At a UN Security Council open debate on the effects of climate change on peace and security, Austrian Ambassador Alexander Marschik raised the issue of widespread and longterm damage to the environment.  He suggested that “the international community should consider making [such damage] a crime under international law — referred to as “ecocide”.

On World Ocean Day 2023, the celebrated oceanographer and conservationist Sylvia Earle joined other world leaders, such as Pope Frances and Jane Goodall, in support of the recognition of “ecocide” as an international crime, as advocated by global NGO Stop Ecocide International.

The breach of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine has displaced the Dnipro River, killed an unknown number of people and animals, and left many Ukrainians homeless. The immediate human consequences of the dam’s destruction have already been devastating and its ecological impacts, though still being assessed, have been repeatedly referred to as “ecocide”¹.

The Brazilian political party PSOL (Partido Socialismo e Liberdade) submitted a new Ecocide Bill to the Brazilian Congress. The proposed ecocide law seeks to criminalise “performing illegal or wanton acts with the knowledge that they generate a substantial probability of serious and widespread or long-term damage to the environment.”

On 9 May, the Spanish government officially answered to a written question submitted by Inés Sabanés Nadal, MP for Más País Verdes Equo, on whether the Ministry of Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge intended to support the proposal to recognise ecocide and autonomous crimes against the environment in the framework of the European Council.

On 15th April, the world premiere of the Ecocide Law Choir Suite took place at the Jyväskylä University in Finland to an audience of over 300 people. The concert comprised a suite of twelve songs by composers from USA, Great Britain, Scotland, Sweden, Sápmi (Sameland), Finland, Canada, Brazil and Denmark, all of whom have donated their contributions to the Choirs for Ecocide Law project.

On the 29th March, history was written on both sides of the Atlantic.  In Brussels, the European Parliament unanimously proposed including “ecocide” into EU law while in New York, a UN resolution called for a legal Advisory Opinion on the obligations of states with respect to climate change.  

A Vatican statement has repudiated the “doctrine of discovery” - a theory that served to justify seizure of indigenous lands by colonizing powers from the 15th century onwards. The “doctrine”, based on papal bulls of the time, was treated by political powers as a fundamental part of the conceptual structure of colonialism for hundreds of years, even making its way into the legal systems of several countries.

Following a historic unanimous Legal Affairs Committee vote, the European Parliament has announced its support for the inclusion of “ecocide”-level crimes in the EU’s revised environmental crime directive.

The Prime Minister of Iceland, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, is hopeful that the upcoming leadership summit of the Council of Europe will produce some positive developments on the matter of ecocide. 

Jakobsdóttir expressed her optimism in the Icelandic parliament during a discussion responding to a parliamentary inquiry on the matter of ecocide from MP Andrés Ingi Jónsson of the Pirate Party on 20 March 2023. 

Following the direction of travel established in the 4 previous consultative committees, the last and most important of these in the context of this Directive, the legal affairs (JURI) committee, unanimously voted to include the most serious environmental crimes - widely known as “ecocide” - in its proposed text for the Directive which will be presented in the EU Parliament on 17th April.

In Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila, leaders of 6 Pacific ocean states made an ambitious collective call to phase out fossil fuels, support a rapid and just Pacific transition to renewable energy, and strengthen related legal obligations - including to “prevent Ecocide”.

The panel addressed legal mechanisms already available for prosecution of harm to the environment in wartime, their drawbacks and potential for use in the Ukraine context; but also discussed the usefulness for the future of putting in place an international crime of ecocide, something that Ukraine has a keen interest in, and has already strongly supported (see speeches by Ukrainian MPs at the Council of Europe debate in January). 

A new policy “viewpoint” document Biodiversity as Systemic Risk: 10 Game-Changers for Board Directors and Stewardship Teams has been released by the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), highlighting the criminalisation of ecocide as an essential emerging framework.

After a year and a half of research and drafting, the prestigious European Law Institute (ELI) has published its Report on Ecocide: Model Rules for an EU Directive and a Council Decision.  The model law draws inspiration from the consensus international definition released by the Independent Expert Panel (June 2021, convened by our Foundation) while making adjustments for the European Union context and certain legal considerations relevant to EU law.

The EU Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (“LIBE”) has just voted in support (NB final text still pending publication) of including a crime of ecocide into the Directive on protection of the environment through criminal law, currently under revision.

Strasbourg the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) votes overwhelmingly to adopt resolution 2477 and recommendation 2246, both calling for recognition of ecocide, based on a recently issued report from its Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development on the Environmental impact of armed conflicts.