Carole M. Billiet (ed.), Biodiversiteitsmisdrijven in eigen land: in Vlaamse savannes en Waalse regenwouden – La criminalité en matière de biodiversité chez nous: des savanes flamandes et forêts pluviales wallonnes [Biodiversity crimes at home: in Flemish savannahs and Walloon rain forests], Brugge, die Keure, 2018, 567 p.
This book is the first one on biodiversity crime in Belgium, more specifically the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region. It focusses on sanctioning practices developed since 2009, when public sanctioning systems with complementary criminal and administrative sanctioning tracks were introduced in both regions. To write it, hundreds of unpublished sanctioning decisions from criminal courts and administrative sanctioning administrations have been collected and analysed. Its first part sketches the EU sanctioning obligations regarding biodiversity crime base on the well-established ECJ Greek Maize jurisprudence and the Eco-Crime directive. Part II gives the facts: the offences detected and trends in criminality. A criminologist specialized on green criminology analyses the facts. An ecologist comments on their significance. In Part III, an environmental economist gives a practice oriented overview of actual economic expertise on the monetary evaluation of habitats, fauna and flora. Part IV offers a view on the case law in the criminal sanctioning track in Flanders and Wallonia. In Part V, the administrative sanctioning track is explored. Fining policies are detailed. Remedial sanctioning practices are discussed, with a focus on the connectivity issue. The last part, Part VI, makes a systemic analysis of the position of civil society in the criminal and the administrative sanctioning tracks in both regions. A general conclusion sums up the knowledge gathered and answers three research questions put forward in the general introduction. An annex gives previously unpublished descriptive statistics on the prosecution practice in the Walloon Region from January 2010 to December 2016.