Graham Lawton of NewScientist (8 May 2021, paywall) says ecocide is a word with a long history, but it’s a new one on me. Regardless, ecocide reminds me of attempts by environmental activists to find ways to incorporate Nature into the legal system, such as with chimps and with lakes (I have a post somewhere about regarding lakes as persons but cannot find it). Lawton gives us some context:
A widely reported research paper set out to discover how much of Earth’s land is ecologically intact, meaning that its ecosystem remains in a pristine, pre-industrial state. The answer: just 3 per cent. To frame it differently, in the past 500 years, humans have degraded 97 per cent of the terrestrial biosphere.
There is, I think, only one word for such levels of destruction: ecocide. Like genocide, it isn’t a word to be thrown around casually. But what else does justice to that degree of destruction?
Speaking of justice, that is exactly what some activists would like ecocide to lead to. Their long-standing goal is to have ecocide recognised in international law alongside crimes like genocide.
Those who bring destruction on nature could find themselves at the International Criminal Court (ICC) next to the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes against humanity. This idea has long been on the fringes of environmental activism, but it now has a genuine chance of being written into the statute books.
Like laws for crimes against peace, an ecocide law would trace its roots to wartime atrocities, in this case the annihilation of forests in South-East Asia, first by the UK’s Royal Air Force during the guerrilla war known as the Malayan Emergency and later by the US Air Force in the Vietnam war. In 1970, the destruction inspired Arthur Galston, a plant biologist at Yale University whose PhD research had led to the development of agent orange, to coin the word “ecocide”.
And you have to have a law before you can have a crime.
It’s an interesting concept, and gives rise to all sorts of questions, from whether the Hoover Dam and its brethren are considered, or will be considered, sites of mass ecocide, to whether or not a crop such as Afghani poppies, torched by adversaries, qualifies as ecocide. What of accidental ecocide? Is it excused, or is the law enforced as a way to make accidents so expensive that planners would be forced to take the law into account?
I think Lawton is a little ahead of himself here:
The 2002 treaty that created the ICC [International Criminal Court] originally included an ecocide law, but it was scaled back after objections from the UK and US (wilful environmental destruction in wartime is a crime, but nobody has been prosecuted for it).
But campaigners stuck to the task and criminalisation has slowly gathered support. Last year saw a significant breakthrough when two of the ICC’s member states, Vanuatu and the Maldives, asked the court to “seriously consider” criminalising ecocide. President Emmanuel Macron of France has backed their request and the government of Belgium has also indicated support.
The left wing, beyond the left of most Democrats, would back such an international law. The mainline Democrats would not.
And the Republicans’ eyes would positively bug out at the thought of being subject to such a law. They have a bad enough time tolerating the EPA as it is, even if one of their own, President Nixon, was its father.
And Lawton knows the road is long and perhaps too rough:
Last month, I hosted a New Scientist event called A Rescue Plan for Nature. We invited a distinguished panel to answer questions submitted by the audience. One was on whether ecocide should be a crime.
I expected a resounding yes, but didn’t get one. Partha Dasgupta, an economist at the University of Cambridge, said: “It’s something we could aspire to in the future but it’s far too early.” Even though there is a strong philosophical argument in favour, he said, the practical danger is that we get bogged down in legal definitions and end up achieving nothing.
I have great respect for Dasgupta and his answer gives me pause. Making ecocide a crime has enormous instinctive appeal. But as a real-world measure, would it do anything? Pursuing alleged war criminals though the ICC has proved time-consuming and difficult enough. When it comes to ecocide, who would be in the dock?
I wonder how many 20-somethings, here and abroad, are looking at this subject as a possible career.
