Ecocide: Criminalizing the Destruction of Our Shared Home

Humanity confronts a planetary crisis of unprecedented scale, a “triple threat of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.”¹ Extant regulatory frameworks and civil lawsuits, while well-intentioned, increasingly feel insufficient to address the magnitude of the peril.² In this context, the term ‘ecocide’ has emerged with a powerful rhetorical punch, promising to meet the moment by framing the mass damage and destruction of the natural world not merely as a tort or a regulatory breach, but as a crime on par with the most serious atrocities known to humankind.³ The movement to criminalise ecocide represents a critical juncture in international law, proposing not just a new crime but a fundamental reorientation of humanity’s legal and moral relationship with the natural world. This report will trace the concept’s evolution from a term of protest to a precise legal instrument, examine its real-world manifestations through devastating case studies, analyse the complex legal pathways to its recognition, and propose a multi-faceted strategy to bring the destruction to a halt.

I. The Genesis of a Crime: Defining and Historicising Ecocide

The journey of the concept of ecocide charts a remarkable evolution from a potent anti-war slogan to a meticulously drafted legal definition, shaped by key historical moments, legal scholars, and dedicated advocates.

A Term Born from War: The Vietnam Context

The word ‘ecocide’ was born from the scorched earth of the Vietnam War. In February 1970, at the Conference on War and National Responsibility in Washington, D.C., US biologist Arthur W. Galston proposed a new international agreement to ban what he termed ‘ecocide’.⁴ Galston, whose own research had identified the defoliant properties of a chemical later developed into Agent Orange, was protesting the US military’s systematic use of herbicides to destroy the forest canopy and croplands of Vietnam.⁵ He framed this “ecological warfare” as the environmental equivalent of genocide: the wilful destruction of the natural environment, which ultimately harms all life.⁶

The term resonated immediately on the world stage. In 1972, at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme declared in his opening speech that the “immense destruction brought about by indiscriminate bombing, by large scale use of bulldozers and herbicides is an outrage sometimes described as ecocide, which requires urgent international attention.”⁷ This high-profile condemnation cemented the word in the lexicon of international environmental discourse.

Early Legal Formulations and Frustrations

Following its dramatic entry into public consciousness, legal scholars and international bodies began to grapple with how to translate the moral force of ‘ecocide’ into binding law. In 1973, Professor Richard Falk proposed a draft International Convention on the Crime of Ecocide, providing an early legal framework.⁸ The concept gained traction within United Nations bodies throughout the 1970s and 1980s. A UN Sub-Commission proposed adding ecocide to the Genocide Convention in 1978, though the idea was ultimately rejected in 1985.⁹

The most significant early debate occurred within the UN’s International Law Commission (ILC) as it drafted the precursor to the Rome Statute, the legal foundation of the International Criminal Court (ICC). From 1984 to 1996, the ILC considered including a crime of “wilful and severe damage to the environment.”¹⁰ An early draft, Article 26, specifically criminalised “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment.”¹¹ However, in a pivotal and ultimately fateful decision in 1996, the provision was dropped from the final draft. This move, reportedly driven by objections from powerful states including the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, effectively erased a standalone peacetime environmental crime from the future court’s mandate.¹² The result was that the Rome Statute, when finally adopted, contained only a single, narrow provision related to environmental harm: a war crime with a prohibitively high threshold that has never been successfully prosecuted.¹³

The Modern Revival and the Independent Expert Panel (IEP) Definition

The idea of ecocide lay largely dormant in international law for over a decade until it was powerfully revived in the late 2000s by the late Scottish barrister Polly Higgins. Higgins dedicated the last years of her life to campaigning for the recognition of ecocide as a fifth international crime, presenting a draft definition to the UN Law Commission in 2010.¹⁴ In 2017, she co-founded the organisation Stop Ecocide International with Jojo Mehta to spearhead a global campaign to amend the Rome Statute.¹⁵

This modern movement rapidly gained momentum, attracting endorsements from influential figures such as Pope Francis, who called for ecocide to be recognised as a “fifth category of crimes against peace,” and climate activist Greta Thunberg.¹⁶ Critically, it also garnered state-level support, with climate-vulnerable island nations like Vanuatu and the Maldives formally calling on ICC member states to consider the amendment in 2019.¹⁷

