Should this be punished like war crimes?
A growing movement of activists, lawyers and political leaders say, yes. They want to make
ecocide, or widespread destruction of the environment, an international crime.
If you put serious damage to nature at the top level, on par with serious damage to people
and property, you're saying that it actually is as bad, not just legally but morally, to
seriously damage the environment.
So far, most environmental law works like this:
When harm is done, companies or governments need to make up for the damage they have caused
by paying fines or compensation.
Ecocide campaigners want a shift—from regulation to criminal prosecution.
If those, you know, key decision makers have to take into account the fact that their personal
freedom could be on the line if the decision that they make or if the project they decide
to go forward with has the potential to seriously destroy nature, then that has a way of seriously
concentrating the mind.
The concept has a history. In 1972, Olof Palme, then prime minister of Sweden, accused the
US military of ecocide over its use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
The deployment of the herbicide created extreme environmental destruction and left millions
of people disabled.
Palme was ahead of his time.
But with the climate crisis escalating and worldwide protests demanding quick action,
the push to criminalize ecocide is back.
In 2019, the small-island-state of Vanuatu was the first country to raise the issue before
the International Criminal Court.
“An amendment of the Rome Statute could criminalize acts that amount to ecocide.
The Pacific country is suffering from rising sea levels and temperatures—both a result
of climate change.
Meanwhile, what started as a civil society-led movement of environmental activists around
Scottish lawyer Polly Higgins, the cause of the Netherlands-based "Stop Ecocide Foundation"
has lately found resonance at the highest global level.
The Pope has endorsed it. The European parliament has discussed it; national parliaments in
several countries around the world are in talks about it.
And high-profile leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron have signaled that
they would support criminalizing ecocide at the international level.
So, does this mean we will see the Amazon rainforest taking a lawyer and suing illegal
loggers before the ICC? Or are we expecting a CEO to be taken away
in handcuffs anytime soon? Well … not yet. There has been no agreement
over what actions legally constitute ecocide.
What kind of magnitude amounts to an "international crime"?
Do humans have to be harmed?
Climate change is the collective result of millions of destructive acts that we are all
committing.
So how grave do these acts have to be in order to make someone a "climate criminal"?
And who could be held legally responsible for ecocide?
Determining that — not an easy task for the international team of lawyers who spent
the past six months working on a definition of ecocide that could be "legally robust.”
This is what they came up with:
"Ecocide" means unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial
likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being
caused by those acts.
I am very hopeful that one day we see the crime of ecocide included in the Rome Statute,
for the survival of our planet.
As with genocide or war crimes, the standards for prosecuting someone at the ICC with this
definition of ecocide would be very high.
But making ecocide a crime independent of human suffering would be a landmark moment
in both international criminal law and the fight against climate change.
So if there was a massive environmental destruction, that in and of itself could be a crime, that
in and of itself could be an ecocide without reference to necessarily human needs.
Some European countries like Sweden have already signaled their readiness to work with this
definition.
That is crucial for the success of the campaign because only States Parties to the ICC can
propose an amendment to the Court's charter, known as the Rome Statute, which then requires
a two-thirds majority for passage.
Even in the most optimistic scenario, mobilizing this kind of support could take years, and
some environmental justice experts still warn that it may not prove as strong a deterrent
mechanism as hoped.
It's not going to stop ecocide. That's all I'm saying. It's not going to stop ecocide.
You know, we need system change. We need really substantial revolutionary shifts in how we
are living our lives and relating to the natural world and the powers that we give corporations.
And just how the whole thing is set up is premised on environmental destruction. Our
systems rely on environmental destruction. So criminalizing some people will not change
that.
For now, the idea of charging humans with ecocide may seem idealistic. But it is exactly
that shift in mindset that may soon be required.
Scientists warn that irreversible climate tipping points are already being reached,
and time is running out to prevent an environmental catastrophe.
Advocates for ecocide laws say that their goal is to both implement legal deterrence
mechanisms and to advance public awareness—so that real and lasting change can happen.