中国环境犯罪的空间分布特征与机制

Spatial Patterns and Mechanisms of Environmental Crimes in China

环境犯罪已成为涉案价值较大的世界第四大犯罪类型,对地球生态、社会等均产生深远影响,但当前关于国内各类环境犯罪的宏观空间特征与机制仍不明确。该文基于中国裁判文书数据,对2014-2019年中国环境犯罪的省域空间分布格局及其形成机制进行研究,结果表明:1)2014-2019年中国环境犯罪案件总量持续快速上升,主导类型为与林木、农用地相关的犯罪,且呈东多西少、云桂高发的稳定空间格局;2)2019年七大类及其子类(如盗伐、滥伐林木)环境犯罪的空间分布存在很大差异,凸显了进行环境犯罪分类型深入研究的必要性;3)根据省域首要环境犯罪类型,中国内地31省域可划分为6种类型,其中南方省域的首要环境犯罪普遍与林木、水产品相关,而北方省域则多与农用地、野生动物相关;4)提出解释环境犯罪空间分布的一般性框架,即“棱锥型”作用机制,涉及自然资源禀赋、地区产业结构、消费市场需求、跨区域犯罪组织、环境立法与监管五大因素。最后,探讨了未来环境犯罪研究与治理中需注意和思考的关键性问题。

As an unlawful human behavior that causes serious environmental harms,environmental crime has become the fourth largest crime in the world in terms of value that it involves and has a profound impact on the current and future ecology and society.In recent years,China has paid increasing attention to the construction of ecological civilization and the enforcement of environmental laws.However,the spatial patterns and their formation mechanisms for different types of environmental crimes remain unclear.Under this background,this paper aims to explore,at a provincial-level,the spatial distribution patterns and the general formation mechanisms of the environmental crimes in China from 2014 to 2019,based on the data retrieved from the China Judgements Online website.The main research findings include:1)During 2014-2019,the amount of all environmental crimes keeps increasing rapidly,and the dominant types of crimes remain to be those related to timber and agricultural land.2)The general spatial distribution of environmental crimes remains rather stable.There are more environmental crimes in the eastern provinces and less crimes in the western provinces except that Yunnan and Guangxi provinces have the most cases.3)In 2019,great differences can be observed for the spatial distributions of seven major categories and their sub categories(e.g.stealthily vs.arbitrarily felling trees)of environmental crimes,thus highlighting the necessity of differentiating crime types when conducting in-depth research on environmental crimes.4)Based on the type of the environmental crimes with the largest number of cases in a province,the Chinese Mainland can be categorized into six spatial zones.Most southern provinces are with timber-or fishery-related crimes as the top environmental crimes,while the northern provinces are generally with the crimes related to agricultural land or wildlife.5)Based on the analysis of the environmental crime cases,a general theoretical framework with a pyramid structure is proposed to explain the spatial distribution of the environmental crimes.This framework involves five main factors that operate at different spatial levels:the natural resource endowment,regional industrial structure,and consumer market demand at the intra-regional scale,the transregional criminal groups at the inter-regional scale,and the environmental legislation and regulation across scales.Finally,this paper discusses some key issues for the future research and governance of the environmental crimes.