to uphold the worst environmental infringement record in the EU. In early 2002, a total of 125 breaches of EU environmental directives were lodged against the Italian authorities with some cases referred to the European Court of Justice (Ferringo, 2003). In December 2006, the European Parliament identified that 60 environmental infringement

1 This section is based on fieldwork conducted in Italy during 2008-2010 that was funded by the British Academy.

notices remained outstanding against the Italian Government (the highest in Europe), mainly for breaches of waste management. In 2009, the European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas stated "EU environmental law aims to prevent damage to the environment and minimise health risks to European citizens. To ensure its citizens are provided the utmost protection I urge Italy to quickly put right the shortcomings of certain of its environmental laws in line with those of the EU." (Europa, 2009: 1). Italy has yet to implement seven different EU environmental directives relating to water, air, soil, waste and nature protection and its legal regimes are often severely criticised for not harmonising EU law. The European Commission is pursuing legal action against the Italian Government for failing to implement Directive into national law (Europa, 2011;UNEP, 2010).

One of the reasons for Italy’s non-compliance with EU environmental regulations is, as mentioned above, the widespread organised criminal activity of the ‘eco-mafia’. As South (2010: 234) rightly points out, the word ‘ecomafia’ first coined by the environmental group Legambiente, is now widely accepted in Italian society to mean ‘organised criminal networks that profit from illegally disposing of commercial, industrial and radioactive waste’. Ecomafia is big business in Italy, estimated at 20.8 billion Euro in 2008 (Legambiete, 2009). Almost all criminal activities occur in the mafia strongholds of Campania, Calabria, Sicily and Peglia. In this area alone, 31 million tonnes of domestic and commercial waste simply ‘disappeared’ in 2008; dumped at sea or in local waterways. More recently mafia groups have taken to illegally burying waste in southern Italy and then rapidly building housing estates on top. Between 2008-2010 17,000 houses were illegally built on waste dumps; 10,000 forest fires were mafia related (Legambiente, 2010). The impacts of organised environmental crime in Italy also have a global reach. In 2008, it was widely reported that mozzarella cheese exported from Campania contained high levels of dioxins, the result of dairies contaminated by the illegal disposal of toxic waste (McCarthy and Phillips, 2008).

Italy’s longstanding record of environmental non-compliance combined with prolific illegalities of the ecomafia that continue to assert media headlines; has necessitated a political response. Within the Carabinieri (reputedly Italy’s most elite law enforcement body) has emerged a specialist policing unit to tackle environmental crime. It should be noted that Italy has a complex structure of state policing and law enforcement. There are eight separate law enforcement agencies: Arma dei Carabinieri (military police), Polizia di Stato (state police), Guardia di Finanza (financial and customs police), Polizia Provinciale (provincial police), Polizia Municipale (municipal police), corpo forestale dello stato (forestry police), Guardia Costeria (coast guard police) and Polizia Penitenziaria (prison police). All these agencies combine to govern and enforce federal, provincial and municipal law across Italy.

The creation of a specialist unit within an existing police force to tackle corporate environmental crime is a first in Europe. Yet, the resources and police personnel devoted to the initiative are minuscule. Moreover, it is the provinces in the north of Italy that have witnessed the greatest political and municipal ‘buy-in’, while the troubled areas of the south continue to struggle for inter-agency collaboration against a culture of suspicion and official corruption.

