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In run-up to elections, Flemish and Walloon political parties have been surveyed on a host of issues. The survey, conducted by a coalition of Belgian environmental organisations, included a question about support for amending the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to include a new crime of ecocide.
The European Council has formally adopted a new environmental crime directive, which includes provision to criminalise cases ‘comparable to ecocide’.
The city of Utrecht, represented by Alderman Linda Voortman, signed the Stop Ecocide NL Manifesto, which calls upon the Dutch government to support the recognition of ecocide as a crime at the international, European, and national levels.
The Joint Global Statement of Major Groups and Stakeholders (Joint Global Statement), presented at the Sixth United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA-6), stated that working 'towards the universal recognition of ecocide as an international crime' would serve as a 'powerful deterrent' against the most severe environmental harms.
In an open letter published by Aktuell Hallbarhet, and timed to coincide with the European Parliament voting through an updated environmental crime directive, six CEOs, including Jenny Rundbladh of pensions giant SPP, called for the establishment of an international crime of ecocide under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
On February 20, 2024, a group of Finnish Green MPs, including former Minister of the Interior Maria Ohisalo, submitted a formal written question to the government, inquiring about the administration's intentions to promote the establishment of a new standalone international crime of ecocide via the International Criminal Court.
Prominent members of the international legal community, politicians, academics, businesses and NGOs have responded to a public consultation held by the office of the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, calling for a new crime of ecocide to be introduced into the Rome Statute.
Launched at the United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi, the Al-Mizan: A Covenant for the Earth charter, has been drafted by leading Islamic eco-theologians and practitioners from around the world. The charter creates a comprehensive Islamic framework on ecological and moral responsibility, urging collective action for the protection of our planet and states: “The enormity of the crime of ecocide – the extirpation of entire ecosystems, communities of species, including our own – can best be appreciated by considering the horrors of genocide – the extirpation of ethnicities and cultures. […] This kind of corruption in the Earth has yet to be recognised, litigated, and penalised in national and international legislation.”
The European Parliament has today voted through a new environmental crime directive, which includes provision to criminalise cases ‘comparable to ecocide’. The European Parliament, along with the Parliament’s rapporteur on the directive, Netherlands MEP Antonius Manders, have been at the centre of efforts to secure new EU legislation aimed at preventing and punishing the most severe environmental harms since it announced its support for the inclusion of “ecocide” in the new directive in March 2023. To complete its legislative journey, the new directive will be subject to a vote by the European Council, scheduled to take place March 2024.
Belgium’s Federal Parliament has today voted in favour of a new penal code for the country, which, for the first time in Europe, includes recognition of the crime of ecocide at both the national and international levels. Nationally, the new crime of ecocide, aimed at preventing and punishing the most severe cases of environmentaldegradation, such as extensive oil spills, will apply to individuals in the highest positions of decision-making power and to corporations.
A new report, ‘The Environmental Compact for Ukraine’, has been published by the country’s High-Level Working Group on the Environmental Consequences of the War. The report highlights the presence of the crime of “ecocide” in Ukraine’s penal code (Article 441), notes the recent increase in the incorporation of the crime into domestic legislation across the globe and makes special reference to the Independent Expert Panel’s 2021 definition of ecocide.
On Thursday 18 January, representations to the Catalan Parliament were heard from NGOs, community groups and experts on a bill to incorporate the crime of ecocide into the national Penal Code of Spain.
Stop Ecocide International CEO Jojo Mehta attended the World Economic Forum in Davos between 15th - 19th January 2024. Jojo spoke at two events: ‘Where Nature Meets Conflict’, live-streamed on Tuesday 16th January and ‘Law and Litigation for Climate and Nature’ on Thursday 18th January and a clip of Jojo’s contribution to the live-streamed event on the 16th was virally misreported, including by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, Donald Trump Jr and Fox News.
In Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila, leaders of 6 Pacific ocean states made an ambitious collective call to phase out fossil fuels, support a rapid and just Pacific transition to renewable energy, and strengthen related legal obligations - including to “prevent Ecocide”.
