Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa: Ecocide should be an international crime

A formal proposal – submitted this week by Vanuatu to the ICC Assembly’s Working Group on Amendments and co-sponsored by Fiji and Samoa – calls on the UN’s top court to amend the Rome Statute to include the crime of ecocide.

The proposal defines ‘ecocide’ as ‘unlawful or deliberate acts committed in the knowledge that such acts are likely to cause serious and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment’.

This definition comes from an independent panel of experts convened in 2021 by the Stop Ecocide Foundation. The foundation has been campaigning for some time to add ecocide to the ICC’s list of crimes.

Professor Philippe Sands KC, Professor of Law at University College London and co-chair of the 2021 panel, said there was an obvious gap in the ICC’s statute and ecocide was now firmly on the agenda, “a crucial and necessary moment for effective international law”.

“This development reflects the growing realisation that serious environmental degradation deserves the same legal prosecution as other serious international crimes where humanity is at the centre.

“I call on Member States to support this initiative.”

The foundation said the bill would allow individuals to be held criminally liable if their actions resulted in serious environmental damage, “such as massive oil or chemical spills, the deforestation of primary rainforests or the destruction of entire river systems.”

The Guardian If successful, the proposal could allow for the prosecution of individuals responsible for environmental destruction, such as the heads of large polluting companies or heads of state, the report says.

The ICC is responsible for prosecuting four other international crimes, including genocide. However, the United States, Russia and China, all major greenhouse gas emitters, have not joined the ICC.

Belgium introduced ecocide as a national crime this year and the European Union included a “qualified” offence in its recently revised environmental crime directive to combat “behaviour comparable to ecocide”.

When contacted by RNZ Pacific, a Greenpeace spokesperson said they could not comment as they were not involved in the incident.