Tourism and Environmental Crimes: A critical analysis of the environmental impacts of tourism through the lenses of Green Criminology
Critical Tourism. Environmental crimes. Green Criminology. Tourism.
Environmental crime is a worldwide complex problem, and one of the most profitable international criminal activities. Although the environmental impacts of tourism have been explored, in the past 60 years, there is little research in the literature of tourism on environmental crime. In this sense, this thesis aims to elucidate one central question: “what is the relationship between environmental crimes and tourism?”. Both Critical Tourism and Green Criminology are used as an umbrella theoretical framework which guided the research process. The research is based on the dialectical scientific method and navigates through different research approaches and techniques. The thesis was divided in three moments. On the first moment, it intended to understand how Tourism and Green Criminology fields interconnects in the literature. Through bibliographic research, it demonstrated that tourism research on the nexus tourism-environment had little progress critically throughout time. Besides, it reinforced that in a local perspective tourism does not need a health environment to happen, and critically, researchers need to think globally, perceiving that the focus should not be in sustaining tourism but to preserve the ecological basis of the planet. In addition, it proposed a theoretical framework based on Green Criminology that can help researchers to approach environmental impacts of tourism in a critical way that focus on the structures and mechanism of oppression that allow these impacts to happen. On the second moment, it attempted to identify the patterns of tourism-related environmental crimes. For that, secondary data analysis of environmental infraction notices issued in Brazil, semi-structured interviews and a discussion of Brazilian environmental legislation and environmental law structure were conducted. The analysis was based on descriptive statistic and content analysis. The results showed that tourism-related crimes were connected, among others, with non-compliance with the environmental license for construction and operation, especially in permanent preservation areas and indigenous territories; deforestation; irregular fishery commercialization, which relates to illegal fishing; and illegal captivity of wildlife. And on the third and last moment, it tried to understand the processes involving tourism-related environmental crime. It used the study-case technique of one of the main tourism-related environmental offenders in the state of Ceará, Vila Galé, located in Cumbuco, one of the main tourist destinations of the state. The results revealed that many of the tourism-related environmental crimes studied were State-facilitated corporate crimes. Besides, through discourses of economic growth, State, corporations, and the media try to legitimize these crimes and undermine environmental social control. In addition, there is a power imbalance between native residents and big corporation when environmental law enforcement is put in place. Finally, the thesis demonstrated that Green Criminology could help tourism researchers to perceive that most of the so-called environmental impacts of tourism are now perceived as crimes and the main victim is Mother Earth. Besides, Green Criminology gives tools to tourism researchers to approach the impacts of tourism in the environment, through the understanding of the processes behind these crimes and exposing a whole system that sustain the relation tourism has with the natural environment.