LAUSR

Arguing from a cultural victimological perspective, this article makes a case for the wider utilization of restorative justice and mediation-based approaches as a means of providing alternative or parallel justice mechanisms for both human and nonhuman victims of environmental crimes and broader environmental harms. Traditional criminal justice mechanisms, it is argued, are fundamentally ill-equipped to identify, prosecute and sentence in a manner proportionate to the full range of environmental victimizations emanating from many environmental crimes or other pollution events. Radical and critical criminological perspectives, it is argued, have only gone so far in conceptualizing this broader form of victimization, especially as it pertains to non-anthropomorphic aspects of the ecosystem. In contrast, the cultural understanding of victimhood has a more constructivist, dynamic character representing developing traumas and emphasizing the benefit to human victims of being officially acknowledged as such. It also gives such victims the opportunity to present “accounts” of their harm. Such characteristics, it is argued, better reflect the reality of environmental victimization and, in so doing, point towards a more central place for mediational and restorative justice mechanisms within the environmental sphere. That said, it will also be demonstrated that restorative justice and mediation mechanisms—despite bringing numerous advantages to human victims in terms of their perceptions of procedural justice—have as yet failed to adequately incorporate notions of ecological and species justice. Moreover, the present state of research in the area of environmental alternative dispute resolution is woefully lacking. The article, therefore, concludes with a call for more development of the cultural approach by green victimologists generally, as well as a focus on testing and developing restorative justice in this area in particular.