Guest User 5/3/24 Guest User 5/3/24

“Ecocide should be prosecuted in times of peace as well as conflict” - Michael Mansfield KC

This blog was written by Michael Mansfield KC, English barrister and head of chambers at Nexus Chambers.

This guest blog is part of a series intended as a dedicated space for the many global movements/campaigns around the globe confronting ecosystem destruction to share their stories, narratives and perspectives.

This blog was written by Michael Mansfield KC, English barrister and head of Nexus Chambers.

“Companies cannot be given a license to spill and kill, provided they clear up the mess”.

These were my closing remarks when I led the prosecution in the world’s first mock ecocide trial in 2011. The trial focused on a fictional corporate oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, mirroring the Deepwater Horizon disaster of the previous year.

I have spent my life fighting injustice and am proud to say that I have used the law throughout my career to help those in need. However, the law, in its current state, is simply not fit for purpose when it comes to global environmental protection.

In the years since our mock trial, the movement to criminalise ecocide has been on a remarkable journey. Last month, I responded to an International Criminal Court (ICC) public consultation along with a host of others, including Laura Mary Clarke OBE, (CEO, ClientEarth) and Sandrine Dixson-Declève (Co-President, Club of Rome), advocating for the introduction of a new international crime of ecocide into the Rome Statute.

There's no doubt: ecocide is a human rights issue, one that warrants prosecution in times of peace as well as conflict. At present, the only explicit protection for the environment offered by the ICC applies to acts committed during wartime. Without a standalone international legal safeguard in place to protect nature, human safety, security, and livelihoods will be forever under threat.

A connection not lost on the island nation of Vanuatu, which in 2019 became the first sovereign nation to call for recognition of ecocide at the ICC. Vanuatu, a prime example of how the ecological and climate crisis disproportionately burdens those least responsible, finds itself confronting rising sea levels that threaten coastal infrastructure and, harrowingly, are salinating under-island freshwater supplies, leading to food and water insecurity.

However, the tide is turning in favour of ecocide law, and with deeply unfortunate events such as the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine, the concept of ecocide is garnering significant global attention.

In the last year, a growing list of states have taken concrete steps towards establishing new domestic crimes of ecocide, including the Netherlands, Mexico, Spain and Scotland.

The most significant political development in ecocide legislation happened this February, with the European Council adopting a revised Environmental Crimes Directive, including provisions to criminalise cases ‘comparable to ecocide’. In March, Belgium’s Federal Parliament voted to recognise the crime.

We are right up against the environmental limits that allow life on this beautiful planet to thrive. Now is the time for the ICC to rise to this challenge and finally introduce a new standalone crime of ecocide.

Michael Mansfield KC is a human rights Barrister responsible for prosecuting high profile cases including The Birmingham Six, The Guildford Four and The Mangrove Nine.

Guest User 4/19/24 Guest User 4/19/24

The Devastating Impact Of Ecocide On Women and Children In Uganda

This blog was written by Linet Nabwire, a climate justice advocate, and Team Leader and Founder of Climate Transformation Network.

This blog was written by Linet Nabwire, a climate justice advocate, and Team Leader and Founder of Climate Transformation Network.

Introduction

In recent years, Uganda has experienced the severe consequences of climate change, with distressing consequences for vulnerable communities, particularly in Namulindwa (Eastern Uganda) and the Kasese region. These regions have faced catastrophic landslides and floods, resulting in the displacement of people, the loss of life, and the destruction of property.

Ecocide, the widespread or long-term destruction of ecosystems, includes acts such as the clear cutting of primary rainforest deforestation or vast oil spills and can be understood as a crime against both humans and the environment. The human consequences of ecocide are disproportionately experienced by vulnerable communities, exacerbating social inequalities and gender disparities. In Uganda, women and children bear the brunt of ecological destruction. This article aims to shed light on the far-reaching impacts of ecocide on these marginalised groups and amplify the urgent need for action.

Bearing the Weight of Ecological Devastation

Women in Uganda, especially those residing in Namisindwa and the Kasese region, face the harshest consequences of ecocide. They are often the primary caregivers, responsible for providing food, water, and shelter for their families. As natural resources become scarce due to climate change, women are forced to travel longer distances to fetch water and firewood, putting them at greater risk of harassment, assault, and even death. Additionally, environmental degradation disrupts agricultural systems, leaving women farmers struggling to feed their families.

Children and girls are inherently vulnerable to the repercussions of ecocide. The devastating landslides and floods triggered by climate change has disrupted access to education, healthcare, and basic necessities. Schools are destroyed or inaccessible, leading to interrupted education, particularly for girls who are more likely to be withdrawn from school due to traditional gender norms. Moreover, these disasters increase the prevalence of child labour, early marriages, and human trafficking, robbing children and girls of their childhood and future prospects.

Addressing the crisis

Faced with these harrowing realities, the Climate Transformation Network (CTN) emerged as a beacon of hope for the affected communities. CTN recognizes that addressing the consequences of climate change requires concerted efforts towards sustainable development, environmental preservation, and the empowerment of women and children. The organisation’s innovative project of crafting wall hangings and photo frames from recycled metallic bottle tops and cut-out pieces of clothes not only tackles environmental pollution but also provides a source of income for the marginalised women and girls.

Like many in the global south, the women and children of Uganda bear the least responsibility for the ecological and climate impacts that are increasingly threatening their lives and livelihoods. They are falling through a gap in international criminal law, which currently lacks provisions to punish and prevent the most severe forms of environmental destruction. These harms transcend communities and borders and destroy human lives. It is imperative that governments take steps to establish ecocide legislation at both domestic and international levels. Additionally, empowering women and girls through education, skills training, and leadership development is crucial to enhance their resilience and ability to adapt to an increasingly unforgiving climate.

As individuals, we can contribute by supporting organisations like CTN through donations, volunteering, or by purchasing their sustainable crafts. Moreover, raising awareness about the impacts of ecocide on women and children in Uganda is essential to inspire meaningful change and garner public support for climate and ecological justice.

Guest User 3/12/24 Guest User 3/12/24

The unfinished story of a dying river

This guest blog was written by Soil Association Campaign Policy Advisor, Cathy Cliff.

This guest blog was written by Soil Association Campaign Policy Advisor, Cathy Cliff.

On the 12th March 2024 the Soil Association launched Stop Killing our Rivers, a campaign calling for urgent government action to address the impact of intensive chicken farming on precious UK rivers.

The River Wye (rising as the Afon Gwy in Wales) flows for 155 miles from the Cambrian Mountains in mid-Wales to the Severn Estuary in the west of England. In 2020, a thick algal bloom extended along the river for more than 140 miles, killing much of the life beneath the surface. The bloom was caused by eutrophication – nutrients, primarily phosphates from the waste of industrially farmed chickens, had washed into the waters, causing rapid algae growth, starving the river of oxygen. Intensive agricultural activity had added to the pressures facing the river from other sources of pollution, such as sewage. For all the existing legal protections in place, the Wye was struggling to survive.

“Unfavourable-declining”

In 2023, the River Wye’s status was downgraded by Natural England to “unfavourable-declining” due to declines in key species that should be protected by its designation as a Special Area of Conservation under the Habitats and Species Regulations.

Phosphate pollution is a particular concern in the catchment, with excess phosphate in local soils resulting from the spreading of livestock manure running off into the river and causing algal blooms which remove oxygen from the water and block out sunlight, killing natural biodiversity.

Phosphate levels have been at dangerously high levels in the Wye for several decades, but it’s a rapidly growing poultry industry that has proven to be the ‘final straw’. The regulatory authorities in England and Wales have all identified intensive poultry farming as a key source of phosphate pollution.

Chickens are now the most numerous animals farmed in the catchment with more than 20 million birds being farmed at any one time, a quarter of all the UK’s chickens. Broiler or ‘meat’ chickens are produced in particularly high numbers in any one operation, especially when you take into account that the average broiler chicken lives up to only 40 days and there can be around 7 so-called “crops” a year in each unit. Many operations have multiple units.

Huge volumes of manure generated by the chickens in these units are spread on local land and are the source of phosphate pollution in the river.

This situation, where one of our most important conservation sites has been so heavily impacted by the presence of these intensive poultry units, is partly the result of flaws in the planning system. Largely, though, it’s our food system and ineffective regulation that has supported the tragic decline of the river.

Britain’s food system is held up by a consolidated supply chain with international food processing companies and supermarkets pulling the strings and putting pressure on farmers. Prices are kept low with the excuse that consumers want and expect cheap chicken, despite the fact that we pay less than half the price for a chicken today that we paid in 1971 and often for less than the price of a cup of coffee.

Existing environmental regulation is clearly failing us, leaving a gap in both domestic and international criminal law where nature should be protected. But things could have been very different had an international law of ecocide been in place, as was originally intended.

A huge opportunity

When the International Criminal Court was established in 2002 to prosecute the crimes humanity considered the most serious (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression) it had also been intended that ecocide - severe damage to the environment - should be included. Although ecocide featured in many years of discussion leading to the ICC’s establishment, it was suddenly dropped. The reasons remain a mystery but with it, a huge opportunity was lost to create a powerful protection for the environment. The establishment of ecocide as one of the most serious crimes would have sent a strong message internationally that severe damage to the environment was unacceptable.

It would have reached into the boardrooms and cabinet offices of the world where many of the decisions which result in environmental destruction are made and changed the decision-making process. It would, in all likelihood, have influenced the decisions that have allowed unchecked proliferation of the intensive poultry units along the banks of the Wye. It is too late for ecocide law to prevent damage to the Wye - we are now forced to find ways to save it - but it can protect other rivers and precious ecosystems in the future.

If action is taken swiftly, the Wye might yet be saved, but other rivers and ecosystems in the UK are still at risk. We have identified 10 other rivers in England and Wales close to which a number of intensive poultry units have been given permission to establish. These rivers may also be at risk of chicken farm pollution, now or in the future, if production continues to expand. We need to reduce chicken numbers across the UK. Diets and production must rapidly and radically change.

