Can eco-crimes be called murder? Why we should look at damage to the environment as seriously as we take serial killers

Whenever you read, watch or listen to the news, you're likely to be exposed to stories of violence and murder.

- By Julia Shaw

As a criminal psychologist, I'm often asked to comment on these cases to pick apart the motives of the perpetrators. People want these insights because murders feel frightening and horrifying, but also oddly compelling. The way these crimes are covered profoundly influences our perception of what the most urgent problems facing society are.

The world would be a very different place if environmental crimes were treated in the same way as murders. So, why aren’t they? At the moment such crimes can, mistakenly, feel distant and abstract. If someone came into your house and stole your valuables, killed your pet, added poison to your water ... you’d be terrified. You’d go to the police. You might want revenge. You’d certainly want justice. It would be obvious to you that a crime had been committed.

Environmental crime is just like this, but even worse because it happens at scale. The problem is that it doesn’t always feel that way. But criminals releasing noxious gases into the air, cutting down protected forests, fishing illegally or polluting rivers do injure us in concrete ways. And that’s before you consider the broader impacts on biodiversity and climate change.