Literature Review

This chapter engages Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa’s and French anthropologist Bruce Albert’s monumental The Falling Sky in the light of recent battles around the environment in the Amazon, particularly the building of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam. I reconstruct this major blow suffered by the Xingu River from political, ecological, and juridical points of view before presenting an account of Kopenawa’s counter-ethnography of what he calls ‘the merchandise people,’ i.e. our own Western civilization. I go on to offer some conclusions regarding the alternatives offered by The Falling Sky to the anthropocentric and highly destructive paradigms of relating to the Earth favoured by Euro-Brazilian and Euro-American societies.

Ecocide, the rampant destruction of ecosystems, poses an drawing close danger to worldwide biodiversity and the delicate equilibrium of Earth's ecosystems. This look at delves into the profound impact of ecocide on biodiversity, elucidating the way it disrupts ecosystems, drives species extinction, and undermines the resilience of herbal habitats. Enforcing both countrywide and international laws in opposition to ecocide faces huge demanding situations, from jurisdictional complexities to the absence of clear felony frameworks and strong enforcement mechanisms. The paper meticulously examines those hurdles, emphasizing the imperative for strengthened criminal mechanisms and enhanced international cooperation to keep perpetrators of ecocide accountable. The repercussions of ecocide amplify past on the spot atmosphere destruction, starting up a cascade of environmental degradation that affects interconnected ecosystems and species. Recognizing this elaborate interconnectedness is vital for devising strategies to save you and mitigate the far-accomplishing affects of ecocide. Effecting transformative exchange demands a holistic technique to ecocide advocacy, spanning grassroots mobilization, policy advocacy, company duty, and public consciousness campaigns. A strategic roadmap for advocacy endeavors is delineated, emphasizing the vital role of collaborative efforts among governments, non-governmental organizations, and civil society in riding systemic trade and safeguarding our planet from the perils of ecocide. In end, this take a look at underscores the pressing imperative to confront ecocide as a pressing environmental disaster, emphasizing the interconnectedness of ecosystems, the bold barriers to prison enforcement, and the urgent necessity of galvanizing collective movement to hold biodiversity and secure the future of our planet.

In the past decades, environmental displacement has emerged as a pressing global challenge, driven by climate change, environmental degradation, and resource depletion. Studies estimate that up to 1.2 billion people could be displaced, internally or across international borders by 2050, due to climate change and natural disasters. In light of this displacement reality, largely resulting from human activity, the international community must ensure that these vulnerable populations are not left behind. While the consequences of this phenomenon are increasingly evident, the absence of adequate legal frameworks under international refugee law for individuals facing environmental displacement poses a significant threat to their most basic human rights. The inadequacy of international human rights law, humanitarian law and environmental law in addressing these gaps advocates for the identification of new ways to protect environmental refugees. While the best alternative still remains to establish international legal protection for persons internally displaced and displaced across international borders through a new instrument, this recourse seems a long way off given the timeframe required to negotiate and implement such an instrument. The central research question revolves around the relevance of recognising ecocide in guaranteeing the rights of individuals at risk or victims of environmental displacement. Acknowledging environmental changes as a global crisis with profound societal implications to be urgently addressed, the study introduces the concept of ecocide as a potential legal remedy preventing the violation of the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. It establishes a foundation by tracing the historical development of ecocide and its emergence as a response to escalating environmental challenges. Drawing on the analysis of international law sources, the research identifies areas where ecocide law could create additional obligations on States and private actors, notably to tackle the root causes of environmental flight situations. Contributing to anchoring ecocide discourse in the human rights field, the study emphasises the relevance of ecocide in opening reparative avenues available to redress the harm suffered by victims of environmental flight. By recognising ecocide as a distinct crime, the legal framework can establish accountability for the perpetrators, who by their careless activities triggered environmental changes, fostering a more proactive approach to environmental protection and mitigating the impacts on vulnerable communities. Considering the transnational threat that environmental changes represent, the thesis underscores the need for a multi-jurisdictional approach, advocating for recognising ecocide at the national, regional, and international levels. This approach, while compensating for the inherent organisational and jurisdictional obstacles of the International Criminal Court, would ensure complementarity among different legal systems, enhancing efficiency and facilitating a more comprehensive response to ecocide cases. By calling for more political will and urgent actions to tackle environmental changes and their consequences on human mobility, the thesis envisions a future where ecocide is universally acknowledged and combated as a means to safeguard our planet and its inhabitants on the lands they have chosen.

Towards the end of 2021, Western media and intelligence sources showed satellite and intelligence photographs of Russian military activity on the border with Ukraine, which were published in the press. Russia was increasing and massing its military forces along the border

