Ecocide!

Robert Hunziker

June 19, 2026

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Image by NASA.

According to the National Geographic Society: “The human footprint is one of the most destructive forces in Earth’s history, fundamentally altering the planet at an unprecedented scale. Humanity consumes resources far faster than they can regenerate, driving rapid environmental degradation, mass biodiversity loss, and climate shifts that many scientists classify as a new geological epoch.”

Yet, the planet is smiling, a big fat smile. It’s happy for the first time since, who knows when? Humans are taking measures to protect her precious ecosystems. The world community is waking up to the full extent of anthropogenic abuse by making it a crime to despoil our home planet.

Finland’s Social Democratic Party (SDP), at its 2026 SDP Party Congress, supported the criminalization of ecocide. SDP has become Finland’s largest party. It supports a strong national, regional and international framework to criminalize mass environmental destruction, known as ecocide.

Their resolution highlights the damage of large-scale destruction of nature with consequences impacting human health, livelihoods, natural resources and food production.

The Human Footprint Consumes 1.75 Earths

In fact, as far as the planet is concerned, help cannot come soon enough. After all, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) which is highly regarded on a global scale as a premier, pro-science research institution and the country’s lead national laboratory for measurements, calibrations, and public safety standards: “We humans need 1.75 Earths to support our current rate of consumption! That is unsustainable, and we have to make changes… If we’re going to secure a sustainable future on the only planet we have to live on, we must transition to a circular economy.” (We Need a Second Earth to Support Our Current Consumption. We Can Do Better if We Think ‘Circular’, NIST, April 19, 2023)

The “1.75 earths” consumed by the human footprint leaves little room for error, in fact, no room. Thus, a universal ecocide law becomes much more relevant and necessary to help prevent excessive overdevelopment and/or nonsensical abuse, e.g., fossil fuel CO2 emissions are turning the planet into a roasting oven, red-faced and bloated. This is excessive and nonsensical and not necessary. Yet, CO2 has been regularly setting new record highs year-after-year in concert with record heat around the globe.

In that regard, on January 14^th, 2026, the UN weather agency warned: “The 11-year streak of record global warming continues.”

In support of the UN Weather agency statement, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported on the source of increasing global warming: “Total energy-related CO2 emissions increased by around 145 million tonnes (Mt) in 2025, reaching a new high of nearly 38.4 billion tonnes (Gt) and 5% above 2019 levels. The increase coincided with record atmospheric CO2 concentrations of about 427 parts-per-million (ppm), roughly 2.4 ppm higher than in 2024 and around 50% above pre-industrial levels.”

But honestly, a very pertinent question must be asked, and answered: Why burn fossil fuels that pollute the atmosphere and heat up the planet if there is a better way? After all, there’s a simple solution; The insanity of burning fossil fuels has an escape hatch: According to the world’s pinnacle of “Stakeholder Capitalism,” i.e., the World Economic Forum: “Most of the world’s countries could run on 100% renewable energy.” Eureka!

Support for Ecocide Law – Rapidly Growing Movement

“Finland’s SDP joins a host of other political parties, legislators and governments worldwide committed to advancing ecocide laws. New domestic legislative proposals are appearing around the world, major regional progress is advancing, and a number of forward-thinking states are backing the proposal to make ecocide an international crime.” (Stop Ecocide International)

Significantly, according to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, at least 27 countries are considering an ecocide law on the books as a serious crime.

Mauritius Criminalizes Ecocide

Mauritius, as of April 18, 2026, officially supports a domestic crime of ecocide. The provision, which is set out in an anti-money laundering and financial crimes law, defines ecocide as an unlawful or wanton act committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term environmental damage, this language closely reflects the definition proposed by the Independent Expert Panel convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation in 2021.

