Conservation Through Criminalization? Rethinking Environmental Crime in Policy and Practice

Abstract

As global biodiversity faces a steep decline and transnational environmental crises intensify, calls to criminalize conservation harms have gained momentum. This Perspective argues that criminal law can indeed play a legitimate role in conservation governance, but only under limited and identifiable conditions. While criminalization can serve as a deterrent against conservation harms and signal societal condemnation, its implementation poses challenges, including the imposition of more complex rules on evidence, punitive excess, and the risk of further marginalizing (Indigenous) communities. From the legal practitioners’ perspective, we argue that conservation policy must approach criminal justice with sufficient caution. Criminalization is most defensible where harms are serious, culpability is sufficiently clear, civil and administrative remedies are inadequate, and enforcement can be implemented without disproportionately burdening marginalized communities or undermining local legitimacy. By mapping where criminal law complements or otherwise complicates conservation goals, we propose a conditional criminal justice framework for designing more just, efficient, and effective responses to environmental and conservation harms. Rather than endorsing punitive expansion in general, we provide when preventive, restorative, or community-led approaches are preferable.