ECOCIDE AS INTERNATIONAL CRIME

IN international law, piracy was the first international crime with pirates considered to be enemies of humanity and commanding universal jurisdiction. In short, it is an offense against the law of nations. As an international crime, piracy is now further defined in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Article 101). In 1948, piracy was followed by a new international crime, genocide, an offshoot of the Nuremberg Trials of Nazis responsible for the mass extermination of Jews. At present, it is an offense triable by the International Criminal Court (ICC), created by the Rome Statute (2002).

Now comes ecocide for international consideration as an international crime.

No legal definition has yet been agreed upon about ecocide, Colloquially, ecocide refers to the devastation and destruction of the environment to the detriment of life. Broadly defined, it means the deliberate destruction of nature and global ecosystems by human activity. The most obvious example is climate breakdown and the damage it has already done and will cause in the future.

Ecocide was first floated during the 1970s when, over a period of 10 years, 19 million gallons of powerful herbicides, including Agent Orange, were sprayed across the countryside in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos for the purpose of defoliation to eliminate cover for enemy fighters in jungle areas. After the war, the chemicals sprayed were found to have caused cancers, neurological diseases and birth defects in people living nearby, in addition to defoliation of verdant jungles as well as decimation of species of wildlife. Indeed, environmental destruction often occurs during armed conflict as in the 1991 Gulf War when Iraqi forces set alight the oil fields as they were retreating from Kuwait. It took years to rehabilitate the extensive ecological damage wrought on the country’s ecosystems.

Other actual examples of extensive and widespread damage to nature around the world are: 1) the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion in Ukraine (1986) which left a deserted dangerously radioactive area that used to be an active community; 2) the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that spilled at least 168 million gallons of crude oil into the ocean and killed countless marine mammals, sea turtles, fish and migratory birds; 3) the tar sands of Northern Canada where toxic waste pits and strip mines have replaced 400 square miles of boreal forests and boglands; and 4) the rapid deforestation in the Amazon reportedly encouraged by President Jair Bolsonaro to give way to agriculture and industrial projects.

In the course of time, other examples of acts that should be criminalized as constituting the killing of nature or the environment were cited by environmental defenders/lawyers. Among those are: willful disregard of environmental destruction related to practices like widespread logging, drilling and mining and deep-sea trawling; experiments including testing of nuclear weapons; manmade environmental phenomena such as the greenhouse effect and transboundary water pollution; and diminishing biological diversity.

Fossil fuel pollution

Across the globe, damage to the biosphere and the atmosphere is known to be a byproduct of pollution and greenhouse gases, e.g., burning coal and gasoline that are not only legal but central to the global economy. Indeed, climate change is disrupting the reliable seasonal rhythms that have sustained human life for millennia while hurricanes, floods and other climate driven disasters have forced more than 16 million people from their homes in the last six months. Fossil fuel pollution has killed 9 million people annually, more than tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS combined. One in four mammals are threatened with extinction.

Fortunately, the campaign to criminalize ecocide has gained momentum among academicians, policy makers, climate advocates and the global civil society. For one, the European Union Parliament’s committee on environment called on the committee and member states to raise awareness and promote solutions on the protection of environmental rights and the recognition of ecocide in international