Emerging from Italy’s ecopolicing, which is still in its early days, is a story of how environmental movements can identify and target organized crime, mobilize political opinion; involve local government; and raise public awareness. In Italy, organized environmental crime is not being addressed or tackled by senior political officials, government administrators of policing agencies; they all play a part, but the real difference is being made through Legambiente. Established in 1980, Legambiente is a left-wing environmental activist organization with 115,000 active members across 45 offices in Italy. With the use of its technologies, databases and local intelligence; Legmabiente has been instrumental in tightening waste disposal regulations and for the prosecutions of mafia personnel. In a similar fashion to the ecomafia having a public identity in Italy; Legambiente are widely thought of as the ‘eco police’. However, Italy’s four biggest mafia groups, namely, the 'Ndrangheta in Calabria, the Sacra Corona Unita in Apulia, the Neapolitan Camorra and the Cosa Nostra in Sicily, are so embedded in the social and economic fabric of Italian society, that organised criminal activity accounts for 7% of the country’s gross domestic product (Phillips, 2008). As the ecomafia compete amongst themselves for waste management contracts, amidst poor and corrupt regulation. Recent endeavours by Legambiente and its alliances to highlight the extent of corruption in Italy’s south, has intensified EU focus on what has been dubbed the ‘Naples rubbish crisis’ where 7200 tonnes of rubbish is accumulating every day in the Campania region (BBC News, 2011).

Environmental Movements and Transnational Organised Environmental Crime Environmental activism also continues to play a major role alongside international instruments to combat organised environmental crime (White, 2011). In 2010, during the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity, Interpol’s General Assembly passed a resolution that would witness 188 national law enforcement agencies collaborate with organisations such as the World Bank and environmental movements; an initiative that promises substantial increase in policing resources to reduce organized environmental crime (Environment News Service, 2010); Interpol, 2011). In 2007 signatory countries to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals agreed to ‘ensure environmental stability’, through, inter alia, targeting and preventing organised environmental crime (United Nations, 2007). The proceeds of organised environmental crime are laundered through legitimate and legal commercial activities. As a result, the Financial Action Task Force now officially recognised environmental crime as explicably associated with money laundering. The Asian Regional Partners Forum on Combating Environmental Crime (ARPEC) was set up in 2005, and continues to play an active role in co-ordinating enforcement endeavours in the Asia Pacific region, an area renowned for trade in illicit wildlife. One important initiative, the Partnership Against Transnational Crime through Regional Organized Law Enforcement has witnessed significant increases in wildlife seizures through co-ordinated policing and information exchange (UNODC, 2010). Finally, in July 2011, eight signatory countries to The Lusaka Agreement on Co-operative Enforcement Operations Directed at Illegal Trade in Wild Fauna and Flora was the brain-child of Wildlife Law Enforcement Officers from eight Eastern and Southern African countries met to increase enforcement resources to prevent wildlife crime (ARC, 2011).

In a similar fashion to the successful involvement of citizen environmental activism in the historically progressive regulation of environmental crime in the United States (Clifford and Edwards, 2012), the above international approaches expressly rely upon organisations such as Greenpeace, Endangered Species International, Environmental Investigation Agency, Environmental Justice Foundation, Legambiente, and the World Wide Fund for Nature, just to mention a few, to combat global organised environmental crime. Environmental movements are becoming central in the identification, detection, and prevention of environmental crime. Their resources, technologies, data bases, personnel are increasingly utilized by law enforcement agencies to police, regulate and prosecute organized environmental crime. The advent and mobilisation of activist movements for prevention and regulation of organised environmental crime is arguably what Habermas referred to as style of participatory democracy or more specifically the ‘revival of the public sphere’. Here, social movements respond to a passive and compliant citizenry by constructing a counter discourse that is harnessed through action, and mobilized as truth (Habermas, 1991). Here, environmental activism, through technology and networks of action, local alliances, as well as appeals to citizens and officials elevate the social movement to a reliable and reputable status that is inculcated into government and regulatory structures. Here environmental activism becomes not mere representative democracy but participatory democracy with both a visible presence and impact. As such, with public and political integration it becomes a new and important form of environmental governance. The momentum created by environmental movements, it is to quote Foucault, a source of mobilised power. Emerging from alliances with local institutions of governance, and knowledges have come to be relied upon as accepted and trusted regimes of truth; they becomes sources of official discourse Foucault, 1979).