What we really need is system change – we need to end the construction of intensive poultry units and reduce the number in existence. Remaining units should operate under a new permitting system applied at much lower population thresholds which include requirements for animal welfare and waste management.

We need a just and safe transition for farmers to move out of this damaging industry. Many farmers are locked into a long-term financial commitment to a poultry unit on their land, with loans having been taken out as part of a contract with a chicken processor.

This transition must be carefully managed to protect producer livelihoods and prioritise animal welfare. It will require change across supply chains, shifts in diet and a fair deal for farmers and consumers.

We need fewer chickens in existing poultry units via implementation of the Better Chicken Commitment, a set of standards that retailers and food service operators can sign up to, committing them to sourcing chicken meat produced as a result of less intensive practices, including slower-growing birds, less waste and reduced reliance on products like soya that are grown in sensitive environments overseas. We need industrial poultry phased out in schools and hospitals.

Time is short but it is not too late.

If we act swiftly and carefully, we can end the pollution from industrial chicken farming, and help bring our rivers back to life.

Please join us in sending a message to UK Governments

Sign the Soil Association petition calling for:

1) A ban on new intensive chicken units

2) Support for farmers to exit this damaging industry

3) Action to reduce chicken consumption to more sustainable levels

Sign the Soil Association Petition

Stop Ecocide International 2/13/24 Stop Ecocide International 2/13/24

How coral reefs stand to benefit from a law of ecocide

This guest blog was written by Lyndon DeVantier, freelance coral ecologist.

This guest blog was written by Lyndon DeVantier, freelance coral ecologist.

It is now abundantly clear that the economic, political and legal status quo is failing to prevent the accelerating collapse of the world’s precious, biodiverse reefs. Repeated appeals to the rationality and goodwill of powerful actors, who have the ability to voluntarily prevent climate breakdown and the associated death of coral reefs, have gone unheeded. Ecocide law represents a new enforcement paradigm to deter reef destruction.

The state of the world’s reefs

Most of the heat caused by greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to 25 per cent of CO2, has been absorbed by the oceans and consequently sea temperatures are rising. This temperature rise fuels marine heatwaves, leading to the disease and death of reefs. Meanwhile, pollution poses an increasing threat to reef ecosystems, in particular from petrochemical-derived plastic. Plastic production is predicted to triple by 2060 and the companies responsible, predominantly fossil fuel corporations, have no intention of ‘turning off the tap’.

Coral bleaching in American Samoa, 2015.
*Photo:* *The Ocean Agency / Ocean Image Bank*

“The road to hell is paved with good conventions”

In recent decades, international goodwill and the hard work of climate negotiations have led to some landmark treaties with ambitious and admirable targets to reduce emissions and protect marine environments. Bert Rölling’s remark, though, that “the road to hell is paved with good conventions”, is pertinent in this context as stark evidence of states’ failure to adhere to environmental agreements continues to emerge.

Notably, for instance, the world did not meet a single element of the 2010 Aichi targets aimed at protecting biodiversity. Moreover, the world is ‘nowhere near’ the path to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aimed at the alleviation of poverty alongside environmental protection, will be met. Among them is SDG 14, protection of the marine environment.

Legal frameworks and enforcement

Fish trapped in a plastic bag, Indonesia.
Photo: *Unsplash*

At the heart of the failure to adhere to environmental targets is a lack of enforceability and the competing legal interests at play. The ratification in 2023 of the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) multilateral treaty under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) illustrates this point well. The BBNJ treaty represented a significantly novel framework in the protection of high seas ecosystems outside of national jurisdictions and has so far been ratified by 84 states. But area treaties such as the BBNJ are limited by other mechanisms within UNCLOS, including in the domain of shipping, fisheries, mining and territorial dispute resolution.

This clash of competing interests is evident in the case of the Spratly Archipelago in the South China Sea, home to numerous reef systems. The prospect of multilateral reef protection is hindered by China’s rejection of several countries’ territorial claims, a dispute that is significantly motivated by the profitability of marine resources there and other economic drivers of territorial claims.

The economic status quo

Underpinning the failure to realise climate objectives is our fixation on economic growth. Growth induces the overshoot of planetary boundaries such as consumption, waste and population, making it fundamentally incompatible with existing climate targets. However, thus far, there is little awareness of this fact among the global public and next to no acknowledgement of it in global policy discourse.

Meanwhile, environmentally damaging corporations have driven the poor enforcement of environmental regulations. A handful of particularly environmentally damaging corporations, most notably fossil fuel mega-corporations that are polluting the ocean, pursue the most aggressive lobbying in order to protect their profits, engaging in cover-up and deceit to prevent public knowledge of their environmental harms and stop initiatives that would regulate such incidents. The “pollution paradox”, George Monbiot explains, is that “the most damaging companies have the greatest incentive to invest money in politics… So politics, in our money-driven system, comes to be dominated by the most damaging companies”.

New legal paradigms

Indigenous leader Valdelice Veron, Guarani-Kaiowá leader and world renowned scholar and environmental activist Vandana Shiva.
Photo: Stop Ecocide International

In recent years, the development towards Earth Jurisprudence, an ecocentric legal framework, has accelerated. In relation to reefs, a notable example of Earth Jurisprudence is the UN initiative ‘Towards a Universal Declaration of Ocean Rights’. Progress has also been made in enforcement through the advancement of 2100 environment-related domestic and international lawsuits across the world since 2017. The usefulness of domestic lawsuits in protecting reefs was illustrated by the case brought against the US National Marine Fisheries Service under the US Endangered Species Act for failing to finalise the protection of coral species.

Nevertheless, powerful actors remain largely unaccountable through civil law. Financial compensation for ecosystem harm is a problematic notion in itself, but it is also often factored into companies costs.

Moreover, the scale of damages may be wholly inadequate, while individuals who make environmentally destructive decisions are shielded by the corporate veil.

Ecocide

Many of the flaws in the legal system I have described have the potential to be remedied by a law of ecocide. By criminalising ecocide, both internationally and domestically, there would be a significant deterrent effect for state and corporate actors considering pursuing policies or actions that are environmentally harmful. Incidents of significant reef pollution could produce criminal convictions and financial penalties that are genuinely commensurate with the scale of ecological harm.

In practice, the proposed definition of ecocide as occurring over the ‘long-term’ and ‘over a reasonable period of time’ could support its applicability to reef destruction given that the regrowth of reefs takes decades and full recovery may even 'take centuries’. Moreover, categorisations of ecosystem vulnerability such as the IUCN’s Red List of Ecosystems could provide a framework for calculating sentences and reparations to vulnerable reef systems and their species. Significantly, fossil fuel actors contributing most to ocean heating could also be handed criminal sentences for engaging in climate delay and deceit.

Conclusion

The failure of ‘business as usual’ economics and the dominant international environmental protection mechanisms have taken us down the path of collapse of our treasured reef systems. A new legal mechanism, with criminal enforcement, is essential if we are to change the course of destruction. As many as 50 state signatories to the Rome Statute host coral reefs and bioherms. The scientific community must help bring pressure on those states to criminalise ecocide.

Scientists can join the growing global initiative to establish new standalone crimes of ecocide at the national, regional and international level here: https://www.stopecocide.earth/scientists.

Guest User 12/1/23 Guest User 12/1/23

Echoes of ecocide: Panama’s struggle against mining and inequality

This guest blog was written by Panamanian student activists, Sofia Ramirez Vakratsas and Andreina Correa Quiros.

This guest blog was written by Panamanian student activists, Sofia Ramirez Vakratsas and Andreina Correa Quiros.

Echoes of Ecocide: Panama’s Struggle Against Mining and Inequality

On October 20th, Nito Cortizo´s government signed a contract granting First Quantum, a Canadian based mining company, a 20-year mining right over Panama ́s rainforests to mine copper and molybdenum. These are minerals used for the Global North's sustainable energy transition, but what are the consequences on the environment and communities of the global south? And is this really part of a Just Transition to a sustainable future?

The signing of this contract is unconstitutional. Biodiversity and humanity are directly threatened as over 12,000 hectares of rainforest are handed to foreign powers. While Panama is receiving 375 million dollars in annual revenue, only 15% of First Quantum´s total profits, the consequences of mining are devastating.

Minera Panama = Ecocide.

Panama's topography, characterized by its narrow, megadiverse territory with over 500 rivers, makes it exceptionally vulnerable to the environmental and social consequences of industrial mining.

Minera Panama is First Quantum's Project in the province of Colón. This is in the Donoso Protected Area, where more than 1,000 endangered species reside. Panama, being part of the largest biological corridor of Mesoamerica, is of critical significance to the region's biodiversity. If this is interrupted, there will be ecological consequences for the whole American continent.

Although the government is bound by law to safeguard this area and its wildlife, Presiden Cortizo publicly stated that the contract has been signed and will prevail. What we are witnessing is nothing short of ecocide, irreversible widespread land destruction and the murder of our home.

The extraction of copper increases toxicity in air, land and water. Ecosystems are at stake, and as water access is being jeopardized, Panamanian families in rural areas are already living through the repercussions of mining. Some children have become intoxicated from consuming polluted water, and respiratory and immune diseases in adults have been linked to living near the mines.

Deforestation resulting from the construction of the mining project and associated access roads. *Photo courtesy of* *CIAM*.

Civic Response

Although Panamanians have widely expressed discontentment throughout Cortizo´s presidency, this decision has caused outrage. What began as groups of a few dozen protestors summoned through social media by youth organizations as Sal de Las Redes, as Sin Mineria in response to environmental concerns, grew into massive protests with more than a hundred thousand civilians at an international level.

Acts of civil disobedience were set off by the renewal of the mining contract, but they represent larger attitudes against government corruption, inequality, and neocolonialism. These massive demonstrations were not seen since Panama´s 1987 Civilist Crusade against General Noriega´a Dictator Regime. As the contract has the option to extend this grant for another 20 years, civilian action continues as it represents the country's history of colonial exploitation. Consequenting in the rebirth of Panamanian nationalism, and raising the question if Panama has ever really been a sovereign state.

