Restorative justice conferencing : A vehicle for repairing harm emanating from lawful but awful activity

Over the past two decades there has been increasing use of restorative justice conferencing to repair the harm occasioned by environmental offending. That increase in use has not gone without academic interest. Harm emanating from environmental offending can be to individuals (presently living and future generations), communities (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) and the environment (and its various components). As green criminology acknowledges, harm to the environment can come from both legal and illegal activities. The purpose of this chapter is to explore whether restorative justice conferencing has potential application for repairing environmental harm emanating from legal activities. Restorative justice conferencing can take many forms, but the form proposed for this chapter is face-to-face conferencing which is essentially a facilitated dialogue between stakeholders to a crime or conflict. The challenge for the use of conferencing for legal activity is enticing those harming the environment to come to conferencing to gain an appreciation of the impact of their activities and devising ways to minimise or eliminate such harm. That harm may come from mining activities, manufacturing and even climate change, to suggest but a few.