One Innovative Approach to Rebalancing the Human Nature Relationship: Ecocide

“Ecocide” means the killing of our home: “eco” from oikos, house in Greek, and “cide” from cidere, to kill in Latin. The full legal definition can be read here.

Earlier this year, the organization End Ecocide International led a team of legal experts to draft a “historic” definition of ecocide. This would pave a path to adding mass environmental destruction to the list of crimes the International Criminal Court can prosecute.

Advocates hope  the crime of ecocide will be recognized by the International Criminal Court, which investigates and tries international crimes, including genocide and war crimes. 

The ecocide draft law is a milestone for the many individuals, organizations and countries who have pursued this approach as a way to hold the worst polluters accountable. In 1970, Arthur Galston, a plant biologist at Yale, introduced “ecocide” to describe the significant environmental harms caused by the chemical warfare used to strip away vegetation during the Vietnam War. The late Swedish prime minister, Olof Palme, pushed the concept at the 1972 UN environmental conference in Stockholm. 

Beyond the movement to codify ecocide within international law (about a dozen countries now have domestic ecocide laws), the new definition provides a model for various national level legal proposals as well, a secondary goal of the panel. France has already moved to include ecocide in its own new national Climate and Resilience Act, while simultaneously asking its parliament to consider supporting the calls for ecocide to be included in international criminal law. Mexico, the U.K., and Chile are all considering incorporating ecocide into their laws (or in Chile’s case the constitution) as well. 

Protecting Wild Nature in the Balkans 

Earth Law Center (ELC) first covered ecocide in 2020, read the blog here. ELC partners with Earth Thrive and others to seek remedies for the ecocide being committed in the Balkans by thousands of small hydro facilities being built on some of Europe’s last wild rivers (read a previous blog here). These small dams and diversions fragment and dewater countless rivers, some being drained or enclosed completely. In Serbia alone, some 800 dams are planned. This onslaught against rivers is encouraged by laws in Serbia and other Balkan countries that promote small hydro, as well as EU-level policies (such as the Renewable Energy Directive) that promote dams as “renewable” energy despite the reality that they permanently devastate freshwater ecosystems. 

This issue was presented by ELC and Earth Thrive at a recent ‘Rights of Nature Tribunal’ (a civil society initiative hosted by the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature) focused on freshwater ecosystems in Europe. The Tribunal finding that "it is possible to conclude that the operators of hydroelectric dams and the State of Serbia are jointly responsible for a crime of ecocide" and that "other States in the Balkans are likely to have committed or allowed to commit crimes of ecocide as a consequence of their dam-building programs.” Now, we are expanding our campaign by seeking practical reform in Serbian, Balkan countries, and the EU. 

Implications beyond international law

Earth Law Center, in its work to transform the law to protect all life on the planet, fully supports the new definition of ecocide as well as its inclusion in the Rome Statute. 

To fulfill our mission, our team of legal experts helps write and enforce a new generation of Earth-centered laws, including laws recognizing the Rights of Nature, the rights of future generations, Indigenous rights, recognizing ecocide as a crime, and others. 

We call this broad field “Earth law,” like human rights law but for all living species. 

In addition to legal advocacy, ELC also wrote the first and only law school coursebook on Earth law, which includes a chapter on ecocide.  

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