The panel addressed legal mechanisms already available for prosecution of harm to the environment in wartime, their drawbacks and potential for use in the Ukraine context; but also discussed the usefulness for the future of putting in place an international crime of ecocide, something that Ukraine has a keen interest in, and has already strongly supported (see speeches by Ukrainian MPs at the Council of Europe debate in January).
A new policy “viewpoint” document Biodiversity as Systemic Risk: 10 Game-Changers for Board Directors and Stewardship Teams has been released by the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), highlighting the criminalisation of ecocide as an essential emerging framework.
After a year and a half of research and drafting, the prestigious European Law Institute (ELI) has published its Report on Ecocide: Model Rules for an EU Directive and a Council Decision. The model law draws inspiration from the consensus international definition released by the Independent Expert Panel (June 2021, convened by our Foundation) while making adjustments for the European Union context and certain legal considerations relevant to EU law.
The EU Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (“LIBE”) has just voted in support (NB final text still pending publication) of including a crime of ecocide into the Directive on protection of the environment through criminal law, currently under revision.
Strasbourg the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) votes overwhelmingly to adopt resolution 2477 and recommendation 2246, both calling for recognition of ecocide, based on a recently issued report from its Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development on the Environmental impact of armed conflicts.
The Stop Ecocide International team, along with host nation team Stop Ecocide Canada have returned from a busy fortnight in Montreal at COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
In a press release issued during COP15, Triodos Bank has called for ambitious biodiversity targets and for the introduction of a new crime of ecocide at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Stop Ecocide Foundation was at the 21st Session of the Assembly of States Parties
to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, The Hague, 5th-10th December 2022.
Stop Ecocide International, our Foundation and Stop Ecocide Canada, had a very strong presence at COP15 in Montréal during December 2022.
Support keeps on growing for the recognition of ecocide within the EU Directive on protection of the environment through criminal law. Two more EU committees, the Petitions Committee (“PETI”) and the Development Committee (“DEVE”) voted this week on proposals for the directive which is currently under revision, both backed inclusion of a crime of ecocide.
The Council of Europe has announced that its Committee of Ministers yesterday adopted the Terms of Reference of the Committee of Experts on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law (PC-ENV), which has been established to draft a new Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law.
The following explanatory paragraphs is taken from the CoE release: “The new Council of Europe Convention will provide a common global framework, laying down a general basis of pan-European criminal law, in line with the transboundary nature of the environmental challenge that needs to be met.
We were delighted that Stop Ecocide International, and our Stop Ecocide Foundation, had a very strong presence during COP27 in November 2022.
At the G20 summit in Indonesia, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine set out in a speech to world leaders a 10-point Peace Formula aimed at restoring just and long-lasting peace for Ukraine. Covering nuclear safety, food and energy security, ceasing of hostilities and the upholding of the UN Charter, the formula also specifically includes a call for immediate protection of the environment. In Zelenskyy’s words: “The eighth challenge is ecocide, the need for immediate protection of environment. [....]”
In a letter sent to the Argentinean Association of Professors of Criminal Law (AAPDDP) and disseminated in the media, Pope Francis makes an express reference to the need to incorporate "ecocide" as a fifth category of crimes against peace, i.e. to criminalise, at the international level, those conducts that involve the loss, damage or destruction of flora and fauna.
In its statement to COP27, the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), an investor-led organisation with ‘assets under management’ of $70 trillion, has, for the second year running, called on governments to criminalise ecocide.
As part of the first major revision of its criminal code in over a century the Belgian government has proposed the inclusion of a crime of ecocide into domestic law, a move championed by the Minister of Climate, Environment, Sustainable Development and Green Deal, Zakia Khattabi.
The Stop Ecocide Foundation EU Crime Directive Position Paper, submitted to EU agencies, has just been vindicated by the vote of the EU’s environment (ENVI) committee on its proposals vis-a-vis the revision of the EU Directive. The committee has proposed inclusion of a standalone article in the Directive setting out an offence of ecocide to cover “severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment”.
In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last September, the Vice President of the Republic of Panama, José Gabriel Carrizo, argued that "the time has come for the world to have an international body to hold accountable all those who cause damage to the planet".
A growing number of businesses are seeing the potential benefits of the legal guardrail that an international ecocide law will afford and are joining calls to criminalise those acts which threaten the most serious environmental damage.