Interview (Snippets) with Stop Ecocide International CEO Jojo Mehta

“Ecocide refers to the most severe, widespread, and long-term harm to nature. While environmental laws and regulations exist worldwide, they are largely fragmented, piecemeal, and insufficient. Our organization works to advance legislation to criminalize ecocide, meaning that the most serious damage to the living world would be treated as a crime. Introducing ecocide into criminal law would not only provide foundational support to the diverse body of law but also help fill gaps and establish a much stronger deterrent against major environmental harms.” (Criminalizing Ecocide: A Conversation with Stop Ecocide International’s CEO Jojo Mehta, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown University, December 4, 2025)

Jojo Mehta is a graduate of Oxford and London universities, Mehta has contributed to UN conferences, diplomatic forums, and international media, including TIME, The Guardian, and The New York Times.

“A key factor in the rapid acceptance of ecocide law is the definition itself, which resulted from a drafting program commissioned in 2021. The definition focuses on the level of harm, not on specific activities or sectors. Similar to how criminal law works, a murderer is defined by the outcome, not the method. The ecocide definition emphasizes the harm caused rather than forbidding particular activities. It does not prohibit industrial fishing or mineral mining; rather, it outlines a threshold of harm that should not be crossed. This approach encourages best practices without alienating any sector, which has been hugely helpful in facilitating constructive dialogue. So, while there are countries that are not ready to support ecocide, we have not encountered many that openly oppose it,” Ibid.

Financial Industry Support

“What has been particularly interesting is the response from the investment world. For several consecutive years, the International Corporate Governance Network submitted statements to the UN Climate Conferences advising governments to legislate for ecocide. They recognize that environmental degradation is a risk factor. In an increasingly volatile world, investors need to know that their capital will still hold value ten years from now. A company engaged in severe environmental harm represents future liability,” Ibid.

Countries that support ecocide laws or have laws covering serious environmental crimes include: Vietnam, France, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Moldova, Chile, EU, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyz Republic, Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, Belgium, Russia, whose law reads: “Massive destruction of the animal or plant kingdoms, contamination of the atmosphere or water resources, and also commission of other actions capable of causing an ecological catastrophe, shall be punishable by deprivation of liberty for a term of 12 to 20 years.” (Existing and Proposed Ecocide Laws, Ecocide Law)

However, it’s one thing to grandstand a law on books; it’s quite another to enforce it. For example, according to sources, Russia has never convicted anyone under Article 358 (Ecocide) of the Russian Criminal Code. And many other countries with similar laws are suspect as well.

All of which gets back to the enormous human footprint, as it devours the land, enforcement to help protect abuse is lacking as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as adopted in 1998, makes no provision for the crime of ecocide in peacetime, only in wartime. Obviously, the ICC needs an update if ecocide is to be truly enforced.

The Big Overshoot

“The Earth cannot sustain the future human population, or even today’s, without a major overhaul of socio-cultural practices for using land, water, energy, biodiversity, and other resources.” (Corey J.A .Bradshaw, Global Human Population Has Surpassed Earth’s Carrying Capacity, Environmental Letters, March 27, 2026)

The study claims 2.5 bln as the “optimal sustainable population.”

Bulging Population Nécessitâtes Écocide Law

“By destroying the ecosystems on which we depend, we are destroying the foundations of our civilization and mortgaging the living conditions of all future generations,’ said Valérie Cabanes, a French lawyer and one of the panelists who worked on the 2021 ecocide proposal. ‘This is no less serious than crimes against humanity, or the crimes of genocide or aggression.” (World Economic Forum)

Ecocide is a declaration of war against the planet that surpasses all world wars combined. Enforcement has never been more important.

“Decisions made in the next few years will determine whether our existence on Earth as we know it will continue or collapse as a result of human activity.” (World Economic Forum’s Expert Network in partnership with UN Environment Programme)

“The next few years” are right around the corner.

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Lawyers Are Working to Put 'Ecocide' on Par with War Crimes. Could an International Law Hold Major Polluters to Account?


Mélissa Godin TIME
Fri, February 19, 2021

Extinction Rebellion Climate Crime Invesigators

Police watch as Extinction Rebellion "crime scene investigators" in white suits and masks put up climate crime scene tape to investigate areas of ecocide in a performance outside the Brazilian Embassy on Sept. 7, 2020 in London, United Kingdom Credit - Mike Kemp—In Pictures, via Getty Images

When a Nigerian judge ruled in 2005 that Shell’s practice of gas flaring in the Niger Delta was a violation of citizens’ constitutional rights to life and dignity, Nnummo Bassey, a local environmental activist, was thrilled.

