What is ecocide? Can harming nature become a crime like genocide?

Three developing nations have proposed making ‘ecocide’ an international crime.

Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to put ecocide in the same category as genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.

Interestingly, ecocide is already a crime in a dozen nations including Belgium, Vietnam, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and France.

The development comes in the backdrop of climate change wreaking havoc across the planet.

But what is it? Is it time to declare it an international crime?

Let’s take a closer look:

What is it?

There is no agreed upon legal definition for ecocide.

However, as per WeForum.org, in 2021, a dozen criminal and environment lawyers – collectively known as The Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide – assembled by the NGO Stop Ecocide International formulated a definition.

They, after working for a year and a half, defined ecocide as “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.”

This was part of a campaign by Stop Ecocide International to make ecocide an international crime – and thus come under the ambit of the ICC, which sits in the Hague.

As per The Guardian, the ICC recognising ecocide would allow for people such as heads of state or CEOs of companies that pollute to be charged with a crime.

The idea of ecocide itself isn’t new.

The word was first used to describe the human and environmental devastation caused by the use of the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

As per Washington Post, the term was coined by biologist and bioethicist Arthur Galston.

Galston also used the term during the 1970 Conference on War and National Responsibility in Washington.

Ecocide also became the subject of regular discussions at the United Nations throughout the 1970s.

According to NPR, the term was brought up in 1972 by then Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.

Palme, addressing the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, was quoted as saying, “The immense destruction brought about by indiscriminate bombing, by large-scale use of bulldozers and herbicides is an outrage sometimes described as ecocide, which requires urgent international attention.”

In 1998, the destruction of the environment was proposed as an international crime against peace, but ultimately wasn’t adopted as part of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Rome Statute.

While ecocide is already outlawed in a dozen nations, another 27 countries, including a bunch of EU member states are considering doing so, according to Stop Ecocide International.

Belgium and France most recently recognised ecocide as a crime.

As per Washington Post, Belgium defined ecocide as “deliberately committing an unlawful act causing serious, widespread and long-term damage to the environment, in the knowledge that such acts cause such kind of damage.”

It mandates a prison term of up to 20 years and a fine of up to $1.8 million for the crime.

Italy, Finland and Denmark have opened discussions on adding it to their criminal codes, Stop Ecocide International has said.

During wartime, ecological crimes can be prosecuted under article 8 of the ICC’s Rome Statute, which prohibits the launching of an attack in the knowledge it will cause “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment.”

Ukraine is currently collecting evidence and building legal cases against Russia in the ICC over environmental damage stemming from Moscow’s 2022 invasion in relation to the seizure of the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants.

Environmentalists hope the move will boost the case for recognising ecocide as a crime.

What do experts say?

Some experts think it’s an idea whose time has come.

Jojo Mehta, co-founder of the Stop Ecocide, told The Guardian the proposal was a “key moment” in the campaign to have ecocide designated an international crime.

“Once it’s on the timetable of the ICC, it has to be discussed,” Mehta said. “Up to now, member states have not been obliged to address the issue.”

Philippe Sands KC, a prominent international lawyer and professor of law at University College London,  was part of the independent panel that came up with the definition of ecocide.

He told the newspaper he was “100% certain” the ICC would recognise it as an international crime.

“The only question is when,” Sands said. “I was sceptical at first, but now I am a true believer. There has already been real change, as some countries have put it in domestic law. I think this is the right idea at the right time.”

Donald R Rothwell, an expert in international law at the Australian National University, agreed.

Rothwell told the Washington Post, “Recognition of ecocide as an international crime would be a major advance in international accountability for severe environmental harm.”

However, he noted that it would “be a long diplomatic process.”

Others say simply making it an international crime isn’t nearly enough.

As David Whyte, professor of socio-legal studies at the University of Liverpool and author of the book Ecocide, told BBC, “It’s really important to change our language and the way we think about what’s harming the planet – we should push through this crime of ecocide – but it’s not going to change anything unless, at the same time, we change the model of corporate capitalism.”

Some expressed scepticism that the ICC would make ecocide an international crime.

Kevin Heller,  associate professor of public international law at the University of Amsterdam, who has also worked closely with the ICC, told Reuters while he shares the desire to criminalise the destruction of the environment, he doesn’t think it is something the ICC will ever adopt.

International law is complicated, he said, and there is a huge difference between the ICC’s Assembly of State Parties adopting an amendment, and ratifying it so it becomes law.

“The likelihood of anyone ever ending up in the dock at the ICC facing ecocide charges is so remote,” he says.

However, the act of putting forward an amendment to add ecocide to the Rome Statute could have a catalysing impact at a national level, he says, and “make states more likely to criminalise ecocide themselves”.

Heller can see this thinking in the “pragmatic concessions” within the language of the 2021 definition, which he says was all about getting states on board. He believes a stronger definition is needed.

“Basically the (current) definition says that if you’re benefiting humans enough, you can destroy the environment, and to me, that’s not ecocide,” he says, dubbing it instead an “anthropocentric cost-benefit analysis”.

“This is the biggest criticism: it is not a truly eco-centric crime if any amount of environmental harm is acceptable.”

The ICC recognising ecocide is unlikely to be a game-changer for other reasons too.

Though 120 countries including the UK and many from the EU are part of the body, the world’s biggest polluters – India, China and the United States are not, as per The Guardian.

Calls for the arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and Russia’s Vladimir Putin – who has a warrant against him for alleged war crimes during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – have also gone unheeded.

With inputs from agencies