The article analyzes the recognition of ecocide as a crime by judicial institutions. Ecocide still has not re-ceived a well recognized definition. However, the proposal to acknowledge ecocide as an international crime developed by the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide, as well as the recognition of environmental crimes similar to ecocide as set out in the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of the environment through criminal law, should be highlighted and ana-lyzed. The purpose of the study is to analyze the impact of new approaches to the crime of ecocide on the practice of environmental courts and tribunals. By the application of general and specialized research meth-ods, the author identifies possible changes in the jurisprudence of already existing judicial institutions, as well as the likelihood of the emergence of international courts and tribunals dedicated to separate cases of ecocide. The article concludes that new approaches to the definition of ecocide may lead to further development of in-ternational environmental law and national environmental law of the Republic of Kazakhstan, as well as the possible emergence of effective international mechanisms to protect international environmental security.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster (1986), the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (1989), and the Kakhovka Dam destruction (2023) epitomise infamous ecocides, overshadowing countless lesser-known yet equally significant ecocidal incidents. The critical role of a healthy environment in ensuring human survival and progress underscores the necessity of addressing ecocide as a potential threat to human civilisation's long-term survival. In response to this growing concern, in June 2021 an Independent Expert Panel, initiated by Stop Ecocide in June 2021, comprising 12 specialists, proposed a legal definition of ecocide. Nevertheless, this definition garnered criticism from various quarters, including prominent academics and legal experts such as Kevin Jon Heller, Kai Ambos, Michael Karnavas, and Matthew Gillett. Subsequently, alternative definitions emerged from different groups, notably the Promise Institute for Human Rights (UCLA) Group of Experts and scholars, including Matthew Gillett. This chapter scrutinises the discussions around the undeniable need for a redefined concept of ecocide. It illustrates that while the other proposed definitions of ecocide may be more in accordance with legal principles (de lege artis), there is substantial room for improvement. Not only should the definition of ecocide be more explicit, but it should also contain as few lacunas as possible to anticipate any future occurrences. In this vein, Victor Tsilonis proposes an innovative definition of ecocide, aiming to fill existing gaps in the legal understanding of this crime. The chapter concludes that considering the International Criminal Court’s constraints in terms of financial, structural, and human resources, as well as its mandate prescribed by the Rome Statute and overseen by the Assembly of States-Parties, a compelling case can be made for the establishment of a new, specialised international legal institution: the International Criminal Court for the Protection of Environment" (ICCPE). This proposed institution would be specifically tailored to tackle the complex and thus far neglected crime of ecocide, providing a dedicated framework for addressing environmental destruction on an international scale.

This introduction situates the six articles included in the special issue in the context of the steady growth of ecocritical and zoocritical perspectives in Holocaust research. It delineates the key themes of the issue and offers summaries of the six contributions. It also speculates about the possible future developments in the transdisciplinary field of environmental genocide studies.

This article discusses the concept of "ecocide" as a criminal offense. In particular, it refers to the attempts of the legislator to formulate the definition of ecocide as an illegal criminal act and provides examples of specific court cases in which the environment and its components are recognized as subjects of law and protected in court from all kinds of encroachments. In addition, the article is intended to draw attention to the problem of determining damage caused to the environment as a criminal offense at the international level, and also to show that at present the concept of "ecocide" is not used in domestic judicial practice.

The concept of ecocide, mass damage and destruction of nature, dates back to the Vietnam War. Still, legal systems fall woefully short of addressing the ongoing ecocide. International environmental law lacks coherence and an overarching normative framework. The global economic system has no corresponding global governance system. Including ecocide as a crime in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court would be the first new international crime since 1945. Since the proposal of a definition of ecocide in 2021, interest from states and transnational organisations has soared. By focusing on the risk of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment, without requiring direct negative impact on humans, criminalising ecocide introduces responsibility for the worst violations of rights of Nature. It constitutes a legal red line: to here but no further. When international criminal law for the first time takes nature into account, this is a transformative step in an anthropocentric system. Ecocide law could be a ‘green swan’—a small change in one place within the system, which catalyses big changes of the whole, paving the way for a more respectful relationship between human society and nature.

We assess the effects of Russia’s war against Ukraine on soil, water, and air – including pollution by oil products, ammonia, heavy metals and radioactive substances; the threats posed by seizure of the Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants; and occupation of parts of the Emerald Network of biosphere reserves. The destruction of forests, steppes and wetlands by mines, bombing, shelling and fires, and the pollution of the environment, amount to ecocide. There is need to engage international organisations to confront environmental issues and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Amid widespread acknowledgment that we live on a planet in peril, the term “ecocide” packs a powerful rhetorical punch. Extant regulatory approaches to environmental protection feel insufficient in the face of the triple threat of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. International criminal prosecution for ecocide, by contrast, promises to meet the moment, and a recent proposal to introduce ecocide into the canon of core international crimes is gaining traction. Assuming the push to criminalize ecocide continues to gain momentum, this Article argues that the primary (and perhaps, sole) benefit that international criminal law can offer in this context is its expressive power and, that being the case, it is vital to clarify exactly what the expressive message of ecocide should be. The recent burst of scholarly attention to the proposed ecocide definition has largely bypassed this normative groundwork. This Article calls for time to be invested in grappling with hard questions about what exactly the harm is that ecocide seeks to vindicate which, in turn, requires determining how best to conceptualize the relationship that humans have with the natural environment. The Article contends that if the proposed legal definition of ecocide is codified as an international crime, it risks being used to prosecute those who are already marginalized, while reinforcing the artificial (and damaging) conceptual separation of humans from nature that is already entrenched in international law. Nonetheless, there is a window of opportunity, currently open, to embed within the ecocide definition a position that understands humans as inseparable from nature, which would align ecocide’s expressive message with long-standing Indigenous epistemologies, emerging human rights jurisprudence, and cutting-edge earth science. Time spent now on re-imagining the normative justification for ecocide’s criminalization could put international criminal law in the rare position of being at the vanguard of a progressive movement to build a greener international law.

Consulta�on has been taking place on an Ecocide Preven�on (Scotland) Bill, proposed as a private member’s Bill by Monica Lennon MSP.1 The proposal is connected with a wider interna�onal campaign to establish ecocide as a crime to ensure that those responsible for major environmental harm are held to account.