Bassey’s organization, Friends of the Earth, had helped communities in the Niger Delta sue Shell for gas flaring, a highly polluting practice that caused mass disruption to communities in the region, polluting water and crops. Researchers had found that those disruptions were associated with increased rates of cancer, blood disorders, skin diseases, acid rain, and birth defects—leading to a life expectancy of 41 in the region, 13 years fewer than the national average.


“For the first time, a court of competence has boldly declared that Shell, Chevron and the other oil corporations have been engaged in illegal activities here for decades,” Bassey said on Nov. 14, 2005, the day the Federal High Court of Nigeria announced the ruling. “We expect this judgement to be respected and that for once the oil corporations will accept the truth and bring their sinful flaring activities to a halt.”

Yet the judgement was not respected. A United Nations report published six years later found that Shell had not followed its own procedures regarding the maintenance of oilfield infrastructure. Today, Shell is still gas flaring in the Niger Delta.

In the 15 years since the ruling, Bassey has come to believe that Shell’s executives might have been held accountable had the case gone to the International Criminal Court (ICC). “Shell could ignore [the case] because it wasn’t in the international media but if it had gone to the ICC, it would have gotten global attention and shareholders would have known what the company was doing,” he says. “If we had had an ecocide law, things would have turned out differently.”

The word “ecocide” is an umbrella term for all forms of environmental destruction from deforestation to greenhouse gas emissions. Since the 1970s, environmental advocates have championed the idea of creating an international ecocide law that would be adjudicated in the ICC and would penalize individuals responsible for environmental destruction. But the effort has gained significant traction over the past year, with leaders from Vanuatu, the Maldives, France, Belgium, the Netherlands—as well as influential global figures like Pope Francis and Greta Thunberg—expressing their support. Although there are questions about whether the ICC as an institution has the teeth to prosecute any crimes, Bassey and other activists believe the law will act as a powerful deterrent against future forms of environmental destruction. “We will not get different outcomes in cases of exploitation and marginalisation unless we reimagine the laws that govern us,” Bassey says.

In December 2020, lawyers from around the world gathered to begin drafting a legal definition of ecocide. If they succeed, it would potentially situate environmental destruction in the same legal category as war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. But even within the movement, questions remain on how far the law should go — and who might fall under its jurisdiction.
The history of the ecocide movement

The term ecocide first rose to the public consciousness in 1972, when Olof Palme, the premier of Sweden, used the term at a United Nations environmental conference in Stockholm to describe the environmental damage caused by the Vietnam War. At the conference, an ecocide convention was proposed but never came to pass.

The idea resurfaced again in the 1990s when the ICC, the world’s first permanent international criminal court, was being created. As a court of last resort, the ICC was established not to override national courts but to complement them, creating a global tribunal that would adjudicate the gravest crimes of concern to the international community. When lawyers came together in 1998 to draft the Rome Statute, the founding document of the ICC, there was a law in the pipeline that would have criminalized environmental destruction.

But the law never came about. “My recollection is that there was just no political support for it,” says Philippe Sands, who was involved in drafting the preamble of the Rome Statute in 1998 (and who would go on to co-chair the expert panel formed in 2020 to draft a legal definition of ecocide). Environmental destruction, Sands says, was not on the public’s consciousness.

This began to change in 2017 when Polly Higgins, a British barrister, launched the Stop Ecocide campaign alongside environmental activist Jojo Mehta. Higgins, who sold her home in 2010 to raise funds to combat environmental destruction, wrote an influential book, Eradicating Ecocide, that informed the legal debate. When the campaign launched a few years later, it quickly gained unprecedented momentum: Greta Thunberg donated €100,000 of the money she received from that year’s Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity to the cause, and for the first time in history, several world leaders publicly backed the idea. Fast-forward three years and now, an expert panel of international criminal lawyers is drafting a definition of ecocide. “Six months ago, we never would have believed where we are at now,” says Mehta. Higgins, sadly, never lived to see her campaign bear fruit, dying in 2019 at the age of 50.

