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Criminologists spend many hours debating whether they should intervene in the real world to make it better or whether they should limit themselves to taking a detached stance in their research. Debates about the role of criminologists in society have followed the script of the modern academy, which praises the lone hero researcher. Yet, the challenges criminologists confront with their activism have deep cultural and structural roots that only collective action can transform. The injustices criminologists confront (defined as harm or crime committed by individual or collective actors that is corporate-sponsored or state-sponsored) require that criminologists exchange the ‘I’ for a ‘we’, and ask how we can collectively mobilise to transform society. In this chapter, the author discusses how Colombian Indigenous communities and the author, in partnership, have used a pedagogy of liberation to transform the deep sources of violence fuelling their genocide.

In this chapter, I present the scientific pillar of the project. Given the political proposal that informs the book, it is necessary for me to show why and how such an activist endeavour as I propose produces valid and reliable knowledge. To this end, I deal with the historical debate about the role of the intellectual in society based on the ideal types of the neutral expert and the academic activist introduced in Chapter 2.

In this chapter, I present the methodological pillar of a Southern green criminology. It may prove useful for researchers and students interested in developing a science to end the ecological discrimination. My main concern in presenting this method is to upset the colonialist logic that sustains culturism and speciesism. In my ‘stereoscope’ of ecological discrimination, I aim to uncover harmful environmental practices that have a global reach and disproportionately affect the geographical and metaphorical Souths.

Land is a main component of the earth system and one of the ‘goods’ over which humans have waged many wars and conflicts throughout history. In this chapter, I present the empirical and discursive dynamics that lead to ecological discrimination regarding land. I focus on three means by which Southern land is legally grabbed: private armies, discourses and laws. Much land dispossession is illegal, but in this chapter I focus on the legal forms because they are equally harmful and most of the times invisible and thus more difficult to prevent.

In this first chapter, I present green criminology as a project based on three pillars and characterised by two traits. I explain how one cultural model and one economic theory have inspired most green criminology undertakings. But mainly, I argue that it is time for the structured appearance of a Southern green criminology, given that recent developments in green criminology show that North–South divides are a key driver of environmental harm.

In this chapter, I present the philosophical pillars of a Southern green criminology. I develop this work by asking ultimate questions. First, I argue that green criminology has yet to establish and develop the most important fundamental premises that every inquiry must have – ontological, epistemological and methodological premises. To fill that gap, I examine the philosophical beliefs that guide, sustain and legitimise environmental discrimination as well as its preventive practices. Building on that analysis, I present two major philosophies – atomistic and Gestalt – that are overarching worldviews that guide our interactions with nature. I establish a Gestalt philosophy as an inquiry paradigm that can serve as the basis of a Southern green criminology.

The Global South is rich in biodiversity, including sought-after seeds and plants. In this chapter, I show the culturist and speciesist dynamics that have removed Southern control of them. I discuss the ever-increasing spiral of biopiracy to point to the interlinked dynamics that help multinational corporations monopolise seeds and plants.

In this chapter, I provide the conceptual and political pillars of a Southern green criminology. First, I define the concepts central to this book: ecological discrimination, a science to end discrimination and a science of the discriminated against. Second, I reflect on two expressions of ecological discrimination: speciesism and culturism. Building on those reflections, I provide the political and moral reasons why it is important to develop a science to end ecological discrimination.

Many of the human communities that comprise the South have cosmologies that place human and nonhuman animals on a continuum. Culturism, with its foreign logic and dynamics, has broken this continuum, thereby fuelling speciesist practices. In this chapter, I portray the deep relation that some rural Southern communities have with nonhuman animals, and analyse some of the imposed logics that lead the South to abuse nonhuman animals while denying that what they are doing is mistreatment.