Recognising the need for a legally robust and politically viable definition, the Stop Ecocide Foundation convened an Independent Expert Panel (IEP) of leading international criminal and environmental lawyers in 2020. In June 2021, the panel unveiled a consensus definition, drafted specifically for integration into the Rome Statute.¹⁸ The proposed definition reads:

“For the purpose of this Statute, ‘ecocide’ means 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.”¹⁹

The panel meticulously defined the core terms to align with existing international law, providing clarity for potential prosecution:²⁰

• “Wanton” means with reckless disregard for damage which would be clearly excessive in relation to the social and economic benefits anticipated.
• “Severe” means damage which involves very serious adverse changes, disruption or harm to any element of the environment, including grave impacts on human life or natural, cultural or economic resources.
• “Widespread” means damage which extends beyond a limited geographic area, crosses state boundaries, or is suffered by an entire ecosystem or species or a large number of human beings.
• “Long-term” means damage which is irreversible or which cannot be redressed through natural recovery within a reasonable period of time.
• “Environment” means the earth, its biosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, as well as outer space.

This history reveals a clear maturation of the concept. It began as an analogy, linking environmental destruction to the ultimate human crime of genocide to convey moral outrage. This gave it immense rhetorical power, but for it to function in a court of law, this rhetoric had to be translated into precise, definable, and prosecutable elements. The work of Polly Higgins provided a crucial bridge, but her early definitions were seen by some as legally challenging. The IEP’s definition is the culmination of this half-century process. It deliberately draws on legal precedents from instruments like the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute itself to create a text that is both ambitious in its scope and legally pragmatic, designed to “mesh well with existing laws.”²¹

A fundamental shift in this evolution has been the move from a crime of war to a crime applicable in peacetime. The concept was born from the battlefield of Vietnam, and the only existing provision in international criminal law is explicitly tied to armed conflict. Yet, as the following case studies demonstrate, most mass environmental destruction occurs in peacetime, driven by state and corporate economic policies. The modern push, codified by the IEP, is to extend legal protection to the environment at all times. This is the most critical aspect of the proposed crime, as it challenges the long-held assumption that nations and corporations can pursue economic activities that result in catastrophic environmental harm, so long as it is not part of a war.

Author/Body	Year	Key Elements of Definition	Context/Significance
Richard Falk	1973	Focused on environmental warfare, including use of WMDs, herbicides, and weather modification for military purposes.²²	Directly influenced by the Vietnam War; established an early, war-focused legal framework.
Polly Higgins	2010	“Extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s)… to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants… has been severely diminished.” Included human agency or “other causes.”²³	Revived the movement for the 21st century; aimed for a broad crime applicable in peacetime, initially proposing a strict liability offence.
Independent Expert Panel (IEP)	2021	“Unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage…”²⁴	A consensus definition drafted by legal experts specifically to be compatible with the Rome Statute, balancing ambition with political and legal feasibility.

II. The Anatomy of Destruction: Case Studies in Ecocide

The abstract legal debate over ecocide is grounded in the stark reality of large-scale environmental devastation. The following case studies illustrate the varied forms that ecocide takes and underscore the urgent need for a legal framework capable of addressing them.

The Chemical War: Agent Orange in Vietnam

The US military’s Operation Ranch Hand (1961-1971) saw the spraying of nearly 80 million litres of chemical defoliants—most famously Agent Orange—over South Vietnam.²⁵ The campaign was designed to strip away forest cover and destroy enemy food crops.²⁶ The scale was immense, covering an estimated 3.1 million hectares of land, affecting over 20% of South Vietnam’s forests and up to half of its vital mangrove ecosystems.²⁷

The ecological impact has been catastrophic and enduring. Agent Orange was contaminated with TCDD, a highly toxic and persistent dioxin that remains in Vietnam’s soil, water, and food chain to this day.²⁸ The spraying caused a massive loss of biodiversity, destroyed animal habitats, and triggered severe soil erosion.²⁹ Many forests have never recovered, leaving behind barren patches of invasive grasses. The devastation directly contributed to the extinction of the Vietnamese Javan rhinoceros.³⁰ The human impact has been equally horrific. Up to four million Vietnamese people were exposed to the chemicals, resulting in generations suffering from severe health problems, including a high incidence of cancers, neurological disorders, and heartbreaking birth defects.³¹

The Vanishing Sea: The Aral Sea Catastrophe

In the 1960s, the Soviet Union, in a monumental feat of engineering, diverted the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, the two great rivers that fed the Aral Sea, to irrigate vast new cotton plantations in the Central Asian desert.³² This state-planned policy, pursued with full knowledge of the likely consequences, triggered one of the worst ecological disasters in human history.

