Abstract
In this concluding chapter, some of the main themes from the other chapters of this handbook are discussed. After a short introduction, a second section identifies the common thread between the authors of the book. What brings them together is the search for an innovative and encompassing framework to develop restorative justice—seen as a shared relational ethos—to the broad field of environmental crime and harm. In the third section, the concept of environmental ‘harm’ is explored, as it appears to be complex and multifaceted. Harm is looked at from a broad eco-centric perspective, including other-than-human beings and nature. This complex understanding of harm poses enormous challenges to restorative justice to come up with appropriate answers for ‘doing justice’. Section 4 deals with the way justice can be conceived as ‘ecological’ or ‘inter-species’ justice, taking into account epistemic challenges and its intergenerational dimension. The next section examines how existing legal systems deal with environmental injustices. Here, also the debate on criminalising ‘ecocide’ from a restorative justice perspective is highlighted. This all results in a sixth section, which looks at environmental restorative justice in practice: which stakeholders have to be involved or represented and how can a process of participation focusing on desired outcomes be envisaged? This chapter concludes by asking for a balance between the needed exploration of an innovative framework for eco-justice, on the one hand, and the development of a clear conceptual framework for environmental restorative justice allowing for practical applications, on the other hand.
The global only exists by the generosity of the local
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Notes
- 1.
Retrieved from https://www.labiomista.be/en/cosmopolitan-renaissance (last accessed 11 February 2020).
- 2.
- 3.
See Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature: https://www.garn.org/.
- 4.
See, for example, European Commission Impact Assessment Report Brussels with the proposal for a new Directive on environmental criminal law (Brussels, 15.12.2021, SWD(2021) 465 final/2). Retrieved from https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52021SC0465R(01)&from=EN (last accessed 9 February 2022).
- 5.
European Forum for Restorative Justice Comments on the EU Directive 2008/99/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008 on Improving Environmental Protection through Criminal Law. Retrieved from https://www.euforumrj.org/sites/default/files/2021-08/EFRJ%20contribution%20EU%20Directive%20Environmental%20Criminal%20Law%203.05.2021%20%281%29.pdf (last accessed 9 February 2022).
- 6.
The following paragraphs are based on what we have elaborated in the European Forum for Restorative Justice Comments on the EU Directive 2008/99/EC (see previous footnote) and on the topic of restorative justice for victims of corporate violence (Aertsen, 2018).
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Aertsen, I. (2022). Environmental Restorative Justice: Activating Synergies. In: Pali, B., Forsyth, M., Tepper, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Restorative Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04223-2_26
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