Environmental advocates believe an ecocide law at the ICC would be groundbreaking. While some countries have national laws on environmental harm, there is no international criminal law that explicitly imposes penalties on individuals responsible for environmental destruction. If adopted, experts say there are three main areas where an ecocide law would make a difference.

The first is the symbolic impact of having the ICC elevate environmental destruction to the same level as genocidal crimes. Mehta argues that the fear of being labelled an ecocide criminal could create incentives for leaders to behave more responsibly. “A CEO doesn’t want to be seen in the same bracket as a genocidal maniac,” she says.

The second area where this law could make a difference is by setting a legal precedent, creating a bandwagon effect where international law could prompt changes in national criminal laws, as countries look to signal their environmental commitment to others. ICC laws have influenced national policies before: several countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, have adopted national laws that criminalize ICC crimes.

The third way an ecocide law could be useful is by prosecuting environmental crimes that fall outside of national jurisdictions. This is especially helpful in poorer countries where legal barriers make it difficult to hold foreign companies accountable. An ecocide law, Bassey says, would create an arena in which marginalized communities in countries like Nigeria have a voice against powerful, polluting actors. “Most of this ecocide devastation is happening in communities where voices are not heard,” he says.


A picture taken on March 22, 2013 shows gas flare at Shell 

Cawtharine Channel, Nembe Creek in the Niger DeltaPius 

Utomi Ekpei—AFP via Getty Images

Advocates of an ecocide law also believe it would change the way the environment is valued. “There is something powerfully urgent about the idea that nature has rights,” says Mitch Anderson, founder and executive director of Amazon Frontlines, an organization that works with Indigenous communities in the Western Amazon to protect their lands. “The [ecocide] law would ensure that nature has a legal voice.”

There’s still a long way to go, though. While lawyers are expected to finish a draft of the law by the end of spring, it will take at least 3 to 5 years before the law might be ratified. Drafting the law is just the first of many steps: a member state needs to propose it to the ICC, at which point, 50% of ICC states have to approve it. States will then need to convene to debate the exact definition of the law before eventually, adopting and ratifying it.

But if passed, an ecocide law would be unique in the ICC’s history, not only because of what it would protect but who it could go after—the heads of countries and corporations that are big polluters. Historically, the ICC has been criticized for targeting only African dictators while turning a blind eye to Western leaders responsible for mass atrocities. But with an ecocide law, powerful white men—who are often disproportionately represented in extractive industries—could face criminal charges. “The ecocide movement is powerful not only in the legal precedent it could set for protecting rivers, forests, oceans and the air but also in the names and faces it identifies as being behind this destruction,” says Anderson. “[They] may not look like the picture we’re used to seeing.”

Oil and gas companies contacted by TIME did not want to comment on whether they support an ecocide law, but the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) said in a statement they “want to further improve the environmental performance and reduce the likelihood and consequences of incident.”

What counts as ecocide?

Bassey is confident that many of the world’s worst environmental offenses —such as Chevron’s pollution of the Ecuadorian Amazon in the 1990s or the ongoing coal-seam fires in Witbank, South Africa—could have been prevented had an ecocide law been in place. “If we had an ecocide law, no one would allow this to go on,” he says. In theory, that might be true. But in practice, much depends on how the term is defined.

Sands, the co-chair of the panel drafting the law, is concerned that the bar for what counts as “ecocide” could be set too high. There’s historical precedence for such a scenario: When the idea of “genocide” was first proposed in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer, he envisioned a law that would prosecute individuals that killed members of a national, ethnic, racial, religious or political group. But when member states—many of whom who were worried about their own histories of discrimination—came together to actually draft the law in 1948, they decided that lawyers needed to prove not only that an individual killed members of a group but that they did so with the specific intention to kill.