Once the world’s fourth-largest lake, the Aral Sea has shrunk to less than a tenth of its original size; its eastern basin completely disappeared by 2014, leaving behind a new, toxic desert called the Aralkum.³³ As the water volume plummeted, salinity skyrocketed from 10 parts per thousand to over 92 ppt, killing off more than 20 native fish species and obliterating a fishing industry that once employed tens of thousands of people.³⁴ The exposed seabed, a 60,000-square-kilometre wasteland laden with salt, pesticides, and fertilizer residue from the cotton fields, became the source of ferocious dust storms that poisoned agricultural land hundreds of kilometres away.³⁵ The regional climate grew harsher, with hotter summers and colder winters.³⁶ For the local population, the disaster has been a slow-motion public health crisis, with unusually high rates of respiratory illnesses, kidney disease, and cancers linked to the toxic dust.³⁷

The Lungs of the Planet Under Assault: Deforestation in the Amazon

The Amazon rainforest, a critical global ecosystem that stores up to 200 billion tons of carbon, is being destroyed at an alarming rate.³⁸ The primary driver is cattle ranching, which accounts for roughly 80% of deforestation, as forests are cleared for pasture to satisfy global demand for beef.³⁹ Other major causes include industrial agriculture for crops like soy and palm oil, illegal logging, mining, and large-scale infrastructure projects such as dams and highways.⁴⁰

Nearly a fifth of the Brazilian rainforest has already been lost, pushing thousands of plant and animal species toward extinction and threatening to tip the entire ecosystem into an irreversible state of collapse.⁴¹ The destruction is often driven by criminal enterprises and has been exacerbated by political shifts, such as the surge in deforestation that occurred under the administration of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who actively weakened environmental protections.⁴² For the 1.5 million Indigenous people who call the Amazon home, deforestation is an existential threat. Their legally protected territories are invaded, their resources are plundered, and they face violence and exposure to deadly diseases from illegal miners and loggers.⁴³

A Delta Drowning in Oil: The Niger Delta

For over 60 years, the Niger Delta in Nigeria has been the site of intensive oil extraction, resulting in what can only be described as a chronic, slow-motion ecocide. An estimated 13 million barrels of crude oil have been spilled into the delicate delta ecosystem since 1958 from thousands of incidents, while the continuous flaring of natural gas releases toxic fumes into the atmosphere.⁴⁴

The environmental consequences have been devastating. Between 5% and 10% of Nigeria’s vital mangrove forests have been wiped out, as oil spills suffocate the trees’ root systems.⁴⁵ The pollution contaminates soil, groundwater, and surface water, destroying aquatic life and disrupting the entire food web.⁴⁶ This has destroyed the traditional livelihoods of the region’s inhabitants, who depend on fishing and farming.⁴⁷ The human health impact is a severe crisis. The contamination of drinking water and food with known carcinogens like benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons has led to widespread respiratory problems, skin diseases, infertility, cancers, and an increase in childhood malnutrition.⁴⁸

A Modern Disaster: The Deepwater Horizon Spill

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in the largest offshore oil spill in US history. Over 87 days, the damaged wellhead gushed 134 million gallons of crude oil into the ocean, fouling 1,300 miles of shoreline from Texas to Florida.⁴⁹

The ecological damage was acute and widespread. Thousands of marine mammals and sea turtles were killed, triggering the largest and longest marine mammal “unusual mortality event” ever recorded in the Gulf.⁵⁰ An estimated one million birds perished.⁵¹ In the deep ocean, ancient and slow-growing coral communities were smothered and killed by oil and chemical dispersants.⁵² The spill had a devastating economic impact on the region’s fishing and tourism industries. A decade later, the ecosystem remains scarred; dolphins in the hardest-hit areas continue to suffer from lung disease and reproductive failure, and the long-term effects on many species are still unknown.⁵³

These cases reveal that ecocide is not a monolithic crime. It manifests through different mechanisms of state and corporate action, from the military ecocide of Vietnam to the state-developmental ecocide of the Aral Sea, the corporate-extractive ecocide of the Amazon and Niger Delta, and the corporate-disaster ecocide of Deepwater Horizon. Furthermore, in every instance, mass damage to ecosystems is inextricably linked to severe harm to human populations, particularly the most marginalized. The destruction of forests poisons people; the drying of a sea creates a public health catastrophe; the pollution of a delta destroys the health and livelihoods of its inhabitants. This demonstrates that ecocide is simultaneously a crime against nature and a crime against humanity, bridging the often-debated divide between ecocentric and anthropocentric legal approaches.

