Before deciding to take Green Criminology, i thought the course would be about topics like fighting pollution, illegal logging, wildlife trafficking, and climate change. While we did talk about these issues in class, I was quite surprised that the biggest activity was maintaining a garden. At first i wasn’t sure how planting vegetables connected to criminology. As the semester went on i found out the garden was more than just a class project it was a way to understand environmental responsibility through experience instead of just reading about. One thing that changed my perspective was realizing how easy it is to take nature for granted. Buying vegetables from a grocery store never made me think about everything that has to happen before food gets to our plates. Watching our plants grow over time showed me that healthy ecosystems rely heavily on balance. Without enough water, good soil, and care, and insects. plants won’t grow. This helped me connect Lynch and Long’s (2022) argument that green criminology examines the damage human cause to ecosystems and recognize that environmental harm affects all forms of life, not only people.<\/p>\n
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Another part of the project that stood out was working together with my classmates. Everyone contributed in different ways whether it watering plants, or checking if everything was growing. The garden depended on cooperation and it made me think about how protecting the environment also requires joint action by everyone. As we must all band together to fight this problem endangering mankind. The readings also made more sense after spending time in the garden. Tourangue and Fitzgerald (2024) explain that food systems involve more than just simply producing food, they also raise questions about environmental sustainability, animal welfare, and social justice. After growing vegetables ourselves, i realized that food production involves many decisions that affect both people and nature. It made me appreciate locally grown food and understand why sustainable farming is important.\u00a0One experience i will remember was seeing how fast the plants respond to changes in their environment. After several hot days, some of the vegetables looked worrisome until they were watered again. It showed me that nature is always responding to human actions, no matter if they are positive or negative. Small choices like saving water or trying to reduce waste may seem small but can make a huge difference over time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Walters (2024) argues that green criminology pushes people to think critically about modern food production and its environmental consequences. The garden helped me understand this idea because it gave me a small example of what sustainable food production looks like. instead of viewing nature a something separate from everyday life, i began to see how closely connected humans are to the environment. To conclude, the gardening project changed my expectations of what learning should look like. Instead of memorizing stuff for an exam, i am able to connect what we were learning with real experiences. It made me think more carefully about my own impact on the environment and showed me that protecting ecosystems often starts with simple everyday actions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before deciding to take Green Criminology, i thought the course would be about topics like fighting pollution, illegal logging, wildlife trafficking, and climate change. While we did talk about these issues in class, I was quite surprised that the biggest activity was maintaining a garden. At first i wasn’t sure how planting vegetables connected to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1513,"featured_media":794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-published"],"splot_meta":{"author":"Karanvir","license":"","footer":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/green-criminology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/green-criminology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/green-criminology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/green-criminology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/green-criminology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/green-criminology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":796,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/green-criminology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions\/796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/green-criminology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/green-criminology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/green-criminology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/green-criminology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}