Environmental Crimes in the Measure of Restorative Justice: from Policies to Programs

During the last century, the "environmental issues" took on a global dimension and became a "sustainable crisis" of the international community; A crisis that poses a serious threat to humanity and is now taking on new dimensions with the escalation of global warming and the crisis of climate change. The result of environmental crimes can be as serious as damage to the health, safety and life of individuals and wildlife, as well as severe habitat pollution, biodiversity and climate change. However, the special nature of these crimes, which have high benefits and low risk, has made it impossible for recourse to criminal law to significantly reduce the rate of these crimes. Indeed, criminal justice alone is not able to respond effectively to such crimes. In fact, the restorative justice approach can have two main advantages over environmental crimes. On the one hand, it allows the multidimensional nature of environmental injustices to be considered and focuses on the wide range of needs of « non-human victims «. That is, the need to compensate and repair the past damages, the need to accept responsibility, the need to participate and cooperate in the process of investigating environmental crime to be conclude. On the other hand, the restorative justice process also makes it possible to prevent the recurrence of crime and damage to the environment in the future.