III. The Legal Frontier: The Global Push to Criminalise Ecocide

The campaign to make ecocide a punishable offence is being fought on two main fronts: at the international level, with the International Criminal Court as the ultimate goal, and through a burgeoning movement to enact national and regional laws.

The International Criminal Court: The Ultimate Goal

The central objective of the modern ecocide movement is to amend the Rome Statute to establish ecocide as the fifth international crime prosecuted by the ICC, placing it alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.⁵⁴ This ambition stems from the profound inadequacy of the current statute to address environmental destruction. As noted, the only explicit environmental protection is Article 8(2)(b)(iv), a war crime provision whose high threshold—requiring proof of intentional attack causing damage that is “widespread, long-term and severe” and “clearly excessive” to the military advantage—has rendered it effectively unusable.⁵⁵ The statute remains overwhelmingly anthropocentric, concerned with harms that have a direct and obvious impact on people, not with harms that primarily affect ecosystems.⁵⁶

The path to amending the Rome Statute is fraught with legal and political challenges. One significant hurdle is the requirement for mens rea, or criminal intent. Article 30 of the statute requires proof of ‘intent and knowledge’ for a crime to be established.⁵⁷ Proving that a corporate CEO or government minister intended to destroy an ecosystem is exceptionally difficult. The IEP definition cleverly navigates this by including “wanton” acts—those committed with reckless disregard for damage clearly excessive to anticipated benefits—and requiring only knowledge of a “substantial likelihood” of severe harm.⁵⁸ This lowers the bar from specific intent but still presents a formidable challenge for prosecutors.

Further obstacles lie in the ICC’s inherent limitations. The court only has jurisdiction over individuals, not corporations directly, meaning prosecutors would need to identify and charge specific high-level decision-makers.⁵⁹ Its jurisdiction is also not retroactive, so it could not prosecute historical acts of ecocide, and its territorial scope is limited to its 124 member states, which notably excludes major powers like the United States, China, and Russia.⁶⁰ The greatest barrier, however, is political. Amending the statute requires a proposal from a member state, followed by a period of negotiation and, ultimately, adoption by a two-thirds majority vote of the Assembly of States Parties.⁶¹

The Rise of National and Regional Laws: A Parallel Path

While the campaign at the ICC continues, a parallel and mutually reinforcing strategy is unfolding at the national and regional levels. The European Union has emerged as a vanguard in this effort. In 2024, the EU adopted a new Environmental Crime Directive that introduces a “qualified offence” for the most serious environmental harms, explicitly referencing acts “comparable to ecocide.”⁶² This directive compels all 27 member states to strengthen their national criminal codes, creating a powerful regional legal bloc against severe environmental destruction.

Inspired by the global movement and the IEP definition, a growing number of individual nations are also pioneering ecocide legislation. Countries including France, Belgium, Spain, and Finland have either passed or are actively considering laws to criminalise ecocide domestically.⁶³ Beyond Europe, nations like Brazil and Mexico are also advancing similar bills.⁶⁴ This momentum was further solidified in May 2025 with the adoption of a new Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law, the first international treaty to explicitly reference the term ‘ecocide’ in its preamble.⁶⁵

This dual-track strategy is symbiotic. The ultimate prize remains an amendment to the Rome Statute, which would create a universal moral and legal baseline. However, achieving this is a long-term political project. In the interim, the proliferation of national and regional laws serves multiple crucial functions. It provides immediate tools for prosecution within those jurisdictions, allows for legal experimentation with definitions and enforcement mechanisms, and, most importantly, builds a body of state practice and a sense of legal obligation (opinio juris). The stronger the legal norm against ecocide becomes at the national level, the more compelling the argument for its adoption at the international level.

Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of this legal push is its focus on shifting from state responsibility or corporate civil liability to individual criminal liability. For decades, environmental law has largely relied on administrative penalties or civil lawsuits, which often result in fines. For large corporations, such fines can be treated as a predictable “cost of doing business” and are simply factored into their budgets, failing to act as a meaningful deterrent.⁶⁶ Criminal law fundamentally alters this calculus. The prospect of personal criminal liability—including the possibility of imprisonment—for top decision-makers like CEOs, corporate board members, and government ministers is a powerful deterrent that cannot be easily monetized on a balance sheet.⁶⁷ This approach targets the “directing minds” behind ecocidal acts, forcing a far more cautious and responsible consideration of environmental risks at the highest echelons of power.⁶⁸

IV. Charting a Path Forward: Strategies to Halt Ecocide

Halting ecocide requires a holistic, multi-layered strategy that combines top-down legal reform with a fundamental paradigm shift in our relationship with nature and sustained bottom-up political pressure from civil society.

Top-Down: Strengthening Legal Frameworks

The dual legal imperative of pursuing an amendment to the Rome Statute while simultaneously expanding national and regional laws is paramount. An international crime of ecocide creates a global standard, a moral red line, and a court of last resort for the world’s worst environmental atrocities.⁶⁹ National laws, in turn, enable more frequent and accessible prosecutions, allowing states to hold perpetrators accountable within their own justice systems.⁷⁰

The primary goal of this legal architecture is prevention, not just punishment.⁷¹ By criminalising the most severe forms of environmental harm, the law establishes a clear boundary that corporate boards, investors, and insurers cannot ignore. The risk of criminal liability will fundamentally alter decision-making, steering investment away from potentially ecocidal projects and toward safer, more sustainable practices.⁷² This creates a level playing field, ensuring that businesses committed to sustainability are no longer at a competitive disadvantage against less scrupulous actors who externalise their environmental costs onto nature and society.⁷³

A Paradigm Shift: The Rights of Nature

Underpinning the legal movement is a profound philosophical shift known as the “Rights of Nature” or “Earth Jurisprudence.” This ecocentric framework posits that natural ecosystems—rivers, forests, mountains—are not mere property to be owned and exploited, but are living entities with inherent, legally enforceable rights to exist, flourish, and evolve.⁷⁴ This challenges the deeply entrenched anthropocentric worldview of Western law, which treats nature as a collection of resources for human use.⁷⁵

This is not merely a theoretical concept. Ecuador has enshrined the Rights of Nature in its constitution.⁷⁶ Courts and legislatures in countries like New Zealand and India, as well as dozens of municipalities in the United States, have granted legal personhood to rivers and other ecosystems, allowing legal guardians to sue on their behalf.⁷⁷ Ecocide law is the logical and necessary criminal extension of this philosophy. If a river has a legal right to flow freely and be free from contamination, then an act that catastrophically violates that right is not just a regulatory breach but a serious crime. Criminalisation provides the “teeth” for the Rights of Nature, establishing the ultimate penalty for the most egregious violations.⁷⁸

Bottom-Up: The Power of Civil Society and Political Will

Legal and philosophical shifts do not occur in a vacuum; they are driven by concerted human action. The strategy to halt ecocide can be seen as a “pincer movement,” combining top-down legal expertise with bottom-up social and political pressure.

On one side are the expert advocacy organisations, with Stop Ecocide International at the centre. These groups perform the crucial work of legal drafting, diplomatic lobbying, and coordinating a global network of lawyers, politicians, and scientists to build a credible and compelling case for reform.⁷⁹ On the other side are the grassroots movements, such as Extinction Rebellion and End Ecocide on Earth, which raise public awareness and create political pressure through non-violent direct action and civil disobedience.⁸⁰ While their methods differ, these movements create the sense of public urgency that compels politicians to take the issue seriously.⁸¹

This combination of public and expert pressure creates the political space for diplomatic leadership to emerge. The role of climate-vulnerable nations, particularly the Pacific island state of Vanuatu, has been indispensable. Along with allies like Fiji, Samoa, and the Maldives, Vanuatu has formally championed the ecocide amendment at the ICC and the UN, giving the movement the official state sponsorship it needs to advance through international legal channels.⁸² Finally, individual citizens have a role to play through raising awareness, supporting campaigns, engaging in citizen journalism to expose local environmental crimes, and making conscious consumer choices to divest from companies engaged in destructive practices.⁸³

Criminalising ecocide is not a panacea for the world’s environmental crises, but it is a keystone intervention that can strengthen the entire structure of environmental governance. Establishing a crime for the most severe harms will have a powerful ripple effect. It will force all existing environmental regulations to be taken more seriously.⁸⁴ It will make multilateral agreements like the Paris Climate Accord easier to adhere to by creating an enforceable backstop.⁸⁵ Most importantly, it will help to shift cultural norms, creating a “healthy societal taboo around mass damage to nature.”⁸⁶ Just as laws against genocide set a clear moral and legal boundary for human-to-human conduct, a law against ecocide would set a necessary boundary for human-to-nature conduct, compelling our legal and economic systems to operate within the finite limits of our planet.