The result is that most genocide trials heard by the ICC have not ended with a guilty verdict because the burden of proof is too high. Sands is worried the same mistake might be made with the definition of ecocide. “It will never be possible to prove that someone intended to destroy the environment on a massive scale,” he says. “If we set the bar too high, we won’t catch anyone.”

On the other hand, if the bar is set too low—if the ecocide law encompasses too many types of alleged environmentally destructive acts, and implicates too many types of people and institutions—it may lose political support. Many people might get behind an ecocide law that charges mega-corporations for polluting on a grand scale; it is less likely they would support a law that penalizes anyone who destroys the environment in any way. The lawyers drafting the definition didn’t want to offer their opinion on what, specifically, a “low bar” would look like out of concern that doing so would put at risk their ability to advocate for a more robust law.

But even if a robust ecocide law is put in place, the movement faces another big challenge: the limited legal powers of the ICC. On its own, the ICC does not have the authority to enforce laws; it is completely reliant on its member states to arrest and surrender the accused. If a country does not comply—if it does not arrest the accused individual—there is no trial. In addition, over 70 countries are not members—including the United States. Some of the biggest fossil fuel corporations, such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron, are American owned, meaning they would be unlikely to be drawn into a prosecution.

Lawyers working on the ecocide law are acutely aware of these limitations. “Let’s not be starry eyed about our legal international frameworks at the international level,” Sands says. “Let’s be realistic.” Holding perpetrators of environmental destruction to account, he says, must ultimately be done at the national level. Nevertheless, international criminal law can be a tool that catalyzes thinking and helps set a precedent. Although only four people have been convicted at the ICC since it began hearing cases in 2002, the creation of ICC law has influenced national policy through the norms and precedents it helped to generate. Advocates of ecocide believe the law could do something similar.

“We know one law won’t change everything,” says Mehta. “But without something like this in place, it’s hard to see how these [environmental] targets will be met.”

Should Harming Mother Earth Be a Crime? The Case for Ecocide

By Reynard Loki ***

April 26, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Stop Ecocide International logo



The destruction of nature might one day become a criminal offense adjudicated by the International Criminal Court.

On December 3, 2019, the Pacific island state of Vanuatu made an audacious proposal: Make ecocide—the destruction of nature—an international crime. “An amendment of the Rome Statute could criminalize acts that amount to Ecocide,” stated Ambassador of Vanuatu John Licht at the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) annual Assembly of States Parties in the Hague. He was speaking on behalf of his government at the assembly’s full plenary session. “We believe this radical idea merits serious discussion.”

Since then, the idea has become less radical: Amid the intensifying global climate emergency, interest has been mounting among nations and diverse stakeholders—spanning international bodies, grassroots organizations, and businesses—that ecocide be formally recognized as an international crime, joining the ranks of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression, which are the four core international crimes established by the Rome Statute of the ICC. These crimes are not subject to any statute of limitations.

Environmental activists are pushing to elevate the concept of ecocide—literally, the “killing of the ecosystem”—as the fifth international crime to be adjudicated by the ICC. If it becomes a reality, those who commit environmental destruction could be liable to arrest, prosecution, and punishment—by a fine, imprisonment, or both.

The European Union, in February 2024, took a step in the direction of criminalizing cases that lead to environmental destruction and “voted in a new directive” that makes these crimes comparable to ecocide, according to Grist. “The new law holds people liable for environmental destruction if they acted with knowledge of the damage their actions would cause.” The article adds that environmental crime is the “fourth most lucrative illegal activity in the world, worth an estimated $258 billion annually,” according to Interpol, and is only growing with each passing year.

Ecocide proponents want laws being pushed across various international organizations and government agencies to cover the most egregious crimes against nature, which could ultimately include massive abuses to the living environment, such as oil spills, illegal deforestation, deep-sea mining, mountaintop removal mining, Arctic oil exploration and extraction, tar sand extraction, and factory farming. British barrister and environmental lobbyist Polly Higgins defined ecocide as “extensive damage… to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been or will be severely diminished.”

