Study analyses crimes against nature and their consequences

The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) has prepared a study approaching crimes against nature from the perspective of international law. This article takes the war in Iraq between 2014 and 2017 as a reference and has been published in the international scientific journal Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. Lecturer Montserrat Abad, a professor in UC3M's International Law, Ecclesiastical Law and Philosophy of Law Department, has researched the crimes with environmental consequences committed by Daesh in Iraq during the last armed conflict. The article takes a critical approach to the lack of official clarification of environmental crimes. "The study examines the main parameters that condition environments such as Iraq's, which are devastated by climate change, environmental degradation and overlapping layers of violence, along with other political, economic and social problems, in order to examine how the law (particularly international law) can have a positive catalytic effect," says the researcher. In this regard, it explores the bodies that could be responsible for investigating crimes against the environment committed by Daesh. "The terrorist group practised a scorched earth policy in the territories from which it was withdrawing as a result of its defeat," says Abad.