Just Transition

Just Transition is the concept that the world's switch into a net-zero future must be inclusive and fair to all countries, social groups, and communities. To transition into clean energy technologies, such as solar panels and electric cars, there are critical minerals that are needed. These critical materials include copper and molybdenum. These minerals are acquired through mining operations taking place in vulnerable nations such as Panama.

In the global north’s well intended approach to a clean energy transition, nations in the global south are being affected negatively. As mining is at the core of the energy transition, we must address this challenge. Mining, often driven by multinational corporations from powerful countries, exploits the resources of less economically developed nations. Mirroring the exploitative patterns of green colonialism and creating a cycle of exploitation and economic dependency.

As resources are extracted from our lands, entities like First Quantum amass wealth, leaving behind a trail of environmental degradation and social issues. Paradoxically, these actions are carried out under the belief that they contribute to a global good. Addressing this challenge is paramount in ensuring that the clean energy transition is truly just and benefits all, rather than perpetuating inequality and harm.

Supreme Court declares mining contract unconstitutional

NGOs, supported by academics, submitted a demand to the Supreme Court against the contract with First Quantum. Citizens have been keeping watch outside the courthouse for days. On November 28, the Court declared the contract unconstitutional. This ruling is a remarkable example of citizen action and holds significant importance for the secret arbitration procedure initiated by First Quantum against the Panamanian government. In this procedure, the company is seeking compensation for the suspension of the contract.

Call to Action

Although our path as change makers and activists has just begun, we believe change comes from speaking truth to power. As two young Panamanians, we invite other young individuals to question rules, and authorities to genuinely incite change. Find your why, ask yourself what do you fight for? and why does it matter?

Raising awareness about mining and resource exploitation in Panama doesn't immediately fix this issue, but it is a big step that holds big companies accountable for the environmental and social issues they are causing. Consequently, taking action by joining protests and demonstrations, posting on social media, and starting with smaller scale projects within communities aid your steps to become an activist.

We are young, passionate and driven by the goal of equality. We strongly encourage everyone to learn, speak up, and support actions to stop ecocide in order to promote a sustainable, just future.

Works Cited:

Ciencia en Panamá - Popularizamos la Ciencia y la Tecnología en Panamá, https://www.cienciaenpanama.org/. Accessed 18 November 2023.

Stop Ecocide International, https://www.stopecocide.earth/. Accessed 18 November 2023.

Hilaire, Valentine, and Divya Rajagopal. “Miner First Quantum faces rocky road as Panama protesters dig in.” Reuters, 2 November 2023, https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/miner-first-quantum-faces-rocky-road-panama-protesters-dig-2023-11-01/. Accessed 18 November 2023.

“Mineral requirements for clean energy transitions – The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions – Analysis - IEA.” International Energy Agency, https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions/mineral-requirements-for-clean-energy-transitions. Accessed 18 November 2023.

“Minera Panamá Operations Pose Severe Threat to People, Wildlife, and Planetary Health, Group of International and Local Organizations Say.” American Bird Conservancy, 17 November 2023, https://abcbirds.org/news/panama-mining-2023/. Accessed 18 November 2023.

Mojica, Bienvenido, and Erick Santos. “RATIFICAN CONTRATO CON MINERA PANAMÁ S.A.” Asamblea Nacional de Panamá, 20 October 2023, https://www.asamblea.gob.pa/noticias/ratifican-contrato-con-minera-panama-sa. Accessed 18 November 2023.

Guest User 11/14/23 Guest User 11/14/23

Criminalising ecocide: business within planetary boundaries

This guest blog was written by Sue Miller, Stop Ecocide International’s Head of Global Networks and originally published by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

This guest blog was written by Sue Miller, Stop Ecocide International’s Head of Global Networks and originally published by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

Business within planetary boundaries: how a new ecocide law can help

Imagine a world where commerce and the Earth can both thrive; where environmentally responsible businesses are not undercut by those outsourcing their true costs to nature; where companies can invest in a stable and sustainable future.

That world could be closer than you think.

The Soil Association is a proud member of the Business for Ecocide Law network and a signatory of the Stop Ecocide International’s Business Open Letter

What is ecocide?

Ecocide – from the Greek “oikos” meaning home and the Latin “cadere”, to kill – is a word that is gaining currency and momentum as we collectively begin to comprehend the damage we are doing to the Earth. Ecocide happens because it is not adequately prevented by law.

The laws which govern commercial activity were created at a time when the Earth’s resources seemed infinite and the Earth itself invincible. However, they have not evolved in pace with our capacity to destroy and are no longer able to prevent the damage we are causing. Duty to shareholders still trumps duty to the planet. Investment and subsidies still flow towards activities which harm rather than heal. We are locked into a cycle of relentless extraction, mass production and thoughtless disposal without real consideration for the effect it is having on the Earth. Existing laws, pacts, treaties and agreements have proved ineffective against the worst practices. Any fines or civil damages awarded against polluting companies – if they are incurred at all - are treated as a business expense, dwarfed by the vast profits to be made.

Thought-leading tech company Ecosia has been an avid and long-time supporter of the global growing movement to criminalise ecocide.

If we are to protect the Earth from unthinking and reckless destruction, we need to change the rules.

In June 2021, an Independent Expert Panel of international lawyers (IEP), convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation, published a definition of a new international crime of ecocide, designed to be added as an amendment to the founding document of the International Criminal Court (ICC). There, it would take its place alongside the crimes humanity considers to be the most egregious: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression. And, as we are beginning to see, the effects of severe environmental damage can be as harmful as genocide.

The definition is as follows:

“ecocide” means unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.

It is designed to deter the worst acts of environmental harm by creating personal criminal liability for the key decision makers behind them, creating a line beyond which harmful commercial activity is deemed unacceptable and moving it into a safer, more sustainable place where all can thrive.

Ultimate goal - ecocide as international law

The ultimate objective is to enshrine ecocide law at the ICC where it will create an international, cross border safeguard. However, following publication of the IEP definition a number of countries have already decided to press ahead with their own national ecocide laws based upon it. Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Mexico and Brazil all have ecocide bills going through their Parliaments at the moment. Chile, when it recently consolidated existing environmental laws within its constitution, incorporated elements of the IEP definition. And, as this piece is being written, a new environmental crime, based on the definition, is being considered by the European Union.

Investors want it too

It is not just governments who are seeing the need for ecocide law. Investors too are calling for it. The International Corporate Governance Network, an organisation whose members have $70 trn under management, has issued statements to both COP26 and COP27 calling for governments and standard setters to support the creation of a new international crime of ecocide.

*“Businesses working to deliver a more sustainable economy would benefit in more ways than one if ecocide was recognised as a crime”* - **Hans Stegeman**, Chief Economist, Triodos Bank

What ecocide means for business

For most businesses there is nothing to fear from ecocide law and much to gain. It is designed to penalise only those responsible for the most severe environmental harm and will not be retrospective. Businesses which are properly run and which carry out proper due diligence are very unlikely to be in the crosshairs.

What it will do is create a more level playing field and disincentivise harmful decision-making. It will ensure that businesses striving to operate sustainably will no longer be undermined by those which cut corners, and will give them more confidence in the integrity of their supply chains. Ecocide law will incentivise responsible practices and channel investment and talent into healthy innovation. And, on a personal level, it will help to protect our only home, our health, our future and that of those we love.

Ecocide law is a law for our time and it is on its way.

To find out more about ecocide law, visit the Stop Ecocide International website.

You can also sign our Business Open Letter calling for governments of the world to support the creation of an international crime of ecocide. If you think your business would benefit from a more in-depth briefing on ecocide law, email sue@stopecocide.earth.

Guest User 11/6/23 Guest User 11/6/23

40 days to COP - a youth call to action

This guest blog was written by Reagan Elijah, Political scientist, Co-lead at Youth For Ecocide Law Africa and Co-founder Debt For Climate Uganda.

This guest blog was written by Reagan Elijah, Political scientist, Co-lead at Youth For Ecocide law Africa and Co-founder Debt For Climate Uganda.

COP is the annual event where thousands of people across the world meet to discuss solutions to the global climate crisis. This year is the 28th COP hosted by the United Arab Emirates and its president is Sultan Al Jaber- the leader of the largest oil company in the UAE.

What does this mean?
This means that there is significant risk of nothing much changing following the hallmarks of previous COPs. It's most likely to be more of the same empty promises and sweet beautiful speeches.

So what needs to change.
In my view, I think we need to change the tone of this conversation to a more strong and durable dialogue.

How?
I agree with my colleague Jojo Mehta that what is missing from the environmental agenda is criminal law. Criminal law is what we use to draw the red line between what is morally acceptable and what is not acceptable. And what is happening to nature and ecosystems is morally unacceptable.

Climate Justice in the sense of the proposed loss and damage fund, climate finance and the 2015 Paris Agreement targets of phasing out fossil fuels and keeping global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius won't make much sense unless it's centered on an international crime of Ecocide under the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court. The word justice and criminal law here are very important because for a long time people have been talking about sustainability without justice. We cannot talk about achieving climate justice without an international criminal law to protect this desired justice. The crime of ecocide is something that undermines justice and the international established legal order to promote climate justice, social justice and environmental justice. That's the tragedy of Ecocide.

What must we do then?
On the road to COP28, we must create public awareness and this public awareness is not merely to tell people that climate change is bad because everyone including world leaders and polluters know it's bad. What we need is behavior change - something that the criminalisation will offer.

We must ensure that those who engage in mass destruction of nature and ecosystems are punished in accordance with the law. We need to amend the Rome statue to recognize Ecocide as the 5th international crime against peace alongside genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression.

We must spread this message and solution at COP28. There's no foundational criminal law to prevent mass destruction of nature. What we need to do right now is to change the law to protect nature. There's no way in which we are going to eradicate Ecocide and all injustices associated with climate change without changing people's behavior.

We must therefore create an environment where, through new internationally recognised legislation, mass environmental damage becomes morally unacceptable. This is something that's going to persist in climate diplomacy and the framework of the UNFCCC but it's only through the international Criminal Court that we can ensure true safeguarding.

