Earth Restorative Justice
Restorative approaches to environmental harms

Faith Voices for Ecocide Law is a remarkable collection of texts, drawing on the vast wisdom, teachings and practices of the world religions and indigenous spiritual traditions. Written at a time of ecological crisis, it focuses on the relationship between humans and nature in general, and on the need for a new international crime of ecocide in particular. The authors are recognized spiritual leaders in their faith traditions.

This pioneering work explores the dynamic new field of Environmental Restorative Justice and discusses how principles and practices of restorative justice can be used to address the threats and harms facing the environment today.

Together with criminologist Anneke van Hoek , I published the essay "Restorative justice and environmental cases: an exploration of possibilities in the Anthropocene" (Herstelrecht en milieuzaken: een verkenning van mogelijkheden in het antropoceen) for the Dutch Journal on Culture & Crime (Tijdschrift voor Cultuur & Criminaliteit) in July 2021.

On 3-4 June 2021, the workshop Environmental Restorative Justice: A new justice framework for environmental harm was convened at the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law by Brunilda Pali (Leuven Institute of Criminology), Miranda Forsyth (Australian National University) and Gema Varona (Basque Institute of Criminology), hosting more than 40 participants from all continents. Together with South African attorney Hercules Wessels, I contributed to the meeting with a presentation on restorative justice and the rights of nature.

This book, written by Australian academic Mark Hamilton , focuses on the use of restorative justice approaches in the context of environmental crime and proposes a third measure of justice – meaningful involvement – as a means of addressing the current invisibility of offenders and victims of environmental crime.

The Working Group on Environmental Restorative Justice has submitted a commentary to the European Commission on how the revised EU Directive 2008/99/EC on Environmental Protection through Criminal Law could incorporate restorative justice approaches to environmental crime.

In 2021, the International Journal of Restorative Justice published a special issue on environmental restorative justice .

At the occasion of the Restorative Justice Week 2020, I had a conversation with criminologist Anneke van Hoek from Restorative Justice Nederland about restorative justice approaches to environmental & climate harms. You can watch our discussion (in Dutch) here .

At the RJWorld 2020 eConference, dr. Brunilda Pali gave the keynote presentation Environmental restorative justice: A new justice framework for preventing and addressing environmental harms . In her talk, she explains the framework of environmental restorative justice and gives examples of how it can be applied to prevent and address environmental harms. You can watch dr. Pali's presentation here .

Source: Restorotopias.com

In Paraguay, a livestock company has been held liable for illegal deforestation. The company agreed to reforest a plot of 1,860 hectares to avoid prosecution for environmental crime. A historic event, according to the Paraguayan NGO IDEA, which pressed charges against the company.

At the occasion of the international Restorative Justice Week 2019, the European Forum for Restorative Justice (EFRJ) explored the intersection of restorative and environmental justice in its booklet Environmental Justice Restoring the Future.pdf .

Pope Francis has called on the international community to recognize ecocide as a “fifth category of crime against peace", while pleading for restorative justice. He addressed members of the International Association of Penal Law in Rome at a conference on Nov. 15, which centered on the theme, “Criminal Justice and Corporate Business.”

The 2019 September newsletter of the European Forum for Restorative Justice (EFRJ) is entirely dedicated to Environmental Restorative Justice. Included are contributions by artist Maria Lucia Cruz Correia on participatory and restorative responses to ecocide through theatrical performance, Belinda Hopkins on Restorative Justice in times of Extinction Rebellion, and Martin Wright on restorative responses to corporate environmental crime, in particular the Bhopal disaster.

I have been commissioned by IUCN National Committee of the Netherlands (IUCN NL) to write a report on Restorative Justice Responses to Environmental Harm. The report is now available, and can be downloaded here: Restorative Justice Responses to Environmental Harm.pdf .

PhD Candidate Mark Hamilton and lecturer Hadeel Al-Alosi published an excellent article on Restorative Justice's benefits in addressing environmental crimes for the Australian Conversation website.

On Friday 26 April 2019 the first European seminar on Restorative Responses to Environmental Harm and Ecocide took place in the Leuven Institute for Ireland, Belgium, hosted by the KU Leuven Institute for Criminology. The presentations by keynote speaker John Braithwaite, prof. Ivo Aertsen, criminologist Anneke van Hoek and other Restorative Justice specialists including myself can be viewed here .

KOSMOS Journal for Global Transformation published my article Reconnecting with the Living Earth through Restorative Justice in their Spring 2019 Newsletter.

In the C anadian province of British Columbia, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy uses restorative justice circles to address environmental offences committed by companies that affect the environment and local communities.

The presiding judge allowed for a restorative justice conference. Restorative measures include increasing awareness and cultural sensitivity among Council staff about sacred Aboriginal objects; public education about the tree, improved Aboriginal consultation procedures and improvement of Aboriginal employment opportunities within the Clarence Valley.

In 2017 filmmaker John Liu founded Ecosystem Restoration Camps, a worldwide grassroots movement that aims to restore damaged ecosystems on a large scale. Documenting the transformation of the Loess Plateau in Central China from a barren ground into an oasis convinced Liu that humans could restore ecosystems, rather than just acting as a destructive force on this planet .

Fania Davis held a powerful keynote speech at the 10th international conference of the European Forum for Restorative Justice last Summer in Tirana, in which she pled for expanding the use of Restorative Justice from the 'micro'-dimension of interpersonal conflic to include the socio-historic structures such as racism, gender and economic inequity, that perpetuate individual harms. I argue we should look at environmental harms through a similar lense.