A Critique on Iranian Criminal Policy towards Environmental Crimes

Nowdays, environmental protection is seen as important and fundamental values, included in UN discourse on human security. Moreover, this issue has been reflected in national as well as regional documents. Since environmental protection requires a consistent and effective criminal policy towards environmental crimes, Iranian criminal law has passed some acts about environmental protection. In this framework, this article tries to identify deficiencies in environmental acts and propose solutions for eliminating them. The results of this paper, which has been done by drawing on library sources and based on analytical approach, show that Iranian criminal law has some deficiencies such as incoherence in legislation, disproportionate punishments, weakness in ways of beginning pursuit and disregarding of non-governmental organization participation. Therefore, we propose passage of a coherent code which contains deterrence, sanction, supervision through efficient and specialized training, and particularly, utilization of non-governmental organization for environmental protection.