By Alyson Lundstrom
(Originally published for Zero Me Sustainability)
The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill, the continuing deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest, all atrocities committed against the earth, all at the hand of humankind.
While it can be argued that global warming is a product of many factors and questions still remain- can it all be attributed to gross human neglect? Or is it part of the earth's natural rhythms? While it is likely a combination of both, massive events of environmental destruction have humans undeniably at the wheel at expediting the demise of our planet.
Ecocide Explained
Ecocide is the mass destruction or damage to an ecosystem or species by human activity. The term is applied against those that essentially commit the crime of “killing the environment.”
Examples of ecocide include:
Deforestation
Oil spills
Deep sea mining
Land and water contamination
Air pollution
Overfishing and detrimental trawling activities
Should Harming Nature Be A Crime?
Ecocide is a term coined 50 years ago when a Yale biologist wanted to describe an event whereby the United States sprayed Agent Orange herbicide over Vietnam, resulting in disastrous effects for both people and the environment.
Back then, biologist Arthur Galston was likely looking for a term that would draw shock value and attention to what he felt was an environmental war crime. The potential to see further events of environmental warfare meant the need for a definable term to make it a punishable offense by the Rome Statute.
Fast forward to 2008, when “ecocide” still had not become lawful veacular or found a concrete path to becoming a punishable offense.
Not at least until Polly Higgins, a former British lawyer turned activist, made the argument that ecocide fundamentally leads to resource depletion, which leads to a scramble over diminishing resources, which leads to war. An argument only a lawyer could make and one that finally got the attention of the United Nations.
Today the term ecocide can, unfortunately, be used to describe a number of global events where humans have caused extensive damage or complete destruction of entire ecosystems. The term has evolved beyond a cry from passionate environmental activists to rest on the desks of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a proposed law that would make severe acts against the environment punishable by international law.
If this law is adopted by ICC, ecocide would become the fifth crime to be prosecuted at the court, alongside genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes of aggression.
Where companies and individuals were once able to escape persecution for large-scale environmental decimation. Events like the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, the overfishing of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna to near extinction, and Palm Oil deforestation in Indonesia, could now be persecutable. Some of our most important natural resources are finite, and we can no longer keep borrowing from the future without remorse.
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