I have been searching for the true definition of evil and I think I have come to define it. Evil is a lack of empathy. It's the lack of feeling for your fellow humans and their surroundings. This is what connects all perpetrators throughout history.

At COP28, advocates of climate and ecological justice must make the most of the opportunity and make every conversation about ecocide law. New domestic ecocide bills are being proposed or progressing every week throughout the globe. Momentum is on our side, but time is not. I call on all those attending COP28 to use your influence and access to put pressure on member states of the International Criminal Court to do something courageous and support recognition of an international crime of ecocide.

Follow the 40 Days to COP campaign on Instagram —>

Guest User 11/1/23 Guest User 11/1/23

We have entered the age of ‘climate war’

This guest blog was written by Richard Rogers, Executive Director of Climate Counsel and Moneim Adam, Executive Director of Sudan Human Rights Hub and originally published in Euronews.

This guest blog was written by Richard Rogers, Executive Director of Climate Counsel and Moneim Adam, Executive Director of Sudan Human Rights Hub and originally published in Euronews.

We have entered the age of ‘climate war’ – Our global institutions must be up to the challenge

By Richard J Rogers & Moneim Adam

For decades, the prospect of violent human conflict fueled by the environmental stresses of climate change has been predicted by human rights experts. Extreme weather and resource scarcity is now a major factor in the increasing level of conflict witnessed across the globe.

Civilisation’s reliance on a stable and healthy living world has long been a favourite theme of science fiction writers, with environmental disasters that trigger conflict featuring in the dystopian worlds of writers like Margaret Attwood, Octavia E. Butler and even Dr. Seuss. But while these fictional ‘eco-wars' were often written as allegory or warnings of future perils, they are now very much reality.

The UN recognises climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ to international peace and security. This means that climate change both exacerbates the conditions that may lead to conflict and accelerates conflicts in their escalation into war. While some parts of the world, often those who bear the greatest responsibility for the climate crisis, have been largely insulated from these effects, there are vast numbers of people living in areas of the globe that are right now experiencing climate-induced destabilisation and violence.

Back in 2007, the then UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, identified climate change as one of the primary causes of the ongoing tragedy in Darfur, Sudan. With annual rainfall in the region steadily declining since the 1980s, water scarcity is at the heart of the now half-century long war, with over 300,000 Darfurians killed and two million displaced.

Since the conflict was referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the United Nations Security Council, several individuals have been indicted. The ICC should use its resources and expertise to analyse the connection between water stress and the violence in Darfur, and publicise this worrying trend.

Armed conflict is, in turn, a source and driver of environmental harms. In Sudan, for example, armed groups seeking to profit from illegal gold mining have (with the help of the Wagner Group) polluted the land and water sources of entire communities with mercury and cyanide.

A more recent example can be seen in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine where the environmental consequences of the war will likely be felt for generations to come. The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka Dam, the ecological impact of which has been repeatedly referred to as ‘ecocide’, flooded vast areas of fertile land and raised alarms regarding the flushing of agrotoxins and petrochemicals into the Black Sea.

The ICC already possesses the legal means to prosecute those responsible for these crimes. The Rome Statute includes multiple provisions for environmental atrocities in both wartime and peacetime, yet the court has not prosecuted a single case focusing on mass harm to the environment.

In our capacity as human rights lawyers and advocates, we are calling on the Office of the Prosecutor to start making full use of its powers under the Rome Statute to examine the role that climate change plays in driving and intensifying conflict and prioritise the prosecution of mass environmental crimes with respect to all situations, including Darfur.

This includes appointing an internal climate-security expert to advise on these cases; improving policies and investigative methods to include a forensic climate-security-based approach; submitting evidence demonstrating how issues related to climate security are relevant to the crimes being prosecuted; and prioritising the prosecution of environmental atrocity crimes.

Sudan's war serves as an alarming and prescient reminder of the causal link between environmental stress and devastation, and human conflict. If the ICC is to retain its efficacy in service to humanity as we navigate a new reality, shaped as it is by ecological and climatic uncertainties, the Rome Statute must be amended to recognise a stand-alone crime that aims to prevent and punish the most severe harms to nature - ecocide.

Link to the full open letter here

Guest User 10/23/23 Guest User 10/23/23

Universal Declaration of Ocean Rights and Ocean for Ecocide Law

This guest blog was originally publised by Ocean Vision Legal and was co-authored by: Michelle Bender*, Jojo Mehta**, Antoinette Vermilye***, Dr. Anna von Rebay*

*Ocean Vision Legal, **Stop Ecocide International, ***Gallifrey Foundation

The Paradigm Shift for a Healthy Connection of People
with the Ocean in this UN Ocean Decade

Authors: Michelle Bender*, Jojo Mehta**, Antoinette Vermilye***, Dr. Anna von Rebay*
*Ocean Vision Legal, **Stop Ecocide International, ***Gallifrey Foundation

1. Rights of Nature and Ecocide Law

2. Shared Principles

3. Two Sides of One Coin

4. Towards a Paradigm Shift

5. Support the Campaigns

The Ocean is the life support system of the planet and human wellbeing is inextricably linked with the health, integrity and functioning of the Ocean. Nonetheless, despite the multitude of laws and policies internationally to protect and conserve the Ocean, marine biodiversity continues to decline.¹ Existing environmental protections are often not adhered to or are poorly enforced to prevent severe contamination of and damage to marine ecosystems.

Many States, as well as NGOs, lawyers, academics, scientists, grassroots movements and a growing number of voices in the corporate and finance sectors are speaking out in support of stronger legal frameworks and accountability. In response to the growing environmental crisis’, two strategies have recently emerged to provide more holistic and effective protection for the marine environment: ‘Towards a Universal Declaration of Ocean Rights’ (UDOR) and the ‘Ocean for Ecocide Law Network’ (OEL).

As both frameworks aim to fundamentally reshape the underpinning values and principles that guide decisions, Jojo Mehta, the co-founder of Stop Ecocide International and Michelle Bender, founder and creator of 'Ocean Rights', explore in this blog post their view on the shared values of both frameworks.

Rights of Nature and Ecocide Law

How we value the Ocean is tightly linked to how society will manage our activity in the marine environment.² UDOR and OEL are subbranches of broader frameworks called Rights of Nature (RoN) and Ecocide Law respectively. Both are two emerging and innovative legal pathways that aim for a systemic reframing of western legal systems utilizing an ecocentric ethic: reorienting environmental ethics away from an anthropocentric worldview (i.e. humans are perceived as central, separate and dominant over Nature) and catalyzing a transformation in how humanity relates to, values, and uses Nature (i.e. humankind as one of many interdependent species in the entire natural ecosystem). While this core value is inherent in both campaigns the main difference lies in how each framework achieves such a paradigm shift.

Rights of Nature (RoN) is broadly understood as an emerging legal framework that recognizes Nature as a subject of Rights with intrinsic value, and humankind’s responsibility to be effective stewards on behalf of present and future generations of all life. The mechanism for reorienting the values and ethics underlying our legal systems thusly lies in the provision of ‘Rights’ or ‘legal personality’ which structure the form of governments and the content (and therefore the implementation and effectiveness) of law.³ The provision of “Rights” enables society to relate to Nature as an entity with intrinsic value worthy of protection in itself,⁴ rather than a resource for human benefit and utility. Indeed, as a subject of Rights, Nature’s scope of protection is amplified and the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights has noted that this protection exists even in the absence of the certainty or evidence of a risk to individuals.⁵

Approximately five percent of Rights of Nature laws and policies are specific to the Ocean, and to address this gap with specific application and attention to the supranational reality of the Ocean policy seascape, is the UDOR. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) outlines fundamental rules, shared values and principles that provide consistency to, and aid in the development and interpretation of domestic law.

Similar to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the aim of the UDOR is to outline fundamental principles to inform all Ocean agendas based on a respect for the Ocean’s inherent Rights and the inseparable human-Ocean relationship.

Thus, the UDOR, a call to action led by The Ocean Race, Earth Law Center and the Government of Cabo Verde, is an ethical framework that seeks to ensure the Ocean’s voice, interests and needs are represented in decision making from the international to local level.

Via the Stop Ecocide Foundation, an international independent expert panel agreed on a definition of Ecocide in 2021 to mean “the unlawful or wanton acts committed with the knowledge that there is substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” The goal is to introduce Ecocide as the fifth crime of the international Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The legal recognition of “Ecocide” as a crime at the international level could go a long way to shifting attitudes and guiding behaviour with regard to (severe) threats to the Earth’s primary life support system - the Ocean.

Criminal law is often thought of as a framework for punishment, but homicide isn’t first a law to punish murderers, it’s a law to stop people committing murder. Criminal law is first meant to be a protective law.⁶ The mechanism for reorienting the values and ethics underlying our legal systems thusly lies in the substantial and immediate moral power that stems from the criminalization of harmful and irreversible harm to Nature.

The Ocean for Ecocide Law Network comprises a rapidly expanding and growing network of organizations, businesses and communities that live and work with the Ocean, created by Stop Ecocide International, calling on governments to support the inclusion of Ecocide into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and to positively engage in the growing global conversation to make this a reality.

International recognition of Ecocide will provide a much needed framework to protect Ocean wildlife and marine ecosystems from the worst harms. It will ensure that Ocean regulation and protection are taken far more seriously at the highest level, driving better due diligence and stimulating strategic positive change.

