Leonora Kleppa Stærfeldt

• Presentation

My research focuses on transnational environmental crime and the regulation of cross-border flows of waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE). In my PhD project I aim to develop conceptualizations for seeing legal frameworks as a type of infrastructure that enable/disable movement of goods. 

The PhD forms part of the interdisciplinary project “Environmental Crime and Illegal Ecologies” (ILLECO). ILLECO researches a concrete problem in relation to the booming green-tech industry; namely the concomitant increase in mineral demand, and the upsurge in irregular mining, smuggling and dumping associated with this. ILLECO researches this irregular mining, as well as the movement of minerals in and from Ghana, to chart their flow from extraction to depletion. After being mined, minerals are traded, incorporated into legal structures and used, amongst other things, to produce efficient tech components such as batteries, computer chips etc. Once depleted, the same minerals are illicitly dumped in Ghana, home to several environmentally hazardous e-waste dumping grounds.