Explained | The global push to make ecocide a crime Premium

As countries take up various initiatives to curb ecological destruction and climate, we explore the concept of ecocide, and attempts to create laws to tackle it

The story so far: Mexico’s Maya train project has earned a contradictory reputation. Some describe it as a “Pharaonic project”: the train route covers 1,525 km (about the distance from Florida to New York City), connects tourists in the Caribbean with historic Maya sites and costs $20 billion (almost four times India’s Great Nicobar Project). It has also been described as a “megaproject of death” — it imperils the Yucatán peninsula’s rich wilderness, ancient cave systems and indigenous communities. The Tribunal for the Rights of Nature in August said the project caused “crimes of ecocide and ethnocide”.

Ecocide, derived from Greek and Latin,translates to ‘killing one’s home’ or ‘environment’. Such ‘killing’ could include port expansion projects that destroy fragile marine life and local livelihoods; deforestation; illegal sandmining; polluting rivers with untreated sewage. Mexico joins several nations that are mulling ecocide legislations — Congresswoman Marina Marlen Barrón Perales recently proposed a Bill to criminalise any “unlawful or wanton act committed with the knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment”. There is also a push to elevate ecocide to the ranks of an international crime, warranting similar legal scrutiny as genocide.

Biologist Arthur Galston in 1970 is credited be the first to link environmental destruction with genocide, which is recognised as an international crime, when referring to the U.S. military’s use of Agent Orange (a herbicide) during the Vietnam War. Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, two years later, used the term in a speech at the United Nations, warning that unchecked industrialisation could cause irreversible damage to the environment. British lawyer Polly Higgins became the linchpin, when in 2010, she urged the United Nations’ International Criminal Court (ICC) to recognise ecocide as an international crime.

At present, the Rome Statute of the ICC deals with four atrocities: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. The provision on war crimes is the only statute that can hold a perpetrator responsible for environmental damage, albeit if it is intentionally caused and during wartime situations.

Ms. Higgins proposed that the Statute should be amended to treat crimes against nature on par with crimes against people. Her description of ecocide was: “Extensive loss, damage to or destruction of ecosystems...such that the peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants has been or will be severely diminished.” Here, “inhabitants” applies to all living creatures, not limiting crime to an anthropogenic legal view.

There is no accepted legal definition of ecocide, but a panel of lawyers in June 2021 for Stop Ecocide Foundation prepared a ‘historic’ 165-word articulation that, if accepted, would locate environmental destruction in the same category as crimes against humanity. Ecocide, they proposed, is the “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.” 

Ecocide is a crime in 11 countries, with 27 other nations mulling laws around criminalising environmental damage that is wilfully caused and harms humans, animals and plant species. The European Parliament voted unanimously this year to enshrine ecocide in law. Most national definitions penalise “mass destruction of flora and fauna”, “poisoning the atmosphere or water resources” or “deliberate actions capable of causing an ecological disaster.” The ICC and Ukraine’s public prosecutor are investigating Russia’s role in the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam, which unleashed a catastrophic flood drowning 40 regions, and caused oil spillage and toxic leakage into the Black Sea.