Ecocide law has been acknowledged as a key driver for business action towards net zero in a high level report delivered at the United Nations during UN General Assembly high-level week in New York.
Shadow Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, re-affirmed the UK Labour Party’s support for a new international law of ecocide in his speech to the Labour Party Conference on 27 September.
President Nikenike Vurobaravu of Vanuatu has called for states to support including a crime of ecocide in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), telling the UN General Assembly “acting with knowledge of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment can no longer be tolerated”.
As part of the Global Climate Strike, FFFNYC made the recognition of ecocide as an international crime one of their 4 key demands.
The Spanish Parliament has just taken the final step to approve the law that recognises the Mar Menor and its basin as having rights, among them the right to exist and the right to recover its natural balance. The law was approved in the Senate by an overwhelming majority.
A statement from the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Karlsruhe calls for support for ecocide law as a new and strengthened form of accountability.
Walk for Earth UK: fundraising for Stop Ecocide International.
Zoe Bicat and her mule Falco set off from their hometown of Oxford on the 8th of June and over the next few months, they will be walking to Loch Lomond in Scotland.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) celebrated 20 years since it opened its doors in July 2002. A one-day conference was held in The Hague to mark the occasion, and the last session of the day, focusing on the future of the court, prominently featured discussion of ecocide as a possible fifth Rome Statute crime.
Stop Ecocide International (SEI) calls press conference at IUCN World Congress following unprecedented use of IUCN rule to challenge it's rejection of SEI motion
France’s Climate & Resilience Act, passed this week, includes ecocide in not one, but two contexts.
Chilean parliamentarians launch bill consisting of an amendment to the Chilean penal code to introduce a new crime of ecocide which is directly based on the new definition.
An amendment has been submitted by Baroness (Natalie) Bennett of Manor Castle to the UK Environment Bill using the full definition elaborated by the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide convened by our Foundation. This is the first use on record of the full definition in a government bill.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has voiced his support for an international crime of ecocide.
Antigua & Barbuda’s Ambassador to the US Sir Ronald Sanders and Sir Shridath Rampal, international lawyer and former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, welcome the legal definition of ecocide.
The Ecolo-Groen group submits a resolution to the Belgian parliament’s Foreign Affairs committee urging the government to actively support the criminalisation of ecocide
Cross-party support has been gathered for a motion to the Scottish parliament submitted by MSP Monica Lennon welcoming the new definition of ecocide.
Commissioned by the Stop Ecocide Foundation, an expert drafting panel of 12 highly renowned international criminal and environmental lawyers from around the world has just concluded six months of deliberations. The result: a legal definition of “ecocide” as a potential 5th international crime, to sit alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.
Bangladeshi parliamentary committee on the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change recommends adding a provision to the Code of Criminal Procedure or drafting a new legal framework to codify ecocide.
Baroness (Natalie) Bennett of Manor Castle, former leader of the UK Green Party, submits an ecocide amendment to the UK Environment Bill. This is the first time a potential crime of ecocide has been recorded in a UK government bill
Resolution adopted almost unanimously at global gathering of parliaments.
Samuel Cogolati, chair of the Belgian delegation behind this historic proposal was unequivocal: “It is the first time such a broad international consensus has emerged for the recognition of ecocide as a crime. The tide of political opinion is now with us.”
At the European Parliament this week, the movement to criminalize mass damage and destruction of nature or “ecocide” took a surge forward with strongly supportive votes on two key reports.
French government’s apparent confusion demonstrates why ecocide should be an international crime
Former President of Finland, Tarja Halonen, expresses her support for an international crime of ecocide
Spain's Foreign Affairs Parliamentary Committee calls for consideration of criminalising ecocide
Belgium, first European country to raise issue of ecocide at International criminal Court
Dutch Party for the Animals proposal to Parliament outlining need for international legislation on Ecocide
French government betrays demands of citizens’ assembly by misleading use of the term “ecocide”
Stop Ecocide Advisory Board member Valérie Cabanes to speak with Pope Francis on the subject of ecocide
Greta Thunberg awarded first Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity and donates €100K to the Stop Ecocide Foundation
Belgian Green parties introduce bill to make ecocide a crime - and support ecocide amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
Greta, Luisa, Anuna, Adélaïde: citizens, scientists and influencers join youth activists calling on EU leaders to #FaceTheClimateEmergency and support making ecocide an international crime
On December 10 2023, the Coalition for International Criminal Justice (CICJ) issued a statement calling upon the States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to establish a Special Working Group on Ecocide.
