Ecocide bill introduced in Peruvian parliament

Summary:

• Congressman Américo Gonza, a member of the Perú Libre party and Chair of the Peruvian parliamentary Justice Committee, has tabled a bill proposing the amendment of Peru’s penal code to include the crime of ecocide.

• The proposed amendment, Article 305-A, co-authored by Gonza and several parliamentary colleagues, emulates the three key threshold criteria for ecocide found in the Stop Ecocide Foundation Expert Panel’s definition, namely: severe, widespread and long-term damage to the environment. 

• The bill, which notes that the Independent Expert Panel’s consensus definition of ecocide is ‘widely accepted at the international level’, proposes a custodial sentence for the crime of between seven and twenty years. 

A copy of the proposed ecocide bill can be found here.