Burn rate: Can we pass a global law against ecocide, and would it help?

The International Criminal Court (ICC) currently addresses four international crimes against peace: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. Global advocacy groups are arguing that ecocide should be the fifth.

“The term would help reframe environmental destruction not as a cost of doing business, but as a punishable crime,” says environmental advocate Jojo Mehta, co-founder (alongside the late lawyer Polly Higgins) of the UK-based advocacy group Stop Ecocide International. The word itself matters profoundly, she adds. “It would help build what we urgently need: a cultural taboo and both fault and accountability, around any mass destruction of a natural ecosystem or resource.”

Enshrining the term, they say, would change how we recognise, prosecute and penalise “wanton, severe, widespread and long-term” damage to an environment.

The call for such a change is also coming from some of the world’s most ecologically vulnerable states, who argue that their current situation — at risk of being submerged amid a human-induced climate crisis they barely contributed to, and cannot possibly tackle alone — represents a kind of ecocide. The island nations of Vanuatu, Samoa and Fiji formally proposed in 2024 that the crime be added to the ICC charter.

Since the early 1990s, countries such as Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia have had domestic laws against offences that amount to ecocide. Most recently, in 2023, Belgium amended its penal code to include laws against ecocide. Acts that are punishable under such legislation include large-scale oil spills, mass deforestation and destruction of critical infrastructure.

ICC, meanwhile, has clauses against ecocide in wartime, which are rarely implemented because they come with a high threshold for damage, and strict requirements for proving intent.

What countries and lobbyists are now arguing for, in addition, are globally recognised peacetime laws that seek to establish a threshold of harm that should not be crossed. This would, at least in theory, hold countries accountable for acts of aggression, sabotage or negligence that amount to a scorched-earth policy.

As recently as 2023, for instance, Ukraine’s Kakhovka dam was destroyed while under Russian control (although the latter country denies involvement), causing catastrophic flooding. In 1991, oil wells were famously set ablaze by Iraqi forces in Kuwait, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in modern history (clean-up efforts are still struggling to undo the damage).

Such acts have wreaked havoc across centuries.

A famous early example dates to 1812, when Napoleon and his troops invaded Russia, and the Russian army responded by setting fire to the landscape as they fell back, destroying crops, storehouses, livestock; even setting the city of Moscow ablaze.

Militarily, the tactic worked. The French soldiers battled starvation, disease and eventually a winter so devastating that those who survived retreated. But it would be years, and in some cases decades, before the devastated landscape and its people recovered.

Similar tactics were used by China in 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, with troops setting large fires and flooding landscapes to thwart the Japanese invasion. Historical records indicate that the scorched-earth policy has roots in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Ancient Rome, with commanders destroying and poisoning agricultural resources as a form of punishment and control.

SECOND NATURE

Could we not just frame the laws? Does it matter what we call it? We’ll get to that in a bit. First, a look at the term itself.

The word ecocide is about 50 years old. It was coined in the 1970s by the American biologist Arthur Galston, after he discovered that his early research in plant biology had contributed to the development of the defoliant Agent Orange, which was now being used as a chemical weapon by the US amid the Vietnam War (1955-75)

Agent Orange would cause immense suffering and claim hundreds of thousands of lives. It has been linked to cancers, genetic diseases, and babies born with birth defects generations later. It continues to poison acres of forests and soil.

As he campaigned to have the use of Agent Orange stopped (it eventually was), Galston argued that any activity or substance that caused this kind of damage — that essentially breached a threshold of harm and crossed over into ecocide — ought to be outlawed.

The legacy of such activism linked to a single, evocative term is a strong one.

The coining of the term “smog”, a portmanteau of smoke and fog, drew attention to its severe public health implications, over a century ago.

“Using the word ‘endangered’ for species has been particularly powerful because it elicits the emotional reaction to ‘danger’,” says Arran Stibbe, professor of ecological linguistics at University of Gloucestershire.

More recently, the neologism Anthropocene has helped scientists and laypeople reframe perceptions of how our global environment has changed, and the extent to which human activity has played a role.

Interestingly, globally recognised anti-ecocide laws for peacetime could have implications for corporate governance too. Criminalising the most severe and irreversible corporate environmental damage could help reframe what is considered acceptable, financeable, and insurable, encouraging businesses to adopt new practices.

Parts of the corporate world would likely favour such a shift, Mehta says. There has already been some advocacy in this direction, by global bodies such as the International Corporate Governance Network. “Companies that invest in responsible practices are currently often at a disadvantage because money typically flows toward the cheapest operations, and sustainability costs more,” she adds. “An ecocide law in that context could put sustainable businesses ahead of the game.”

“Effectiveness would depend on political will,” Mehta admits. “But without the law in place, accountability is simply not possible.”