Green Criminology and Transnational Organized Environmental Crime Within criminological studies, debates about organized environmental crime have emerged within discourses on state and corporate crime or ‘crimes of the powerful’, and within the rapidly expanding area of ‘green criminology’ (South, 1998; Lynch & Stretesky, 2003; South & Bierne 2006.) Professor Nigel South from the University of Essex, argues that growing phenomenon of green crime is a product of a late-modern risk society. As a result, he rightly identifies that emerging environmental harms and injustices requires ‘a new academic way of looking at the world but also a new global politics’. This includes an intellectual narratives that moves ‘beyond the narrow boundaries of traditional criminology and draws together political and practical action to shape public policy’ (South, 2010: 242). This interdisciplinary approach combined with environmental activism and public policy has facilitative a green criminological perspective with three dimensions. First, scholarship that conceptualises environmental crime; second, that devoted to exploring and uncovering various types of environmental crimes, and finally, a commitment to environmental policing and enforcement (White, 2009).

A substantial amount of green criminological scholarship seeks to put issues of environmental harm on the academic, political and public radar. As this chapter argues, too often when actions violate international environmental agreements or domestic laws they are referred to as ‘breaches’ or ‘offences’ and not crimes. From a purely legal perspective this is best explained by the fact that environmental offences are often not contained within either international or municipal criminal law. As such they are dealt with as administrative offences and prosecuted in civil jurisdictions. Such offences only become issues for the criminal courts when offenders fail to comply with a court sanction and are subsequently referred to a criminal court. While the language of eco-crime is used (most often by activists and NGO’s) it is not expressed in such terms at international law and only in reaction to anti- social behaviour within domestic law. With new laws, emerge new regulations and new offences. Eco-crime, therefore, must be an important area, within what South above refers to a new academic way within a new global politics.

Organised environmental crime often occurs, and is intrinsically linked, to the free-market policies of state and corporate trade. For Westra (2004: 309) acts by governments and corporations in pursuit of free trade that deliberatively destroy and damage biodiversity are ‘attacks on the human person’ that deprive civilians (notably the poor) from the social, cultural and economic benefits of their environment. As a result, eco-crime is an act of violence and should be viewed as a human rights violation as citizens are deprived of freedoms and liberties. As Halsey and White (1998) have noted, ‘environmental harm’ is often publicly and politically accepted as necessary for maintaining human well-being. To use a Gramscian analysis, capital accumulation and the prominence of trade is preserved through ideologies of ‘necessity’. There is cultural hegemony that underpins the imperatives of trade that come about through consensus or ‘common sense values’ that cannot be undermined. As a result, it is essential to inculcate discourses in political economy to analyse and understand the interconnectedness between organized environmental crime and legitimate global trade.

To understand the complexities of organised environmental crime requires an examination of the networks of corruption that facilitate criminal markets (Elliot, 2009). Lorraine Elliot is correct to assert that addressing this expanding and global enterprise requires ‘joined up thinking’ across various transnational government and non-government agencies. Notwithstanding the importance of this network type analysis, it must be recognized that policies of free-trade governed by principles of market regulation provide the contexts for organized environmental crime to flourish.

Conclusion The environment has become big business for global trade and ‘dirty collar criminals’ alike. The language of ‘environment’ has become a powerful discourse for various social, commercial and political sectors. The environment is both a resource for human exploitation and consumption that provides the basis for trade and high standards of living; as well as something to be conserved and cared for. What we mean by environment remains uncontested and often confused. As a result, notions of environmental preservation and development remain blurred and often in competition. Moreover, the environment has become a taken-for-granted subject, often romanticized and uncritically idealised. Yet advancing technologies; increased human interaction with nature; raise questions about what and where is this thing we call the environment? Answers to which, or discourses about, will help shape social, future political and environmental agendas that are increasingly becoming central to contemporary modes of governances and democracy. Green criminology must continue to wrestle with these important questions when exploring issues of environmental, ecological and species justice. The role of green criminologists must be to unpack and disentangle the ways that policies and practices of legitimate trade, facilitate the opportunities and activities of organized transnational environmental criminal networks.

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