Shared Principles

As reflected above, both frameworks extend beyond and deeper than their initial face value use of ‘Rights’ and ‘criminal law,’ respectfully, and fundamentally reshape the underpinning values and principles that guide decision making. In the context of Ocean law and policy, both frameworks instill:

Responsibility and Stewardship: The recognition that the Ocean has limits to be respected and that humankind has a responsibility and obligation to protect and preserve the marine environment for the long-term benefit of all life on the planet.
Protection: Amplifying and prioritizing the safeguarding of marine ecosystems, rooted in the Ocean’s intrinsic value, as essential for the well-being of all life on Earth.
Precaution and Prevention: Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, the lack of full scientific uncertainty shall require precautionary measures, and the prevention of harm to the Ocean before it occurs. In cases of doubt, the decision that best guarantees the Rights of Nature and its preservation, while giving preference to less harmful alternatives, prevails (when in doubt err on the side of Ocean or “in dubio, in favorem Oceani”).
Equity and Justice: A shift in power to those communities and stakeholders most affected by poor governance and the ability to hold individuals, governments and corporations accountable for actions that cause a violation of the Rights of the Ocean or substantial harm to the marine environment.
Reversal of the burden of proof: The burden of proof is placed on those actors to prove their activities (and its externalities) will not cause severe harm to the marine environment.
Interconnectedness and Humility: A ‘One Ocean’ approach that recognizes that human identity is an extension of everything around us, and that our actions and impacts transcend imaginary Oceanic boundaries.

Two Sides of One Coin

It is not necessary for either, RoN or EL, to be in place for the other to be implemented. Nonetheless both frameworks are frequently referred to as “two sides of the same coin” or regarded as two different ways of achieving the effective protection of Nature. Just like the crime of murder (one side of the coin) prevents infringements of the right to life (other side), Ecocide can help prevent infringements of Nature’s rights. A review of a case regarding sharks in Ecuador demonstrates this analogy in practice:

In 2017, a Chinese vessel was found with over 6,000 dead sharks (or 300 tonnes) from where they were protected in the Galapagos Marine Reserve.⁷ In Ecuador, the RoN were recognized in the Constitutional amendment of 2008. Furthermore, industrial fishing is prohibited in the Galapagos Marine Reserve, fishing gear and systems designed to catch sharks, including finning of sharks is prohibited, and Article 247 of the Organic Integral Penal Code of Ecuador criminalizes ecocide, including crimes against biodiversity, Nature or pachamama, and wild flora and fauna.⁸

In Ecuador’s Constitution, Nature, or Pachamama, has the Right to “maintain and regenerate its cycles, structures, functions and evolutionary processes;” has the Right to be restored and this restoration shall be apart from compensation to people; and “the State shall apply preventative and restrictive measures on activities that may lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems and the permanent alteration of natural cycles (Art. 71-74). Thus, Ecocide Law is established in Ecuador’s Constitution alongside the Rights of Nature. As a result, precaution and prevention is required in order to prevent Ecocide and the infringement of Nature’s Rights.

In its judgment, the Ecuadorian Supreme Court ruled that the captain and crew were to receive prison sentences and fined $6,137,753.42, noting that Nature, as a subject of Rights, is entitled to complete reparation from the Crime (due to the Constitutional Right), and that the amount necessary as compensation depends on both material and immaterial damage caused.⁹ The court also noted the serious environmental impact the removal of sharks has on the ecosystem and the important roles they play as apex predators by maintaining marine ecosystems in good health. As a result, the shark's scope of protection was amplified through both the legal recognition as a subject of Rights, and through the penalization of a Crime against Nature, just as the violation of the Right to Life is penalized by law.

Towards a Paradigm Shift

Hence, neither the RoN nor Ecocide Law are intended to diminish Human Rights, but rather provide a form of checks and balances to maintain the integrity and functionality of the Environment in order to ensure the effective realization of Human Rights now and into the future. Both frameworks in the context of Ocean governance require humankind to respectfully balance the exploitation of the Ocean with the responsibility to sustain the Ocean’s health.

The international community continues to call for transformative change away from business as usual, including the United Nations, having noted that in order to maintain the quality of life that the Ocean has provided to humankind, a change is required in how humans view, manage and use the Ocean and seas.¹⁰ In this third year of the UN Ocean Decade, the paradigm shift is already happening. RoN has emerged in nearly forty countries in the form of constitutional amendments, national law, judicial decisions, treaty agreements, local law, and resolutions: for example, in Ecuador, Uganda, Mexico, Spain, India, Colombia, Panama, Belize, New Zealand and the United States.

Since 2021 dozens of nations are now discussing Ecocide law. Belgium is legislating and domestic bills have been announced in Brazil, the Netherlands and Mexico most recently. The Republic of Vanuatu and Ukraine, both victims of severe environmental destruction (via climate change and conflict respectively), are vocal advocates. An international crime of ecocide is also supported by:

the European Union (27 states), currently negotiating inclusion of ecocide-level crimes into EU law with the EU Commission & Council;
the Council of Europe (46 states);
the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (57 states);
the Inter-Parliamentary Union (179 states);
the International Corporate Governance Network (world’s top asset managers); and
the World Council of Churches.

Youth, faith and Indigenous networks have all endorsed the initiative, as have citizens assemblies and business/investment networks.

Support the Campaigns

The either/or narratives are false: either protecting Human Rights or Nature’s Rights, and either promoting economic growth and harming the Environment or ceasing economic development and protecting the Environment. Ocean Rights and Ecocide Law are a win-win for all life on the planet.

Join them today:

The Universal Declaration of Ocean Rights is an international initiative led by the government of Cabo Verde, The Ocean Race and Earth Law Center, to achieve the passage of a Universal Declaration of Ocean Rights by 2030, with the near-term goal (Sept. 2023) to introduce language in this year's UNGA omnibus resolution on "Oceans and Law of the Sea."¹¹

E-mail Johan Strid (johan.strid@theoceanrace.com), Michelle Bender (michelle@oceanvisionlegal.com) or Rachel Bustamante (rbustamante@earthlaw.org) for questions.

Sign the One Blue Voice Petition

Ocean for Ecocide Law is a growing network of organisations, changemakers and influencers who have joined forces to support this initiative calling on governments to support the inclusion of Ecocide into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and to positively engage in the growing global conversation to make this a reality.

E-mail Stop Ecocide International (press@stopecocide.earth) for questions.

Endorse the Ocean for ecocide law open letter

[1] Living Planet Index, available at http://www.livingplanetindex.org/projects?main_page_project=BluePlanetReport&home_flag=1

[2] Kai MA Chan and others, ‘Why Protect Nature? Rethinking Values and the Environment’ (2016) 113 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 1462, available at https://pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1525002113.

[3] Leif Wenar, ‘Rights’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2020), available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/.

[4] Marceau J and Stilt K, ‘Rights of Nature, Rights of Animals,’ 2021, Harvard Law Review, available at: https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/03/rights-of-nature-rights-of-animals/.

[5] InterAmerican Court of Human Rights, Advisory Opinion OC- 23/17, ‘The Environment and Human Rights’, requested by the Republic of Colombia, 15 November 2017, para. 62.

[6] Jojo Mehta, Legally protecting nature: The power of recognising ‘Ecocide, 2023, available at: https://diem25.org/legally-protecting-nature-the-power-recognising-ecocide/.

[7] Carr L et. al, “Illegal Shark Fishing in the Galapagos Marine Reserve,” 2013, Marine Policy.

[8] Código Orgánico Integral Penal, 2014, Chapter 4; CEDENMA, Legal Brief on Rights of Nature in a Galapagos Context, 2016, available at: https://ecojurisprudence.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Legal-arguments-for-the-shark-case-in-Ecuador.pdf.

[9] Ecuador’s Case Lawsuit Against the Illegal Transport of Sharks in the Galapagos, available at: https://ecojurisprudence.org/initiatives/illegal-transport-of-sharks-galapagos/.

[10] Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform, United Nations, available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics/oceanandseas.

[11] Omnibus Resolutions are more detailed and longer than regular Resolutions. They can cover many different issues in one document and provide more specific information about a specific topic. They usually support existing processes and Resolutions but often call on states/governments to take additional actions. Just like Resolutions, Omnibus Resolutions can be used by different bodies of the UN and for a variety of issues/topics. More at Alana Capell, What is an Omnibus Resolution?, Child Rights Resource Center, available at:https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/document/what-omnibus-resolution/; Every year, the General Assembly adopts a resolution entitled “oceans and the law of the sea” e.g.N2300478.pdf (un.org).

Robin Gairdner 4/12/23 Robin Gairdner 4/12/23

Walk for Earth: Oxford to Loch Lomond (and back!)

This blog post was written by Zoe Bicât, published author of poems and songs, injury rehabilitation therapist and teacher of Tai Chi Qigong.

‘Allär är ä’ by Owl Light Trio
https://www.owllighttrio.com

This blog post was written by Zoe Bicât, published author of poems and songs, injury rehabilitation therapist and teacher of Tai Chi Qigong.

The first steps

On 8th June 2022 I trod the warm tarmac of a cycle track along an A-road in Oxford, past a car-wash where the jet from pressure-washers exploded off the hood of an Audi into fine mist. I had a lightweight rucksack on my back and a 2 metre rope in my hand. At the end of the rope was a mule from the rural quiet of southern France, carrying 55 kilos in panniers over the crossbars of his pack saddle. We’d been training for this moment for three years. We were headed north, and would walk side by side until we reached Loch Lomond in Scotland.

It’s now nearly 10 months since Falco the mule and I took the first steps of our ‘Walk for Earth’ from Oxford to Loch Lomond. We spent most of July waiting for me to recover from Covid in Warwickshire. In early October last year after nearly 500 miles of walking with Falco, I stood on the shore of the Loch and gave thanks for the life and work of Polly Higgins, and for all the life that Earth holds. After a winter rest in The Trossachs, we’re now preparing to walk the return leg of our journey. We set off from the village of Etal in Northumberland this month.

Walk for Earth came out of a desire to express my love for the living world, and to physically walk this connection as a pilgrimage, with a more-than-human-companion. I knew that I loved Earth’s biodiversity; that my sense of wonder, and the joy of my own authenticity, had always sprung from those times of immersive understanding that I was not just proximal to this beauty, but part of its living flow. What song could I sing with my body, this little piece of an entire planetary life, that would raise a prayer against its loss? When I heard about Polly and Jojo Mehta’s work in 2017, I knew that the walk would be in support of ecocide law, and an attempt to offer people creative and democratic ways to engage with its progress. With the generous support of over 200 crowdfunder donors, the tolerance and practical help of all my friends, and the skill and belief of two amazing volunteers Katie Smirnova and Lily Nicholson, together we’ve been able to get Walk for Earth in motion.

