This essay discusses green criminology in relation to the development of non-anthropocentric research perspectives in history and cultural anthropology. Green criminological concepts of ‘environmental harm’ and ‘ecocide’ turn doing harm to nature and ecosystems, even when legal, into object of criminological research. Historical research exploring a wider time frame deepens and enriches criminological understanding of, e.g., wildlife trafficking and climate change. According active agency to animals and other non-human actors and attempts to create a new language transcending human-nature dichotomies, as undertaken in transspecies or multispecies history, anthropology, and narratology, offer substantial contributions to green criminologies of everyday life.

The impact of climate change, long merely an abstract prospect, has rapidly become manifest these last years. To prevent rapid global warming, a daunting level of policy intervention is needed. The Green New Deal is an attempt to address that challenge. It is a political programme that combines energy transition with a social agenda focused on providing employment and welfare. While the early and more radical versions of the Green New Deal idea question the necessity of growth itself, the more moderate programmes now pursued by the EU and the Biden administration approach the Green New Deal as a new ‘growth strategy’ that will help western economies recover from the corona pandemic.

The environmental crisis makes it clear that our current legal instruments and concepts are not sufficient to effectively combat, remedy and prevent widespread environmental harm. However, new concepts and approaches are being developed that try to reduce these legal imperfections. Our essay explores these developments, in particular the emergence of a legal duty of care for the environment, the rights of nature-movement, the campaign to make ecocide (mass damage and destruction of the environment) an international crime and the application of restorative justice to repair environmental harm. We also advocate a new multidisciplinary perspective launched by us: positive green criminology.

De groeiende aandacht voor Empirical Legal Studies (ELS) in Nederland roept vragen op over het onderwijs in empirisch-juridische vaardigheden in ons land. Er gebeurt al het nodige op dit vlak, maar een nauwkeurige inventarisatie van welke ELS-vakken reeds concreet worden aangeboden in Nederland ontbreekt. Een dergelijk overzicht zou het mogelijk maken dat opleidingen van elkaar leren en kennis en kunde uitwisselen in plaats van het wiel opnieuw uit te vinden. Daarom hebben wij een uitgebreide rondgang gemaakt langs de diverse opleidingen aan rechtenfaculteiten, om in kaart te brengen welke vakken met aandacht voor empirische methoden reeds in het reguliere rechtencurriculum worden aangeboden. In dit artikel rapporteren wij de resultaten van deze landelijke inventarisatie en werpen een blik op de toekomst in het licht van recente discussies en ontwikkelingen die verband houden met ELS in Nederland.