Conclusion

The concept of ecocide has travelled a long and arduous path, from a protest slogan born in the crucible of the Vietnam War to a sophisticated legal proposal now being debated in the halls of parliaments and at the International Criminal Court. The devastating case studies of destroyed ecosystems and shattered human lives, from the poisoned forests of Vietnam to the desiccated Aral Sea basin, provide a stark and urgent testament to the need for such a law. The era of treating mass environmental destruction as an acceptable cost of doing business or an unfortunate externality of development is drawing to a close.

The criminalisation of ecocide is more than just a new legal tool. It is the expression of a necessary evolution in human consciousness—a legal recognition of our profound and inescapable dependence on the natural world and our solemn responsibility to protect the planetary systems that sustain all life. It is about embedding the reality of ecological limits into the very heart of our systems of justice. While the road to global recognition remains challenging, the momentum is clear and growing. The adoption of an international crime of ecocide would mark a pivotal moment in human history, signaling that the age of impunity for the destruction of our shared home is over. It is a legal idea whose time has come, essential for securing a just and livable future for all generations.

Notes

1. Rebecca Hamilton, “Criminalizing Ecocide,” Harvard Human Rights Journal 38, no. 1 (2024): 71.
2. Sara K. Phillips, “Unpacking ‘Ecocide’: A Note of Caution for International Criminalization,” Stockholm Environment Institute, July 9, 2021, https://www.sei.org/perspectives/unpacking-ecocide-international-law/.
3. Hamilton, “Criminalizing Ecocide,” 70.
4. Arthur W. Galston, interview by David Zierler, The Origins of Ecocide, directed by Joelle N. Ziemian (2013; New Haven, CT: Yale University), video.
5. David Zierler, The Invention of Ecocide: Agent Orange, Vietnam, and the Scientists Who Changed the Way We Think About the Environment (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 45.
6. Zierler, The Invention of Ecocide, 46.
7. Olof Palme, “Speech at the UN Conference on the Human Environment” (speech, Stockholm, Sweden, June 6, 1972), UN Audiovisual Library.
8. Richard A. Falk, “Environmental Warfare and Ecocide — Facts, Appraisal, and Proposals,” Revue Belge de Droit International 4, no. 1 (1973): 1–27.
9. United Nations, Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, E/CN.4/Sub.2/416 (New York: UN, 1978), 128-134.
10. Anastasia Telesetsky, “Ecocide,” in The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law, ed. Kevin Jon Heller et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 473.
11. International Law Commission, Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind, A/CN.4/L.459 (Geneva: ILC, 1991), Article 26.
12. Anja Gauger et al., The Ecocide Project: ‘Ecocide is the Missing Fifth Crime Against Peace’ (London: Human Rights Consortium, 2013), 22.
13. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, art. 8(2)(b)(iv), July 17, 1998, 2187 U.N.T.S. 90.
14. Polly Higgins, Eradicating Ecocide: Laws and Governance to Prevent the Destruction of Our Planet, 2nd ed. (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 2015), 68.
15. Stop Ecocide International, “Our History,” Ecocide Law, accessed October 26, 2025, https://ecocidelaw.com/history/.
16. Pope Francis, “Address to the Participants in the World Congress of the International Association of Penal Law” (address, Vatican City, November 15, 2019), https://www.vatican.va.
17. Republic of Vanuatu, “Statement at the 18th Session of the Assembly of States Parties” (statement, The Hague, Netherlands, December 2, 2019).
18. Stop Ecocide Foundation, “Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide: Commentary and Core Text,” June 2021, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ca2608ab914493c64ef1f6d/t/60d7479cf8e7e5461534dd07/1624721314430/SE+Foundation+Commentary+and+core+text+revised+%281%29.pdf.
19. Stop Ecocide Foundation, “Independent Expert Panel,” 2.
20. Stop Ecocide Foundation, “Independent Expert Panel,” 3-4.
21. Philippe Sands, quoted in “Launch of the legal definition of ‘ecocide’,” Stop Ecocide International, June 22, 2021, https://www.stopecocide.earth/legal-definition.
22. Falk, “Environmental Warfare and Ecocide,” 15-18.