Mule love this

The way people’s faces change when they meet Falco is evidence for me that humans feel deep resonance with the more-than-human world - that it makes us happy. We feel more connected with each other through the shared experience of that joy. Having conversations about ecocide law that spring from this sense of non-verbal connection is helpful; it spreads the message to a wider range of people than I could otherwise have reached. The fact that I’ve been on foot rather than on Falco’s back has also helped too - it’s much less intimidating to approach someone who’s at eye-level with you.

I’ve now had conversations about ecocide law with 270 people while out walking. Of those, only 5 had heard about the terms ‘ecocide’ or ‘ecocide law’. Each one of those people will likely go back to their friends and family and tell them about it. The vast majority we speak with, even those who haven’t heard of the term ecocide, think the concept is a good thing - whether they’re a young couple outside a pub in Banbury town centre, a farmer along the Mallerstang Valley in Yorkshire Dales National Park, the owner of a caravan park in Lincolnshire, or a dog walker in Stalybridge. Some people we’ve met, especially farmers, have fears about how it might be implemented, but this doesn’t stop them acknowledging the need for change.

We’ve visited two primary schools so far on our journey, and it’s been good to invite children and teachers to think about the connection between their school’s values such as kindness, respect, or care, and the idea of a law to protect the living world.

We are Interwoven

From the start I wanted to find a way to weave into Walk for Earth the care that so many of us feel for the living world, and to reach out with that same care to an island that has suffered most from the damage of climate change. This is taking shape in the form of a textile project, Interwoven. There are now seven weavers from different parts of the UK including Coventry, London, Glasgow and Lancaster, creating 35x45cm sections of what will be a larger final piece joined together with flax grown and spun in the Cotswolds. Once the piece has been assembled in Stroud it will be offered as a gift to Vanuatu’s Ambassador to the UK, to honour their stand as the first nation to propose serious consideration of ecocide law on the international stage in December 2019.

We’re looking for more loom weavers to join the project, so if that’s you, or if you can spread the word, please be in touch here: https://walkforearth.co.uk/contact/. We’ll also be stitching a small amount of plant-dyed yarn into the final Interwoven piece, so we’d welcome contact from natural dyers who want to take part.

If you like being outdoors, Falco and I would love you to join us by organising your own local Walk for Earth as a mini-fundraiser for Stop Ecocide International. You don’t need to walk a mule to Scotland… and ‘walks’ can be with a mobility aid. The Guide to Your Walk for Earth on our website takes you through how to message your MP, or tag them if you post about your walk on socials. ‘How to Join Walk for Earth' has all the info you’ll need. It’s been great to see a few people who hadn’t heard about ecocide law organise their own Walk for Earth locally. Your walk will help us reach our fundraising target of £10,000 for SEI.

It’s been wonderful to see the news of Stop Ecocide’s impact as we’ve walked. In the month we set off came the first anniversary of the Expert International Panel’s groundbreaking legal definition of ecocide as a crime. It has since informed discussion - and in some cases legislative change - in the governments of 26 countries.

In September last year Walk for Earth got a mention in Scottish Parliament, when Monica Lennon MSP asked what role Scotland would play in supporting the progress of ecocide law on the domestic and international stages. Monica’s questions resulted in the brilliant news that a meeting had been secured between Stop Ecocide International and Scotland’s Cabinet Minister for Infrastructure. And it might be the first time that a mule has been mentioned by name in Parliament anywhere in the world. I told Falco, but it wasn’t something he could eat.

Just last month saw two huge milestones in the progress of ecocide law. The EU Parliament voted to endorse including ecocide in their new ‘Directive on protection of the Environment through criminal law’. This was followed last week by a UN resolution led by Vanuatu and 133 co-sponsoring states, for an International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the obligations of states around climate change. The resolution was adopted by consensus at the UN General Assembly - also a first. It’s a milestone because it requires clarity on the obligations of states under international law to ensure the protection of Earth systems and of future generations. And it requires the same clarity on the legal consequences for states under these obligations, in relation both to other states (especially those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change) and to the “peoples and individuals of present and future generations” affected. This movement will open the way for more governments to step up with support for making ecocide an international crime.

I hope you’ll join us in expressing your care for the living world and your support for ecocide law, by doing your own local Walk for Earth this summer.

With thanks,

Zoe and Falco.

Are you a school teacher and you’d like us to visit your school or college? We have capacity for a few more visits on our return route.

Are you a group leader and you’d like your group to join us for a short section of our route near to you? Or, could you run a plant-dyeing activity to contribute to the Interwoven piece? We’d love to hear from you.

Contact: https://walkforearth.co.uk/contact/

How to Join: https://walkforearth.co.uk/how-to-join-walk-for-earth/

Interwoven textile project: https://walkforearth.co.uk/interwoven/

Fundraiser: https://cafdonate.cafonline.org/19962#!/DonationDetails

Guest User 3/10/23 Guest User 3/10/23

Open-cast gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon

This blog post was written by Louise Romain, anthropologist, campaigner for climate justice & Indigenous rights and producer of the podcast ‘Circle of Voices’. It draws on an interview at COP15 with Indigenous land defenders Puyr Tembé and João Víctor Pankararu with the support of Amazon Watch.

*Credits: Xingu River Big Bend, Xingu Volta Grande. ©Cícero Pedrosa Neto/Amazônia Real*

One more threat in a fragile region

The Amazon region is known to be facing the pressure from interconnected environmental, geopolitical and socio-economic threats. As an example, the deforestation that makes space for cattle grazing increases the transformation of the rainforest towards becoming a savanna. That process is further accelerated by forest fires and droughts which are intensifying with climate change. But the Amazon also suffers from the greed of international companies who are interested in the mineral resources that lay underneath the rainforest.

One such case is Belo Sun Mining Corp, a Canadian company currently developing the Volta Grande Project (VGP) in the Xingu River’s Big Bend, located in the state of Pará, Brazil. They are looking to operate the largest open-pit gold mine in Brazilian history, threatening the critically important ecosystem as well as the local communities dwelling there.

João Víctor Pankararu, youth coordinator for the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities and communicator with APOINME, reminds us of the larger consequences of such extractive projects:

*João Victor Pankararu at the March for Biodiversity and Human Rights, Montréal. Credits: Kamikia Kisedje/APIB*

“Thinking about large enterprises, such as Belo Sun, requires a sensitivity to understand that the impact will not only be felt in the state of Pará, in Volta Grande, in Xingu. It is an impact that will affect all of us. We must start thinking about the broader issue posed by these developments that affect Brazil, because they will directly influence the climate emergency that we are all feeling.”

The Xingu river basin has previously been weakened by another ecocidal project: the Belo Monte dam in Altamira. This hydroelectric complex is one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the world. It displaced 40,000 people, faced several lawsuits for human rights and environmental violations, and infringed on the rights of Indigenous peoples impacted, especially the process of obtaining free, prior and informed consent, as stated in international legal instruments such as ILO 169 (the International Labour Organization Convention 169) and UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples), both ratified by Brazil.

A disaster in the making

There are so many reasons why the Volta Grande Project should not be allowed to happen. On top of causing deforestation and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, mining activity also poses significant risks of contaminating soil, air and water. Belo Sun intends to use cyanide in their operations, a highly toxic component. Because the region is made of porous rocks, underground contamination can unfold over time resulting in unprecedented harm, far from sight but with brutal repercussions for the ecosystems and species affected. The acute exposure to cyanide is lethal as it affects oxygen intake, which can lead to shutting down the cardiovascular and central nervous systems of living organisms.

The Canadian company is also planning to build a tailings dam (a toxic pit with the residual waste from the mining operations) not without safety concerns. In their own environmental impact assessment, the company itself predicts a high risk of a tailings dam failure. In 2015, Brazil suffered from their greatest environmental disaster, the Mariana mining disaster. The collapse of the Fundão tailings dam brought traumatic consequences both for people and the environment, generating a 500km trail of millions of tonnes of toxic mud from the state of Minas Gerais to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Xingu Big Bend is already under pressure from the Belo Monte megadam, which is contributing to a socio-environmental collapse of the ecosystem as well as water and food shortages for the local communities. The Volta Grande Project would be an additional strain in a region deemed a priority area for biodiversity conservation by the Brazilian Environment Minister.

A multilateral coalition against Belo Sun

*From left to right: Ta'Kaiya Blaney, land defender from the Tla’Amin Nation, unceded Coast Salish territory, British Columbia, Canada; Dinamam Tuxá, lawyer and* *APIB* *executive coordinator; and Puyr Tembé, President of FEPIPA and co-founder of Anmiga, marching in Montreal during COP15. Credits: Kamikia Kisedje/APIB*

A coalition has formed to resist the project. Civil society, Indigenous organisations and international networks are joining forces to raise awareness of this catastrophic project. Last December, Amazon Watch published a report 'The Risk of Investing in Belo Sun' which details the reputational, legal, political, social and environmental risks associated with the project. They paint a clear picture for investors: Don’t invest in ecocide.

Both the report and the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre highlight that the mining company has been openly spreading misleading, incomplete and distorted information to investors, including at highly mediatised public events. Several investigations have proven that Belo Sun applied for the illegal acquisition of public lands and land use rights since 2015. They are forcing the eviction of resident populations in the mining area, prohibited public access and hired armed security to threaten riverine and fishing communities.

As of today, the environmental licensing process has been suspended following a lawsuit filed by the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (Ministério Público Federal). The ruling proved that Belo Sun and Brazil's Indigenous agency (FUNAI) have failed to assess the impacts that the Volta Grande Project would have on the Arara and Juruna peoples, and ignored their rights to self determination and autonomy (as guaranteed by UNDRIP and the ILO Convention 169) in regards to carrying out a process of free, prior and informed consent with these peoples.

