Criminalising ‘Ecocide’ at the International Criminal Court

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth and twenty first centuries, untenable economic development and excessive depletion of environmental resources have devastated the relationship that humans share with the natural world. As knowledge and concern regarding environmental destruction has become ever more widespread, the criminalisation of ‘ecocide’ has increasingly been debated by academics, activists, politicians and legal professionals. In 2020, the Stop Ecocide campaign convened a panel of experts, tasked with drafting a definition of ecocide capable of being incorporated into the International Criminal Court’s mandate. In this briefing, we explore 1) the history of ecocide as a proposed international crime; 3) the current gap in accountability for crimes against the environment; 4) the potential benefits of ecocide’s criminalisation; and 5) the prospects for a future crime of ecocide.

Keywords: Ecocide; International Criminal Law; International Criminal Court; Environmental Crime