A restorative approach to environmental conflicts

This paper aims to further explore alternative ways to deal with environmental crisis. The restorative justice (RJ) approach looks promising for diferent reasons that are considered here, namely the ofenders’ acknowledgement of responsibility, a non-economic understanding of compensation and the possibility to manage justice among large groups of stakeholders. As RJ is a way of managing confict that starts by focusing on the harm caused by an ofence, a more detailed understanding of environmental harm is needed to pave the way for environmental RJ. This paper ofers some preliminary insights to provide a more detailed overview of environmental harm. However, not all commonly used RJ practices seem suitable for dealing with environmental harm. The emerging feld of study of environmental RJ needs to acknowledge which practices could be transferred from regular to environmental RJ and which ones would be ineffective.