So far, Belo Sun failed to comply with socio-environmental impact assessments, consultation processes and land tenure regulations. While some lawsuits are awaiting a trial court decision regarding the aforementioned issues, the continued legal challenges could potentially lead to the suspension and/or annulment of the Volta Grande Project.

The report concludes with the following:
“The completion of Belo Sun’s project could mean the death of the Xingu River, and the ecocide of a region that is vital to life on Earth.”

Solutions rooted in Indigenous principles

This extractive project symbolizes some of the modern ailments we face. Below are key teachings shared by Puyr Tembé, President of FEPIPA and co-founder of Anmiga, and João Victor Pankararu, as they traveled from their traditional territories to attend the UN Biodiversity Conference COP15 in Montréal. Their quotes have been translated but their original voices can be listened to in the sound clips (in Portuguese).

*Puyr Tembé at the March for Biodiversity and Human Rights, Montréal. Credits: Kamikia Kisedje/APIB*

“Historically as indigenous peoples, we have been talking about the care of the environment and the care of humanity, that if you take care of humanity, you take care of the planet. Society has not yet understood the message of nature, the message of indigenous peoples and traditional populations. And I don't know at what moment society will understand the call. The call of the great Father, the call of Mother Earth. Then we wonder: what are we going to do? Because historically we have been speaking about the dangers, showing the risks. Today we are changing this discourse a little… So now we are going through another mechanism, the mechanism of talking about love. To talk about peace.”
[listen here]

Puyr often talks about ‘reflorestamento’, the need to reforest our minds and hearts to ensure a livable Earth for future generations and co-exist more harmoniously together.

“To reforest the mind is in fact to reforest your soul, your heart and your mind. I think that reforestation is not only about planting, improving the ground we walk on, but we also need to improve, we need to decolonise the mind that is polluted, literally. And with this polluted mind that society has, it won't be able to save the world from destruction.

And that is why the environmental impacts are unfolding. Many cities in Brazil and outside of Brazil are suffering from the impacts of the rains, the fires, the droughts, and we are bringing this reflection: what is this reforesting of minds that we are talking about? What do we want for our futures? I am here now, we are here now. And what about our children and our grandchildren? So we need to reforest the minds of humanity so that we can have a world of solidarity, a fraternal world, a world of peace, love and care, but above all a world of sustainability, of sustainability with all the ancestral and spiritual strength that indigenous peoples and traditional populations have, to be combined with the scientific and technical knowledge.” [listen here]

João further builds on this discourse of inclusion and unity by sharing about ‘bem viver’ or ‘buen vivir’, the good life: a living principle shared across Indigenous peoples in South America, that spans across Indigenous cultures around the globe under different names.

“I think that we live longing for this peace, to be able to live quietly, in our forests, our jungles, our bush, to practice our rituals quietly and fully, without anyone threatening us or prejudicing us. I think that this vision of plenitude, peace, dignity, of us living well in our place is very important.

We have crafted this language of solidarity, of love, of sensitivity, so that people begin to act before seeing things destroyed. This is not what we want. We want a safe place, a good place, a place of good living, for all of us. Not just Indigenous people. We want people to embrace this cause and take this cause upon themselves as well, to understand that this cause belongs to all of us. The construction of the good life is the responsibility of all of us.” [listen here]

Finally, he calls on peoples’ responsibilities to hold their leaders to account and to become aware of the connection between our consumption in the Western world and the destruction of Indigenous lands and lives:

“We also call the attention of governments, countries and civil society that their way of living, that is the capitalist and consumerist system, has invested in the destruction of Brazil. So many countries, governments and financial institutions have financed the destruction that has occurred in Brazil. The unbridled consumption of material goods has been driving the destruction in Brazil.

So when we bring these reports out, bringing them to international advocacy, to speak at conferences, at conventions, at forums, of what we have been going through there, it is precisely to awaken people, citizens of those countries, that their country has been a strong investor in this deforestation, in this exploitation.

It is another strategy that we have also used now, to awaken the people themselves to stop the leaders of their nations, who cannot continue doing this. It is necessary to rethink the model of life, this capitalist system that has moved us all for a long time and is only leading us to an end, to something without purpose.” [listen here]

To support this campaign, head over to Amazon Watch’s website which currently has a petition to ‘Get Belo Sun out of the Amazon’ and raise awareness by sharing this article on your social media with the hashtag #StopEcocide.

Guest User 2/23/23 Guest User 2/23/23

Train derailment in Ohio produced the chemical poisoning of a town

This independent guest blog was written by human rights lawyer, Steven Donziger, best known for his legal battles with Chevron, particularly Aguinda v. Texaco, Inc. and other cases in which he represented over 30,000 farmers and indigenous people who suffered environmental damage and health problems caused by oil drilling in the Lago Agrio oil field of Ecuador.

By: Steven Donziger

This guest blog was written by human rights lawyer, Steven Donziger, best known for his legal battles with Chevron, particularly Aguinda v. Texaco, Inc. and other cases in which he represented over 30,000 farmers and indigenous people who suffered environmental damage and health problems caused by oil drilling in the Lago Agrio oil field of Ecuador.

A disastrous derailment of a train carrying highly toxic and cancer-causing chemicals in the US state of Ohio appears to have produced a mass poisoning of the small town of East Palestine. Thousands of people now face the risk of cancer and premature death because of a clear case of corporate malfeasance. The incident illustrates again why Ecocide must be enshrined as international law. I would argue that if Ecocide had been law, this incident and the calamitous ecological and humanitarian crisis that resulted might have been avoided.

Ecocide is defined as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment.” The evidence from this incident of corporate misconduct and “wanton acts” by the responsible party with long-term environmental damage is overwhelming.

The railway company whose train caused the accident – Norfolk Southern – had a market value of roughly $55 billion with its top management team making exorbitant salaries. The company recently spent billions of dollars on a stock buy-back that enriched shareholders while refusing to invest to upgrade the antiquated braking systems on its trains, which date back more than a century. The company also spent massively to lobby both the federal and various state governments to prevent regulations from being implemented that would have modernized the braking systems and increased safety.

Norfolk Southern and its CEO Alan Shaw are central players in an industry that is notorious for exploiting its workers. The train that derailed in Ohio had 150 cars and was 1.7 miles long, but only had two exhausted workers manning the controls. The industry had not given its workers a raise in three years. Profit margins in the industry in the last decade have risen from 15% to 41% as railway workers (and safety risks) reached a breaking point. Some of the largest hedge funds in the United States – including Blackstone – demanded greater and greater efficiencies to increase their profits.

When the derailment happened, Norfolk Southern made a misguided decision to detonate more than 1 million pounds of highly flammable vinyl chloride. It did this without any community input or discussion of health risks. As one local engineer put it, the railway essentially “nuked” the town to get the rails open sooner in order to keep profits flowing. The result was a giant mushroom cloud of poison floating over the town and hundreds of miles beyond. The fireball produced additional chemical compounds – including phosgene, a chemical compound so deadly it was banned by the Geneva Convention after World War I.

Thousands of fish were floating dead in local streams. Residents reported respiratory ailments. Yet local “authorities” claims it was safe to live there and drink the water. We went through this same playbook after the attacks on 9/11, and hundreds of people in the affected area ended up dying of cancer.

The US government – including the Environmental Protection Agency – has been hapless. The EPA was neutered under the Trump Administration with top administrators being replaced by chemical industry lobbyists. Its top official under the Biden Administration, Michael Regan, recommended that residents of East Palestine return to the town just days after the accident even though the agency had not done any independent lab testing of the water.

Regan still seems more focused on helping Norfolk Southern manage the public relations fallout than on his mission to protect the public from environmental harm. Journalist Chris D’Angelo in an excellent article demonstrates the testing relied on by the Ohio "authorities" and the EPA to declare the water “safe” in East Palestine was funded by the railway company and that the samples tested were tainted. In my opinion, this is scientific and political malpractice and an example of corporate capture of a critical public function of our government.

As for the safety of the water, Norfolk only tested in five spots in the town of East Palestine which is suspicious. There should be hundreds of samples taken on a daily basis, not just in East Palestine but in surrounding communities also impacted by the poison mushroom cloud. And the tests must be for all the chemicals burned off, including the new compounds created by the detonation. One independent expert called the sampling "sloppy" and "amateur". Further, neither the Ohio EPA nor the national EPA have published any water sampling results from East Palestine for several days, suggesting there is no ongoing water monitoring.

This is all deeply disturbing. There are a lot of tough questions that need answers. But the facts thus far strongly suggest that the rail company made a series of intentional decisions motivated by profit that produced this disaster and worsened the aftermath for the public, leading to a substantial likelihood of long-term environmental harm and likely death. This is precisely the kind of situation where ecocide law could have made a concrete difference. Had the CEO been confronted with this law, there is a good chance the braking system would have been upgraded and the accident would not have occurred.

Guest User 2/3/23 Guest User 2/3/23

Argentina: enough of terricide!

This post has been written by the ‘Movimiento de Mujeres y Diversidades Indígenas por el Buen Vivir’ (Women's Movement and Indigenous Diversities for Good Living) with the special collaboration of one of its members, Paula Mercedes Alvarado Mamani, lawyer and coordinator of the Terricide Bill.

This post has been written by the ‘Movimiento de Mujeres y Diversidades Indígenas por el Buen Vivir’ (Women's Movement and Indigenous Diversities for Good Living) with the special collaboration of one of its members, Paula Mercedes Alvarado Mamani, lawyer and coordinator of the Terricide Bill. She belongs to the Kolla Indigenous People, is a member of the Tres Ombúes de la Matanza Community and of the Assembly for the Articulation of the Peoples of Qollasuyu. She is also a member of the indigenous women's community SISA PACHA of the alternative media outlet Las Sisas

The Movimiento de Mujeres y Diversidades Indígenas por el Buen Vivir defines "TERRICIDE" as the killing, not only of tangible ecosystems and the people who inhabit them, but also of all the forces that regulate life on earth - what we call the perceptible ecosystem.

