A harms-based political ecology: understanding harms through the wildlife trade

In this article, we examine how political ecology can benefit from greater engagement with green criminology's focus on harms. We do so by developing a harms-based political ecology, which is a useful lens through which to analyze global environmental change. It is essential to understand how harms are produced and sustained, and what impacts they have on people and wildlife. This article examines the wildlife trade in Europe focusing on brown bears, European eels and songbirds. In particular, the article analyzes how harms are produced in the context of global capitalism, unequal power relations and interconnected global crises. Through this analysis the article develops the field of political ecology by encouraging approaches that fully address harms to non-human animals. This harms-based approach builds on current justice perspectives within green criminology that emphasize anthropocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric concepts of justice to expand concepts of victimhood and harm.