Ecosystem Services: Existential and Economic Value

Healthy, functioning ecosystems provide a wide range of services to humanity and all life on Earth that are essential for the sustainable management and conservation of natural resources. These services can be categorized into four broad categories.

Provisioning Services: Healthy ecosystems provide food and water for humans and nonhuman animals, timber for building, and fiber for clothing and other industries.

Regulating Services: These services control conditions and processes, such as climate regulation, water purification, and pollination. Wetlands, for instance, purify water by filtering out pollutants, while forests help regulate climate by absorbing carbon dioxide.

Supporting Services: These services are necessary to produce all other ecosystem services. Examples include nutrient cycling, soil formation, and primary production. Soil organisms contribute to nutrient cycling, and the soil supports plant growth.

Cultural Services: Humanity obtains numerous non-material benefits from healthy ecosystems, including spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experiences. Parks, beaches, and natural landscapes provide opportunities for recreation and relaxation, while cultural heritage sites offer historical and spiritual connections.

Ecosystem services are crucial for human well-being, economic prosperity, and societal development. To ensure that we continue to enjoy these services, we must protect ecosystems from the destructive harm of unsustainable exploitation. Ecocide laws can provide this protection.

War in Ukraine: Ecocide by Russia

Ukraine is seen as a “trailblazer” in pushing for recognizing ecocide crimes “within the realm of justice.” This thinking has especially gained momentum since Russia’s attack on the nation in February 2022, leading to the war on Ukraine being seen as a site of ecocide. On April 16, 2024, environmental, climate, and energy experts gathered at Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest in Middlebury, Vermont, for a panel discussion titled “Criminalizing Ecocide: Lessons From Ukraine in Addressing Global Environmental Challenges.” The event centered on the significant ramifications of Russia’s environmental transgressions in Ukraine within the broader scope of global environmental justice.

The panelists—including Marjukka Porvali from the European Commission (a specialist in environmental policy with a focus on Ukraine); Jojo Mehta, the co-founder of Stop Ecocide; Bart Gruyaert, project director at Neo-Eco Ukraine; and Anna Ackermann, a climate and energy policy analyst—discussed establishing legal precedents to prosecute the gravest offenses against nature, promoting a cultural shift toward taking environmental issues seriously, and navigating a fair transition—while responsibly utilizing critical resources for reconstruction.

The Ukrainian government “has [also] argued for using…[international criminalization of ecocide] as a tool to hold individuals accountable for environmental destruction in wartime.” Their call increased in the summer of 2023 when Russia destroyed the Kakhovka Dam, which not only killed people but also caused the spread of chemical pollution in the area.

Protecting the Future of Life on Earth

In 2017, Higgins and Mehta founded the Stop Ecocide campaign. Overseen by the Stop Ecocide Foundation, a charitable organization based in the Netherlands, the campaign is the only global effort to exclusively focus on the establishment of ecocide as an international crime to prevent further devastation to the Earth’s ecosystems. “Protecting the future of life on Earth means stopping the mass damage and destruction of ecosystems taking place globally,” states the Stop Ecocide Facebook page. “And right now, in most of the world, no one is held responsible.”

Vanuatu’s bold proposition was the first time a state representative made an official call for the criminalization of ecocide on the international stage since 1972 when then-Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme made the argument during his keynote address at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm.

“The immense destruction brought about by indiscriminate bombing, by large-scale use of bulldozers and herbicides is an outrage sometimes described as ecocide, which requires urgent international attention,” said Palme in his address. “It is shocking that only preliminary discussions of this matter have been possible so far in the United Nations and at the conferences of the International Committee of the Red Cross, where it has been taken up by my country and others. We fear that the active use of these methods is coupled by a passive resistance to discuss them.”

The Failure of the Paris Climate Agreement

That passive resistance to discussing the immense destruction of nature at the hands of humanity has largely continued. Though nearly 200 nations signed the Paris Agreement in 2015—designed to avoid irreversible climate change by limiting global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius—the countries’ commitments are not nearly enough. As they stand, the promises put the Earth on course to heat up between 3 and 4 degrees Celsius above the historic baseline by 2100.

