ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates presumes that specialist courts can and do have greater insight into the nature of environmental offences. It describes the difficulties associated with legal proceedings involving nonhuman environmental victims in terms of four key socio-legal problems. These include: the problem of victimization, the problem of ontology, the problem of expertise, and the problem of temporality. The chapter provides a platform for later in-depth examination of the practical complexities facing environment courts in responding to the plight of nonhuman environmental victims. The nonhuman environmental victim is assessed here from the point of view of their status as victims of harm within the environment court. Not all courts deal with environmental crime per se, nor are all harms perpetrated against nonhuman objects considered to be criminal in nature. For present purposes, the primary focus is on criminal harm as defined in relevant legislation.
