The Global Campaign Against Ecocide
Photo by Augaly S. Kiedi, Prince William Sound, Alaska, 2016
Between mining activities, deforestation, floating plastic islands and space debris, the state of the world’s ecosystems is in utter shambles. The world is burning and flooding, displacing nearly 7 million people in the first half of 2019 alone, and we—the global society—have yet to achieve a meaningful response to these acts of ecocide.
What is ecocide?
Ecocide is the catastrophic destruction of ecosystems and the lives within them by deliberate human activity.
What we know by now is that increasingly extreme weather conditions are effects of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. We also know that just 100 fossil fuel companies are responsible for more than 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. Still, business carries on as usual, with no legal precautions in place to hold the culprits effectively accountable and protect the Earth. Remember the disastrous oil spill that destroyed the marine and coastal ecology of the Gulf of Mexico in 2010? This means companies like British Petroleum (BP), which was responsible for the spill and racked up a bill of $65 billion in fines, are not bound by any legal obligation to ensure that such atrocities never happen again. This has happened again and again.
Sanctions and reparations have proven to be insufficient to incentivise State and corporate actors to prioritize environmental sustainability over profit and power. The mainstreaming of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Paris Agreement acknowledges the grave effects of ecocide on nature and people, but these formalities do not provide decisive, legal measures for accountability. We need “a legal duty of care that holds persons of ‘superior responsibility’ to account in a court of law”.
The global campaign against ecocide
The global campaign to establish an international law on ecocide appeals to the United Nations (UN) to recognize ecocide on par genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, thereby making it punishable by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The significance of internationally criminalizing ecocide is to enforce not only the urgency of the climate crisis but also the need to reform our relationship with nature and the functioning of our economy.
While we have become accustomed to hearing about the complexities of global issues, the process of establishing an international law on ecocide is rather possible, simple and powerful:
It’s possible—any Member State of the ICC, no matter how small, can propose the amendment, and once tabled, it cannot be vetoed;
It’s simple—it requires only an amendment to the Rome Statute, which is the governing document for existing international crimes and the ICC;
It’s powerful—it imposes personal accountability for ecocide and climate breakdown upon senior corporate and State officials, ending state-sanctioned industrial immunity and corporate impunity.
On 3rd December 2019, at the ICC’s annual Assembly of States Parties (ASP), Ambassador John Licht from the Pacific island state of Vanuatu boldly called upon the Assembly to consider seriously expanding the court's remit to include a crime of ecocide. His sentiments were echoed by Jojo Mehta, director of the Ecological Defence Integrity (EDI) and co-founder of Stop Ecocide, which are at the forefront of the ecocide movement. Mehta optimistically welcomed the changing political climate and declared the movement as an acceleration of a much-needed legal inevitability.
Taking action
Perhaps our first and foremost responsibility as both individuals and collectives is simply to become aware of what is going on. Coinciding with the 2019 ASP, JusticeInfo.net, a global media providing specialized coverage of international criminal justice, hosted a panel discussion on ecocide and the role of the ICC and multilevel litigation in the global crisis. This is where I learned about the ecocide movement and, to my surprise, that atrocities against the Earth, despite their consequences on international peace and stability, was legally permitted.
We do not all need to quit our jobs and sell our houses to finance a global campaign like environmental lawyer and activist Polly Higgins did. However, we should ask ourselves the same question she did before doing so: “how do we facilitate legal responsibility for the care of the Earth?”
While it may take some sleepless nights to answer such a question, in the meantime, you can become an Earth Protector by signing up with Stop Ecocide. As an Earth Protector, you contribute to the legal and diplomatic efforts to recognize ecocide as an international crime against the Earth.
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