Stop Ecocide Foundation was at the 22nd Session of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, United Nations, New York, 4 to 14 December 2023.
We were delighted that Stop Ecocide International, and our Stop Ecocide Foundation, had a strong presence during COP28 in December 2023.
The Global Tipping Points report 2023 was produced by The University of Exeter's Global Systems Centre and sees contributions from 200 authors and 25 institutions. The report names Ecocide Law as one of a series of ‘Positive Tipping Points’ in technology, economy and society which offer hope in the face collapsing systems in the natural world.
The 'Ecocide Bill', introduced as a Private Members Bill by Baroness Rosie Boycott, aims to close an existing gap in UK criminal law which allows perpetrators of the most severe environmental harms to escape accountability.
The EU has agreed to enshrine in law a new offence that aims to punish the most serious crimes against the environment. The final text emerged following several months of negotiation (“trilogues”) between the European Council, Commission and Parliament considering, inter alia, the establishment of a “qualified offence” aimed at preventing and punishing the gravest environmental harms including, as the accompanying recitals specify, “cases comparable to ecocide”.
On November 8th, the Environment and Sustainable Development Committee of the Deputies Chamber of the Brazilian Congress approved Bill No 2933/2023 which aims to criminalize the most serious cases of illegal or wanton destruction of the environment, known as “ecocide”. This Bill has been authored and submitted by the PSOL party and supported by a coalition or organisations including Ecoe Brasil, Climate Counsel, Observatório do Clima and Stop Ecocide International.
Monica Lennon MSP has lodged proposals for a Members’ Bill in the Scottish Parliament asking people to support an ecocide prevention law that could see big polluters jailed for between 10 and 20 years.
The Nordic Council has voted unanimously during its most recent session in Oslo, Norway to adopt a recommendation calling for ‘the Nordic governments to participate in relevant international discussions to criminalise serious crimes against the natural environment in both wartime and peacetime.’
On August 17, a new law, Law 21.595 was published in Chile. It modifies the Penal Code in terms of economic crimes and incorporates a new section on "Attacks against the environment", which includes several elements of the legal definition of ecocide formulated by the Independent Expert Panel, convened by Stop Ecocide Foundation in 2021.
Pope Francis has published “Laudate Deum”, an Apostolic Exhortation which is calling on governments to take responsibility on climate change and environmental damage.
Following up from his 2015 “Laudato Sì”, Pope Francis highlights the inarguable human origins for the global climate emergency, and advocates for more international co-operation to control environmental damage. Pope Francis was also the first Head of State, in 2019, to publicly support the inclusion of ecocide as a crime under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra (Greens and Left Alliance), supported by Stop Ecocidio Italia and Stop Ecocide International, has submitted a bill aimed at preventing and criminalising ecocide to the Italian Parliament.
The proposed bill, which is directly based on the wording of the legal definition of ecocide formulated by the Independent Expert Panel convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation in 2021, has been formally submitted to parliament, with debate and votes due to take place in the coming months.
In his opening speech of the 54th Session of the Human Rights Council, Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed enthusiasm for inclusion of the international crime of “ecocide” in the Rome Statute of the UN-backed International Criminal Court as a potential measure to ensure accountability for environmental damage, saying:
"An international crime of ecocide has been proposed for inclusion in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court by a number of States and civil society groups. I welcome consideration of this and other measures to expand accountability for environmental damage, both at the national and international level.”
The Taskforce on Nature Markets, an initiative of Geneva-based non-profit Nature Finance working across public policy and the finance world to “align global finance with climate resilient, nature positive and equitable outcomes”, has issued its in-depth report Making Nature Markets Work.
The report directly recommends establishing an criminal offence of ecocide in order to deter, prevent and hold accountable those engaging in illegal nature markets.
