Prosecuting Environmental Crime: Latin America's Policy Innovation

In: Latin American policy: LAP ; a journal of politics & governance in a changing region, Volume 8, Issue 1, p. 63-92

Abstract

Why does Latin America struggle to implement even its increasingly strong and broadly supported environmental polices? To answer that question, this article examines the primary tool of enforcement, environmental prosecution, one of the region's newest and most‐innovative developments in policy and institutional reform. It creates an analytical framework that explains how the two pillars of prosecution, the state and the law, are also its two main weaknesses. Within the state, it examines deficiencies in investigation and resources. Within the law, it focuses on the lack of clarity in laws and in policy regulations that support them. Together, these common and inherent policy challenges make it difficult for governments throughout Latin America to halt crimes such as illegal deforestation, mining, and road building. The article develops a way to understand comparatively how ably policies are supported in practice. Empirically, it draws on five years of fieldwork in the region's two main tropical areas, Central America and the Amazon Basin. In addition to its concrete policy assessments and recommendations, the article brings a new dimension to the study of the state in Latin America and to the field of criminology.