Although the Paris Agreement mandates the monitoring and reporting of carbon emissions, it lacks the authority to compel any nation to decrease its emissions. Considering this shortcoming, the landmark agreement has been a failure. This failure inspired more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries to sign a “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” declaration in January 2020. Another 2,100 scientists have signed it as of April 9, 2021.“An immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis,” the scientists warned.

Society did not heed the warning: Two years later, in 2022, worldwide carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels reached a record high.

“A 100 countries say they are aiming for net-zero or carbon neutrality by 2050, yet just 14 have enacted such targets into law,” Carter Dillard, policy director of the nonprofit Fair Start Movement and author of Justice as a Fair Start in Life: Understanding the Right to Have Children, wrote in the Hill in April 2022.

“[T]he Paris Agreement, which itself allowed for widespread ecological destruction, is failing,” said Dillard, whose organization supports the emergence of smaller families not only to tackle environmental degradation but also to establish “fair starts” for the children born today who have to face the prospect of growing up on a rapidly deteriorating planet. “Meanwhile, in real-time, global warming is already killing and sickening people and damaging fetal and infant health worldwide,” Dillard wrote. “Maybe it’s time for a rethink and a deeper approach.”

A Broken Legal Framework

One deeper approach would be to protect the natural environment through the legal system since, as the Paris Agreement has shown, non-binding commitments that are not subject to possible punishment and remain unfulfilled are ultimately meaningless.

Higgins pointed out the illogical state of our current legal system, which shields perpetrators of crimes against nature: “We have laws that are protecting dangerous industrial activities, such as fracking, despite the fact that there is an abundance of evidence that it is hugely harmful in terms of carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, and the catastrophic trauma it can cause communities that are impacted by it.”

“The rules of our world are laws, and they can be changed,” she said in 2015. “Laws can restrict, or they can enable. What matters is what they serve. Many of the laws in our world serve property—they are based on ownership. But imagine a law that has a higher moral authority… a law that puts people and planet first. Imagine a law that starts from first do no harm, that stops this dangerous game and takes us to a place of safety.”

Ecocide Movement Growing

While the ecocide movement was dealt a blow when Higgins died in 2019 after a battle with cancer, it picked up speed, aided not only by Vanuatu’s proposal but also by high-profile supporters like French President Emmanuel Macron, who said, “The mother of all battles is international: to ensure that this term is enshrined in international law so that leaders… are accountable before the International Criminal Court.”

Environmental protection is becoming more of a concern among the general public, many of whom take a dim view of elected leaders’ inaction. According to a 2024 CBS News poll, 70 percent of Americans favor government action to address climate change. Half of Americans believe that it is a crisis that must be addressed immediately. Almost a quarter of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions come from the industrialized destruction of natural landscapes to support agriculture, forestry, and other uses to support human society. By criminalizing widespread environmental destruction with no remediation, ecocide laws can be a vital tool in dealing with the climate crisis.

A 2024 Conservation in the West poll revealed a deep-seated worry about the environment’s future among two-thirds of voters across eight Western U.S. states. Their concerns ranged from low river water levels and loss of wildlife habitat to air and water pollution. Interestingly, the survey found that 80 percent or more of these voters support the idea of energy companies bearing the costs of cleaning up extraction sites and restoring the land after drilling activities. This view is not far from the belief that environmental destruction should be treated as a criminal offense.

Meanwhile, three-quarters want the U.S. to generate all of its electricity from renewable sources within 15 years, according to a poll conducted by the Guardian and Vice in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. In December 2020, as world leaders marked the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged every country to declare a “climate emergency.”

The general public is warming to the idea of criminalizing the destruction of nature, with more than 99 percent of the French “citizens’ climate assembly”—a group of 150 people randomly selected to help guide the nation’s climate policy—voting to make ecocide a crime in June 2020.

“If something’s a crime, we place it below a moral red line. At the moment, you can still go to the government and get a permit to frack or mine or drill for oil, whereas you can’t just get a permit to kill people because it’s criminal,” said Mehta. “Once you set that parameter in place, you shift the cultural mindset as well as the legal reality.”