On 30 July, Deputy Karina Marlen Barrón Perales (PRI) proposed adding a new article to Mexico's Federal Penal Code which would impose 10 to 15 years in prison and a fine of 1,000 to 1,500 pesos per day on anyone who perpetrates "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”.
The Catalan Parliament has initiated a procedure to bring before the National Congress of Deputies a bill to include the crime of ecocide in the Spanish Penal Code. From here, the proposal will continue its progress. There will be several months of hearings in which amendments can be introduced to the text, after which a final vote will take place at the Catalan Parliament.
On Thursday 20th July, the Belgian Council of Ministers approved the second reading of a bill outlining proposed reforms to the nation’s penal code. Among the new crimes listed for inclusion is Ecocide. Pending approval by Parliament later this year, the development sees Belgium set to become the twelfth country to add the crime to its statute books.
Member of Parliament Lammert van Raan of Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals), officially launched a law proposal to criminalise ecocide in the Netherlands.
The proposal is currently subject to four weeks of public consultation prior to being submitted for advisory opinion to the Council of State. For the bill to become law, it will then need to be approved by Parliament.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has called on parliaments of its participating States to enshrine the concept of ecocide in national and international law.
Once every five years, representatives from Green Parties, Indigenous communities, civil society, academia, charities and NGOs from all over the world come together at the Global Greens Congress to take stock of the current state of the world and establish key policy priorities for the coming years. Among this year’s selected strategies for endorsement (all of which can be read in the Korea Declaration) was the growing global initiative to establish an international crime of ecocide.
At a UN Security Council open debate on the effects of climate change on peace and security, Austrian Ambassador Alexander Marschik raised the issue of widespread and longterm damage to the environment. He suggested that “the international community should consider making [such damage] a crime under international law — referred to as “ecocide”.
On World Ocean Day 2023, the celebrated oceanographer and conservationist Sylvia Earle joined other world leaders, such as Pope Frances and Jane Goodall, in support of the recognition of “ecocide” as an international crime, as advocated by global NGO Stop Ecocide International.
The breach of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine has displaced the Dnipro River, killed an unknown number of people and animals, and left many Ukrainians homeless. The immediate human consequences of the dam’s destruction have already been devastating and its ecological impacts, though still being assessed, have been repeatedly referred to as “ecocide”¹.
The Brazilian political party PSOL (Partido Socialismo e Liberdade) submitted a new Ecocide Bill to the Brazilian Congress. The proposed ecocide law seeks to criminalise “performing illegal or wanton acts with the knowledge that they generate a substantial probability of serious and widespread or long-term damage to the environment.”
On 9 May, the Spanish government officially answered to a written question submitted by Inés Sabanés Nadal, MP for Más País Verdes Equo, on whether the Ministry of Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge intended to support the proposal to recognise ecocide and autonomous crimes against the environment in the framework of the European Council.
On 15th April, the world premiere of the Ecocide Law Choir Suite took place at the Jyväskylä University in Finland to an audience of over 300 people. The concert comprised a suite of twelve songs by composers from USA, Great Britain, Scotland, Sweden, Sápmi (Sameland), Finland, Canada, Brazil and Denmark, all of whom have donated their contributions to the Choirs for Ecocide Law project.
On the 29th March, history was written on both sides of the Atlantic. In Brussels, the European Parliament unanimously proposed including “ecocide” into EU law while in New York, a UN resolution called for a legal Advisory Opinion on the obligations of states with respect to climate change.
A Vatican statement has repudiated the “doctrine of discovery” - a theory that served to justify seizure of indigenous lands by colonizing powers from the 15th century onwards. The “doctrine”, based on papal bulls of the time, was treated by political powers as a fundamental part of the conceptual structure of colonialism for hundreds of years, even making its way into the legal systems of several countries.
Following a historic unanimous Legal Affairs Committee vote, the European Parliament has announced its support for the inclusion of “ecocide”-level crimes in the EU’s revised environmental crime directive.
The Prime Minister of Iceland, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, is hopeful that the upcoming leadership summit of the Council of Europe will produce some positive developments on the matter of ecocide.
Jakobsdóttir expressed her optimism in the Icelandic parliament during a discussion responding to a parliamentary inquiry on the matter of ecocide from MP Andrés Ingi Jónsson of the Pirate Party on 20 March 2023.