History of Ecocide
1945
During the Nuremberg Trials in 1945, leading Nazis were prosecuted for the deaths of millions of Jews and other minorities during World War II. Four years prior, Winston Churchill had described these atrocities as a “crime without a name”, but this crime is now known as genocide. Genocide is one of only four crimes, along with crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression, and war crimes, that is punishable by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
1970
Ecocide, as a concept, was first introduced during the Vietnam War. It was borne out of biology professor Andrew W. Galston’s active protest of the use of Agent Orange, a tactical herbicide employed to eliminate the crops and forest cover of Vietnamese troops.
1971
Harry W. Pettigrew, a law professor, argued in his paper “A Constitutional Right of Freedom from Ecocide” that the Ninth Amendment, which states that the rights of Americans are not limited to those listed in the Constitution, supports the right to freedom from ecocide. Since Americans have a right to protection of life, we should also enjoy a right to protection from any ecocidal acts that threaten that life.
1991
The first draft of the Rome Statute, which is the treaty that established the ICC, included a section about ecocide, but this section was left out due to strong opposition from France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
2010
Scottish lawyer and activist Polly Higgins first proposed and spearheaded the campaign to criminalize ecocide in 2010. She defined ecocide as “extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that country has been severely diminished.” She also believed that while environmental destruction was a clear moral crime, public money was still employed to fund destructive practices because it was not yet a legal crime. Hence, her push to criminalize environmental destruction.
2019
Ambassadors from the Maldives and Vanuatu asked 123 nations to consider the inclusion of ecocide under the ICC’s jurisdiction during the 18th Assembly of State Parties of the ICC. These countries recognized that this was an unconventional idea, but they also emphasized that the submersion of their island nations would be imminent if drastic measures were not taken to mitigate the climate crisis.
2020
Recently, prominent global leaders, including Pope Francis, the Pontiff, and French President Emmanuel Macron, have been pushing for the United Nations to recognize ecocide as the fifth international crime. This first requires agreeing upon a singular definition of ecocide. In November of 2020, a group of international lawyers set about formally defining ecocide, the first draft of which will be published this month. This group is co-chaired by Philippe Sands, a lawyer who has previously appeared before the ICC and Dior Fall Sow, a former international prosecutor for the United Nations.
The Argument For Criminalization
George Monbiot succinctly summarizes his argument for criminalizing ecocide in his statement that doing so is the “difference between a habitable and uninhabitable planet.” As Polly Higgins believed, the lack of responsibility that corporations seem to feel towards protecting the Earth and humanity can be attributed to the fact that environmental destruction doesn’t pose any consequences for the destroyers. Proponents of making ecocide the fifth crime punishable by the ICC posit that criminalizing ecocide will force corporations to pause before engaging in any activities that may endanger the environment or its inhabitants, and take responsibility for any detrimental actions. This preemptive tactic has the potential to prevent future environmental disasters.
The Argument Against Criminalization
Some argue that criminalizing ecocide fails to tackle the root cause of environmental destruction. Dissenters to criminalizing ecocide suggest that the process of putting companies on trial takes too long, and that in the duration, thousands of lives continue to be impacted by climate change. There is also little evidence that trying companies for their crimes against the environment deters these companies from continuing to harm the environment. For instance, charges, including felony manslaughter, were brought against BP following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but the corporation continues to dominate the fuel industry today.
There is also the issue of who to hold responsible for a company’s negative effects on the environment. While the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is the simple and obvious choice, it isn’t always the CEO who makes the decisions that cause direct harm to the environment. This makes it difficult for the charges to stand up in court.
What Can You Do?
Stop Ecocide International describes a number of ways that you can support the establishment of ecocide as a crime here. These include, but are not limited to, signing an international petition, writing a letter to your elected representative(s), and becoming an ambassador.
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