| Popis: |
While an increasing cycle of environmental disaster and degradation, loss of ecological integrity and environmental damage and pollution from humans seem to be the general rule for a world gone astray, at the same time there are emerging signs that many individuals and different groups of people are trying to find a “way out” from the environmental unfriendly manner to live and use the Planet Earth. The researches on Ecological Duties, on the ways to implement them and on how to construct an ecological society are some examples of this emerging effort. The emphasis of the mentioned studies is upon the adoption and exercise of human responsibilities towards all forms of life, including non-human life1,and a special duty to “care for the planet”.2 This paper suggests that the Restorative Justice might be considered as one tool to implement the Ecological duties and to push individual to feel responsible for the Environment adopting environmental friendly behaviours. Indeed the fundamental aim of the Ecological Duties is to modify the consciousness of the individual and move towards a construction of an ecological civilisation3. To date, unfortunately, Restorative Justice (RJ) has been used only occasionally by the national and international courts to deal with environmental crime. On the contrary, the growth of the employment of this model of Justice, to restore the damage done to the environment, could aim to bring a fundamental change in the modern western culture and consciousness and respond to the urgent need to transform our unsustainable society into a sustainable and ecological society. Part I of this paper provides an overview of Ecological Duties with a brief analysis on the concept of Ecological Citizen. Part II focuses on Restorative Justice as such: the study on the origin, nature, aims and players of the RJ are necessary to understand the reasons why, in the Part III, is affirmed that the employment of the RJ in the field of environmental crime can help the individuals to be more ecological responsible. Finally in Part III, the analysis of RJ is carried further to include its application in the field of environmental. This last section of the article explains how “Restorative Environmental Justice” can be an alternative and useful way to favour the implementation of the Ecological Duties with an emphasis on how Restorative Environmental Justice works in the community, how it contributes to citizen empowerment, local peace-building, and more important, how it helps to develop an ecological consciousness in all parties affected by an environmental crime. |
