From Genocide to Ecocide. Essentials of a new category of international crime against humanity

Abstract

The recent legislative initiative for the adoption of an amendment to the Rome Statute on ecocide as a new category of crime against humankind has an impressive normative background in the classical doctrine of international criminal law pioneered by Raphael Lemkin, in the prescriptions of the ethics, and in the discourse of an international community aware that the protection of the totality of life together with the ecosphere is currently the most urgent priority. Between 2019 and 2021, the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide at the European Parliament developed a legal definition of ecocide. In the following article, I discuss 1) the nexus between genocide and ecocide, 2) the prescriptions of the ethics of responsibility for the future of all life on earth, further justifying the need to prosecute the perpetrators of ecocide, 3) specificities of ecocide as a comprehensive and expectedly effective category of international criminal law in comparison to the human right "to" a healthy and legally protected environment and in comparison to constitutional ecocentric rights, as more declarative but less effective. When adopted into the Rome Statute, the new category of crimes against humankind may equip the International Criminal Court in The Hague with an effective legal tool to prosecute perpetrators of ecocides.