Negative impact on environmental security: Review of the main causes

Saint Petersburg Institute of the All-Russian State University of Justice (Russian Law Academy of the Ministry of Justice of Russia), 190000, 16, Baskov line, Saint Petersburg, Russia

^* Corresponding author: lokhi@yandex.ru

Abstract

The subject of the study is the peculiarities of ensuring environmental security in the context of countering environmental crime. Effective counteraction to it is impossible in the absence of detailed data on the causes of environmental crime. Modern domestic concepts of the determination of criminal behavior are characterized by some diversity, although in general they are based on the analysis of the social complex of causes of crime. Scientists differentiate the established approaches into three groups, isolated depending on whether the determinants are centered on social processes, subjective causes or biological properties of the criminal's personality. Environmental crime has a number of features, and both general and specific determinants may underlie the genesis of criminal behavior. Due to the use of a wide range of general scientific methods (first of all, content analysis and instrumental analysis), the authors substantiate the conclusion about the selfish nature of environmental crime. As a consequence, it is stated that the main criminal threat to environmental security are acts of socially dangerous behavior committed against natural resources and aimed at their illegal trafficking. Damage to the natural environment in most cases is not perceived by the perpetrators acting for personal enrichment. Other types of environmental crimes are associated with improper fulfillment of obligations by economic entities in the field of environmentally safe operation of industrial and other facilities and occupy a negligible share in the overall structure of environmental crime. As a result, the determinants of criminal behavior are based on such factors as the demand for natural resource products and the marginalization of a part of the population living in economically depressed but resource-rich regions of Russia.