ECO-CRIM-NET: Investigation and Prosecution of Crimes against Ecosystems - the use of new technologies in international environmental crime control in large scale conflicts

• In Event: Atrocity Crimes: New Challenges and New Approaches of Transitional Justice (ECACTJ)

Abstract

Environmental crimes in combination with large-scale corruption have a hugely destructive impact on ecosystems and the climate and undermine the rights of communities, local populations, and indigenous peoples. Crimes like illegal unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing), illegal mining, waste trafficking, and climate and pollution crimes are causing great harm to the environment, the climate, and the people. However, events in the current armed conflict also demonstrate that crime against ecosystems poses a severe threat to the international community as well. Establishing criminal responsibility for these kinds of crimes involves immense challenges for national and international law enforcement agencies due to the high complexity of these crimes and their connection with networks of transnational organized crime.
This paper will present new approaches to address the immense complexity of such crimes against ecosystems through the integration of new technologies such as AI, satellites, etc. into the system of international and transnational criminal investigation and prosecution. This approach will overcome the fragmentation of different approaches of crime control to provide new knowledge about the design and modus operandi of crimes against ecosystems and how these crimes can be addressed by legal means with the support of new technologies. In taking the “Realpolitik”-approach, this project left the purely legalistic dimension by integrating computer science, political science, sociology, biology, anthropology, and criminology into the project and therefore presents a new and unique approach for the development of new models of crime control by integrating new technologies into the monitoring, investigation, and prosecution of crimes against ecosystems.

Author

• Nandor Knust, UIT Arctic University of Norway