“The air we breathe is not the property of any one nation—we share it,” Palme said in his 1972 address. “The big oceans are not divided by national frontiers—they are our common property. … In the field of human environment there is no individual future, neither for humans nor for nations. Our future is common. We must share it together. We must shape it together.”

Greta Thunberg called for a shift in our legal system regarding the environment. “We will not save the world by playing by the rules,” said Thunberg, who has become the face of the international youth climate movement. “We need to change the rules.”

Ecocide Laws Moving Through European Parliaments

In February 2024, the Belgian parliament passed a revised penal code endorsing the punishment of ecocide at national and international levels. This landmark decision makes Belgium the first European nation to acknowledge ecocide within the realm of international law.

“Belgium is now at the forefront of a truly global conversation around criminalizing the most severe harms to nature and must continue to advocate for the recognition of ecocide at the International Criminal Court, alongside genocide,” said Patricia Willocq, director of Stop Ecocide Belgium. “In order to fully protect nature, it is necessary that those that would willfully destroy vast swaths of the natural world, in turn causing untold human harm, should be criminalized.”

Scotland may follow suit. On November 8, 2023, Labour Member of the Scottish Parliament Monica Lennon introduced a proposed ecocide bill in the Scottish Parliament that could lead to substantial penalties for those found guilty of the large-scale destruction of the environment, potentially resulting in up to 20 years of imprisonment. If passed, it would establish Scotland as the first country in the United Kingdom to implement strict consequences for environmental damage.

Lennon initiated a consultation that was set to conclude in February 2024. The government responded by confirming that Circular Economy Minister Lorna Slater would discuss the proposed measures with Lennon. Following the conclusion of the consultation phase on February 9, 2024, the bill now needs the backing of at least 18 parliamentary members to advance to the next stage.

“Thousands of overwhelmingly supportive submissions have been received from members of the public and institutions in the space of just four months and Greens Biodiversity Minister Lorna Slater has now written indicating her government’s support,” reported John Ferguson, political editor of the Sunday Mail, on March 24, 2024.

“This is a promising development and I welcome the Scottish Government’s support,” said Lennon. “Ecocide law is emerging around the world in a bid to prevent and punish the most serious crimes against nature. My proposed bill to stop ecocide in Scotland is gaining widespread support, and this encouraging update from the Scottish Government is a boost to the campaign.”

The Case for Ecocide Laws

If implemented, ecocide laws would protect ecosystems and preserve biodiversity, an essential element for maintaining healthy ecosystems that support all life forms, including humans. These laws would safeguard natural habitats, reduce environmental damage, and significantly mitigate climate change by preserving carbon sinks like forests and curbing greenhouse gas emissions from industrial activities.

Critically, enshrining ecocide as a crime would hold individuals and corporations accountable for environmental harm, promoting a sense of justice and responsibility in interacting with the natural world. Enforcing laws against ecocide also encourages sustainable practices and resource management, fostering a more harmonious relationship between human activities and the environment over the long term.

Together, these reasons reflect broader efforts that stretch across disciplines and activist frontlines—from environmentalism and nature rights to social justice and the law—toward sustainable development, conservation, and responsible stewardship of the planet for current and future generations. Part of that stewardship is eradicating “institutional speciesism,” cultivating ecocentrism, and seeing our place in the natural world in the context of the entire planetary ecosystem—as one species among a multitude of interdependent species.

Philippe Sands, a lawyer who is a member of a panel launched in November 2020 to draft a definition of ecocide and who has appeared before the ICC and the European Court of Justice, told the Economist in 2021, “My sense is that there is a broad recognition that the old anthropocentric assumptions may well have to be cast to one side if justice is truly to be done, and the environment given a fair degree of protection.”

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

*** REYNARD IS THE NAME GIVEN A FRENCH FOX CHARACTER WHO IS A TRICKSTER

LOKI NORSE GOD OF CHAOS ALSO A TRICKSTER