The Definition Of 'Ecocide'

• Published date: 03 February 2021
• Law Firm: WilmerHale
• Author: Josef Rybacki

In 2016, Professor Philippe Sands QC published East West Street, which recounts the development of the concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity and their application in the Nuremberg Trials. In November 2020, 75 years after those trials, the Stop Ecocide Foundation (SEF) convened a panel of lawyers, co-chaired by former International Criminal Court (ICC) judge Florence Mumba and Professor Sands, to draft a legal definition of 'ecocide' that could form the basis for a new international crime.¹ The definition is due to be published early this year.

The concept of ecocide first gained significant worldwide attention in 1972, when Swedish prime minister, Olof Palme, addressing the UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, called for an international crime of ecocide, primarily in response to US use of chemical weapons in the Vietnam War. However, when the Rome Statute was ratified in 1998, creating the ICC, environmental crimes were not included. In 2010, lawyer and environmental campaigner Polly Higgins lobbied the UN to create an international crime of ecocide. Although the UN rejected her argument, in 2016 the ICC said it would assess instances of environmental destruction as 'crimes against humanity'.²

As the negative effects of global warming have intensified, so too has political momentum in favour of criminalising ecosystem destruction. In 2019, island-states Vanuatu and the Maldives urged the ICC's Assembly of States Parties to recognise the crime of ecocide.³ This call was echoed by Swedish parliamentarians, who asked SEF to draft a definition of ecocide.⁴

According...