11 August 2021 – by Ben St. Laurent
In a renewed effort to incorporate environmental protection into existing bodies of international criminal law, an expert panel has developed a legal definition for the term ‘ecocide’ — “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” The expert panel included independent criminal and environmental lawyers, jurists, authors, and professors from around the world. The Stop Ecocide Foundation, responsible for convening the commission, is working to amend the Rome Statute to include ecocide within the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) jurisdiction.
According to Guardian legal affairs correspondent Haroon Siddique, this present attempt marks the most recent in a long battle to establish a legal framework for ecocide, including an effort to include ecocide in the 1972 Stockholm Declaration, as well as the 1998 Rome Statute which established the ICC. While it currently lacks explicit jurisdiction over environmental cases, in recent years the ICC has interpreted crimes against humanity to include environmental destruction, with implications for member states as well as corporations operating within their borders. If the Rome Statute is amended to include ecocide, it would join the ranks of international crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. Prof Philippe Sands QC, who co-chaired the committee, told The Guardian that the new definition of Ecocide “catches the most egregious acts”, including major oil spills and deforestation, but excludes daily activities that more broadly contribute to climate change.
Already, an amendment to the 2021 UK Environment Bill has been introduced by Green Party peer and former party leader Natalie Bennett, which would adopt the new legal definition of ecocide into UK law. If retained in its current state after the review process, this amendment would also create a path for domestic criminal recourse against those responsible for committing ecocide in the UK. Another amendment to the Environment Bill (page 85) proposed by Baroness Bennett would require that the UK government support an amendment to the 1998 Rome Statute, which would begin the process of the ICC expanding its jurisdiction to include ecocide.
Article 121 of the Rome Statute maintains that any of the Court’s 123 state parties may propose an amendment to the treaty, and the ICC would require the support of at least a two-thirds majority of member states to adopt the amendment. If adopted, the amendment would enter into force for all ratifying parties one year after ratification, allowing the court to “exercise its jurisdiction regarding a crime covered by the amendment when committed by that State Party’s nationals or on its territory.”