23. Polly Higgins, “Proposal for a Law of Ecocide,” submission to the International Law Commission, 2010.
24. Stop Ecocide Foundation, “Independent Expert Panel,” 2.
25. Australian Government Department of Veterans’ Affairs, “Agent Orange and other chemicals in the Vietnam War,” ANZAC Portal, accessed October 26, 2025, https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-and-missions/vietnam-war-1962-1975/events/aftermath/agent-orange.
26. Zierler, The Invention of Ecocide, 1.
27. Kiem N. Truong et al., “Agent Orange: Half-Century Effects On The Vietnamese Wildlife Have Been Ignored,” Environmental Science & Technology 55, no. 23 (2021): 15575–15577, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c06613.
28. Australian Government, “Agent Orange.”
29. Truong et al., “Agent Orange,” 15576.
30. World Wildlife Fund, “Javan Rhino,” Species Directory, accessed October 26, 2025, https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/javan-rhino.
31. Truong et al., “Agent Orange,” 15575.
32. Philip Micklin, “The Aral Sea Disaster,” Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 35 (2007): 47-72.
33. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “The Shrinking Aral Sea,” Earth Observatory, August 24, 2014, https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/AralSea.
34. Micklin, “Aral Sea Disaster,” 55.
35. The World Bank, Saving a Corner of the Aral Sea (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007), 12.
36. T. M. T. T. Columbia, “Environmental Impacts of the Aral Sea Crisis,” Columbia University, accessed October 26, 2025, https://www.columbia.edu/~tmt2120/environmental%20impacts.htm.
37. World Health Organization, The Aral Sea Crisis: Report of a WHO Mission (Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe, 1999), 8.
38. Scott Denning, quoted in “The Amazon is a Carbon Bomb,” Undark Magazine, December 20, 2021, https://undark.org/2021/12/20/ecocide-amazon/.
39. World Wildlife Fund, Living Amazon Report 2022 (Gland, Switzerland: WWF, 2022), 25.
40. Peter M. Fearnside, “Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon,” in Amazonia and Global Change, ed. Michael Keller et al. (Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union, 2009), 30-32.
41. Fearnside, “Deforestation,” 28.
42. Gert-Peter Bruch, quoted in “Protecting the heart of Earth from ecocide,” The Ecologist, July 5, 2023, https://theecologist.org/2023/jul/05/protecting-heart-earth-ecocide.
43. World Resources Institute, “Nature Crime in the Amazon,” WRI Insights, October 26, 2024, https://www.wri.org/insights/nature-crime-amazon-deforestation.
44. N. P. Ogele, “Oil Spills in the Niger Delta: A Public Health Emergency,” American Journal of Public Health 103, no. 5 (2013): 822.
45. United Nations Environment Programme, Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland (Nairobi: UNEP, 2011), 54.
46. Ogele, “Oil Spills in the Niger Delta,” 823.
47. Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface, “Witnessing Ecocide in the Niger Delta,” Stop Ecocide International, April 10, 2024, https://www.stopecocide.earth/sei-guest-blog/witnessing-ecocide-niger-delta.
48. Ogele, “Oil Spills in the Niger Delta,” 824.
49. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill,” NOAA Office of Response and Restoration, accessed October 26, 2025, https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/oil-and-chemical-spills/significant-incidents/deepwater-horizon-oil-spill.
50. NOAA, “Sea Turtles, Dolphins, and Whales – 10 Years after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill,” NOAA Fisheries, April 15, 2020, https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/marine-life-distress/sea-turtles-dolphins-and-whales-10-years-after-deepwater-horizon-oil.
51. Smithsonian Ocean, “Gulf Oil Spill,” Smithsonian Institution, accessed October 26, 2025, https://ocean.si.edu/conservation/pollution/gulf-oil-spill.
52. Smithsonian Ocean, “Gulf Oil Spill.”
53. NOAA, “Sea Turtles, Dolphins, and Whales.”
54. Global Witness, “Why Ecocide Should Be an International Crime,” Global Witness Blog, October 27, 2021, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/blog/why-ecocide-should-be-international-crime/.
55. Telesetsky, “Ecocide,” 474.
56. Jojo Mehta, interview by UNICRI, The Cycle of Conflict, Injustice, and Environmental Collapse, UNICRI Magazine, no. 14 (2023): 97.
57. Rome Statute, art. 30.
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