An expert team of international lawyers has revealed a new legal definition for “ecocide” which they are hoping will be adopted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). If adopted, ecocide would then stand among genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression as acts that can be prosecuted at the ICC. This would be a major step towards real environmental accountability and would allow world leaders and corporate chiefs to be prosecuted for the destruction of the world’s ecosystems.

The lawyers explained ecocide as:

“unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”

For an act to be considered ecocide it requires “reckless disregard” which leads to “serious adverse changes, disruption or harm to any element of the environment” and this damage would have to “extend beyond a limited geographic area, cross state boundaries, or [be] suffered by an entire ecosystem or species or a large number of human beings”. The definition of ecocide also requires the damage to be “irreversible” or unable to be fixed “within a reasonable period of time” and its reach can apply anywhere within the Earth’s biosphere and even outer space.

To allow for the global prosecution of those who commit ecocide, any of the ICC’s 123 member states can suggest it as an amendment to their court’s charter, also known as the Rome Statute. If the court’s annual assembly decides to pass the amendment, member states must have a two-thirds majority to adopt the draft law before it can be ratified and enforced in each member’s own national jurisdiction.

The lawyers hope for the ICC to endorse the new legal term which would be a landmark moment in the fight for environmental accountability. Philippe Sands, one of the experts who teaches law at University College London, commented:

“In international law you get occasional moments where remarkable things happen, I wonder if this might be such a moment.”

Despite such remarkable progress, there are also significant environmental setbacks. Ministers in the UK are currently set to approve a new oil and gas project in the North Sea, mere months before Britain is due to host the global climate change conference in Glasgow. The oilfield, just off the coast of the Shetland Islands, is expected to extract 150 million barrels of oil which is the equivalent of operating 16 coal-fired power stations for a year. In addition, the project will emit over three million tonnes of carbon during the course of its lifetime, which is expected to last until 2050.

By approving the oil project, Britain is going against its pledge to be net carbon neutral by 2050 as well as ignoring recommendations made by a government-commissioned report from the International Energy Agency that called for “no investment in new fossil fuel supply projects”. Caroline Rance, from Friends of the Earth Scotland, commented:

“It is simply not compatible with the science to go ahead with exploiting these fields and the fact that it is even being considered shows the current system is not fit for purpose.”

The tendency of major governments to ignore their global responsibilities is why many climate activists approach environmental accountability through a human rights lens. On 21 June 2021, over 200 civil society and Indigenous Peoples groups sent a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), calling on them to set up a new mandate for a Special Rapporteur on human rights and climate change. In their report, the groups state:

“As the impacts of the climate crisis worsen and aggravate intersecting forms of discrimination against various peoples, individuals and groups in our societies, action can no longer be postponed at the HRC and urgent measures to protect people and the planet must be adopted.”

The groups express their hopes for an independent expert with the powers to encourage governments to uphold their human rights obligations in relation to the environmental impacts. And while many governments have acknowledged that climate change poses challenges to their ability to uphold human rights, there still needs to be enforced accountability through country visits, communications to governments, studies, and expert consultations.