The Urgency of a “Green Criminology”: A Case Study of Air Pollution, Criminal Activity and Environmental Perception in the South Durban Basin (South Africa)

Victims of environmental crimes have been always the focus of environmental justice, which “incorporates environmental issues into the broader intellectual and institutional framework of human rights and democratic accountability” (McDonald, 2002).
The notion of environmental justice emerged in the 1980s. Its aims were responding to environmental injustices and preventing them in the future through “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies” (EPA).

For the purpose of this study, I consider environmental justice from a South African point of view. My research is based on one of the greatest example of environmental injustice, which took place in South Africa. It involved the forcible removal of poor black and colored communities from their ancestral lands to toxic waste sites.
The environmental justice movement in South Africa started in the 1990s in response to discriminatory laws, a history of racism, and racial conflicts which characterized the Apartheid period. These conditions continue unfortunately in a more hidden shade.

The Apartheid Era, from 1948 to 1989, created “a period of extreme politicization of environmental conservation, passing body of laws which further disempowered blacks and rendered them even more vulnerable to discriminatory action” (Horrell, 1978 as cited in McDonald, 2002). This was the beginning of environmental racism, which “confined Africans to small rural areas, where overpopulation, poverty, and a lack of basic services inevitably led to a relentless alienation of blacks from the environmental sphere and to widespread environmental degradation” (Timberlake, 1986 as cited in McDonald, 2002).

From a more global picture, the term environmental racism was coined by Rev. Ben Chavis in the 1960s, according to whom it means “the racial discrimination in environmental policymaking and the enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of people of colored communities for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in our communities, and a history of excluding people of color from leadership in the environmental movement” (di Chiro, 1995 as cited in McDonald, 2002).

It was not until 1994, with the first South African democratic election that the concept of environmental justice started to be considered within the new government’s agenda, leading to the creation of Section 24 of the South African Constitution concern-ing the environment. The first part of the Section states “everyone has the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being”.
Therefore, from an environmental justice point of view, the goal is not only countering environmental crimes and guaranteeing justice to their victims, but also ending racial oppression and discrimination.