State-corporate crime and ecocide : a critical study of the Carmichael Coal Mine

This thesis provides a substantive case study of the Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Project (‘Carmichael Project’). The study is an exegesis of Adani’s proposed mega coal mine in Queensland, including the intricacies of political decision-making, and how this case informs, critiques and develops global discourses in ecocide. It adopts an expedition in archaeological and contemporary knowledge and explores the background, politics and reasoning of the Australian governments’ multiple decisions to approve and support what will be the world’s largest-ever coal mine. It examines processes of political decision-making during a period of global economic coal down-turn, amidst an unprecedented period of coal industry bankruptcy and redundancy, and at a time when continued coal production is predicted to cause devastating green-house gas emissions and climate change. This thesis, as discussed later in Chapter Two, draws on a unique and originally constructed archive comprising diverse and multiple sources not previously compiled. This extensive dataset is an authoritative library and forms the basis underpinning the analyses of this thesis. As an exercise in green criminology, this thesis recognises that environmental degradation is often the result of crimes of the powerful; that is, it arises through their actions and inactions, justifications and denials of state and corporate actors. The thesis not only presents the story of who the stakeholders are and why they want to see the Carmichael Project approved, but it also argues for the need to establish an international law against ecocide – the term that arguably encompasses the environmental destruction which would result from the Project – to prevent the possibility of approval for similar projects in the future