History of the Movimiento de Mujeres y Diversidades Indígenas por el Buen Vivir (Movement of Indigenous Women and Diversities for Good Living)

In 2013, a few of us sisters began to travel around the country with the idea of creating what is today the Movement of Indigenous Women and Diversities for Good Living. We went on a mission to make visible what they try to make invisible: our body-territory, our cosmovisions, our identities and our rights as women and indigenous diversities. All of these driving forces led us on a journey that brought together and generated the support of women from 36 of the 40 pre-existing nations which cohabit the Argentinian territory. Together, we organised ourselves in the space that we called the March of Indigenous Women for Good Living and which, in mid-2018, we renamed the Movement of Indigenous Women for Good Living, and again in May 2022, renamed the Movement of Indigenous Women and Diversities for Good Living.

We are a movement set up to amplify rights. We recognise ourselves as a movement of struggle insofar as we claim territory and we believe that movements of struggle must multiply.

We do not accept ideological tutelage, and we politically declare ourselves on the basis of our ancestral identity and our cosmogonies, knowledge and territorial identities. We are a fighting movement.
We aim to recover the historic plurinationality that has been ignored and denied by the official history. We fight for self-determination of our bodies, our territories and our peoples.
We are confident in our strength as women of the earth. Our ancestry gives us power and wisdom; our love for life calls us to struggle. The time is today and unity cannot be postponed.

Context

It is necessary to establish what is meant by Lands and Territories for Indigenous Peoples and Communities. It has been stated that: "Indigenous territory is NOT the sum of the resources it contains that are susceptible to appropriation or economic relations. Its nature is based on the integration of physical and spiritual elements that link a space of nature to a particular people".

In this way, it is worth highlighting the transcendence of Territory in relation to the identity and culture of the Original Peoples. Territory is the habitat, the space in which the Peoples develop their political, social, economic, cultural and spiritual life and satisfy their most varied needs. The right to Territory is a natural right inherent to Indigenous Peoples.

At the same time, Indigenous Peoples do not consider themselves in any way "owners" of the lands they occupy. On the contrary, they are part of Nature. They worship Pacha Mama or Mother Earth. Mother Earth has rights, and so she is a subject of rights and not an object to be appropriated. The indigenous people's relationship with Territory is not an economic relationship, nor is it a relationship of appropriation. It is a spiritual, cultural and identity relationship.

So what is Terricide?

Terricide is the destruction of both the TANGIBLE ECOSYSTEM and the SPIRITUAL ECOSYSTEM. It is a term that intertwines historical and present oppressions:

TERRICIDE is also the attempt to destroy our spiritualities, through the invasion of our communities by churches financed by those transnationals, who, taking advantage of the impoverishment and inability to access other means, provide some educational, welfare or musical services, and inoculate reactionary, sexist, verticalist, discriminatory and racist ideologies, leading to estrangement from one's own history and identity. We say that Terricide is also:

INDIGENOUS GENOCIDE - the systematic extermination of a social group, motivated by race, religion, ethnicity, politics or nationality. It is a mass murder that seeks to eliminate the group and may even include measures to prevent births. It has never ceased, because the systematic extermination of indigenous peoples has never ceased. Only the methods have changed: today they kill us with hunger, malnutrition, racist violence, repression, water pollution, poisoning with toxic agro-chemicals and state neglect.

ECOCIDE means the destruction of nature, which is our home: mountains, forests, hills, wetlands, rivers, lakes, glaciers, mountains. It is everything that agribusiness, mining and extractivist companies are doing all over the country, and as a result of which, in the face of our attempts to stop them, we are subjected to all the cruelty of the repressive apparatus of the State, which acts as the guardian of these companies, with its army, police, gendarmerie and judicial system.

FEMICIDE not only encompasses the macho violence found in a patriarchal society, but also institutionalised racial violence, that is to say, it is a form of extermination elaborated, devised and developed under the protection and impunity of the State. The damage to women's lives is systematised; we indigenous women have been suffering racism, colonial violence, discrimination and xenophobia, misogyny, chineo*, the death of our children and economic impoverishment due to the loss of land.

CULTURICIDE is the destruction of our ways of life, the transmission of knowledge, medicine, ways of feeding ourselves, our deities and beliefs, and our artistic manifestations. From the conquest until now, there has only been contempt, disqualification, mockery and humiliation of our practices, and the permanent destruction of our sacred places and sources of life.

EPISTEMICIDE -the elimination, obstruction, cancellation of all our ways of knowing and understanding the world, life and its processes. So-called scientific knowledge is recognised as the only form of knowledge, and it is the form in which colonialist Europe has decided to interpret an enormous and rich world and which it has imposed on Abya Yala and Africa. And in all educational systems and in the generality of life, this form is imposed as the only valid and legitimate one, leaving our knowledge in a place of superstition, mythical or magical beliefs, as ways of despising and disregarding them. We reclaim magic, myths, and all ancestral, spiritual and empirical ways of understanding, interpreting and improving life.

TRANSFEMICIDE and TRANSVESTICIDE - the organised, continuous and targeted murder of our body-territory on a daily basis. The violence of the patriarchal system is integral. The context of violation and elimination of dissident bodies, as well as women's bodies, is constructed with perverse subtleties, from underhand segregationism to institutional negligence that assumes that certain bodies are violable and murderable, and that some lives are worth more than others. Within this policy, there is a proliferation of radicalised religious sectors that construct discourses of hatred, what we call religious violence against gender. In this way, they create the conditions for the crimes of femicide, transvesticide and transfemicide.

For all these reasons, in March 2021 we held the 'Enough of Terricide' walk, under the slogan “As long as we do not have justice, there will be no peace for them”. As indigenous women from various plurinational territories severely affected by the Terricide, we walk together with all those people who, like us, feel indignant, powerless, and who do not want to be mere spectators to the tragedy, nor silent accomplices to the destruction of life. We propose to make visible, to claim and to demand: Enough of Terricide!

We demand that Terricide be considered a crime against nature and humanity, that the Terricide murderers be tried and condemned. Up to now, all attacks against the life of our mother earth have gone unpunished. The indolence of governments feeds the greed, the lethal greed of extractivism.

It is for this reason that we arrived in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires on 22 May 2021, the 211th anniversary of the first cry for independence of the Argentine Republic. We remember that, on that date, the State began to constitute itself as an invasion force in the indigenous territories.

As heirs of those original nations that were invaded, plundered, murdered and enslaved, we make an urgent call to act from the spirit of the mapu, pacha, land, to combat Terricide. The State must account for what it has done with our territories; how does it intend to repair all the damage that it has caused?

*Image:* *2º Parlamento de Mujeres Indígenas por el Buen Vivir, en las Grutas, Río Negro (julio 2019)*

Conclusion

This plurinationality that inhabits the confines of all the territories which are today called Argentina must unite in clamour for life, building together with the Argentinian people and the peoples of the world a new, civilising matrix. The colonial republics have taken Terricide to its maximum expression of pain and death.

There will be those who say: "Indigenous comrades, the conditions are not right for us to go out and fight". To which we reply: “the conditions for living are not present, that is why we go out to fight. Our medicine women, our spiritual authorities and many of us are receiving truths, revealed to us through dreams, about events that are going to occur.

As bearers of these visions, we commit ourselves to be guardians of life. There is no excuse; the time is now. We will not be walking alone. The spirit of the earth and the spirits of our ancestors will walk with us. We are determined to offer our strength, our wisdom, our spirit and our walk to put an end, once and for all, to so much death. We shout to the world: "As long as we do not have justice, there will be no peace for them".

Note: Chineo is a colonialist crime that persists in several provinces of Argentina where white men gang rape women of indigenous peoples, including minors.

Guest User 5/23/22 Guest User 5/23/22

The east African crude oil pipeline: future ecocide?

This blog post was written by Omar Elmawi, Coordinator at the Stop EACOP campaign and the deCOALonize campaign - with the support of Louise Romain, Stop Ecocide International and Paul Hallows, Global Witness. He writes about the planned construction of the EACOP, a pipeline crossing East Africa, and the environmental, human and climate impacts (both local and global) of this ecocidal project.

This blog post was written by Omar Elmawi, Coordinator at the Stop EACOP campaign and the deCOALonize campaign - with the support of Louise Romain, Stop Ecocide International. He writes about the planned construction of the EACOP, a pipeline crossing East Africa, and the environmental, human and climate impacts (both local and global) of this ecocidal project.

The world’s longest electrically heated oil pipeline

Uganda sits on some of the largest crude oil reserves in the African continent, with an estimated 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil, sitting below its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Extracting and transporting this oil would mean causing certain destruction of some of East Africa’s most ecologically unique habitats.

This is exactly what TotalEnergies is planning to do. The fossil fuel giant owns one of the two major oil fields on the shores of Lake Albert, and a majority stake in the pipeline which would need to be built to transport it for export into international markets: the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP. The 1,443 km long heated pipeline is slated to transport oil from the Tilenga and Kingfisher fields on the shores of Lake Albert in Uganda, to the port of Tanga, in Tanzania. Alongside the French company, the oil fields in Uganda (consisting of more than 400 oil wells) would also be operated by China National Offshore Oil Corporation Ltd.

Environmental, human and climate impacts of EACOP

Once built, the EACOP will cause irreversible damage to the biodiversity, natural habitats and water, as well as displace local communities and threaten their livelihoods. It also carries significant global impacts by contributing to global warming.

The pipeline will disturb nearly 2,000 square kilometers of protected wildlife habitats, including the Murchison Falls National Park, the Taala Forest Reserve, the Bugoma Forest, and the Biharamulo Game Reserve. These reserves are critical to the preservation of vulnerable species such as the Eastern Chimpanzee and African Elephant, both listed on the “red list” of threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It will also disrupt biologically significant marine areas, including mangrove forest reserves and coral reefs, along the Tanzanian shore, as well as numerous Ramsar wetlands sites of global importance.

EACOP will also affect human communities, posing significant risks to millions of people. About a third of the pipeline will run through one of Africa’s largest lake basins, Lake Victoria, which more than 40 million people rely on for water and food production. A small spill or leak, which is highly likely since the pipeline traverses a seismic zone that regularly experiences earthquakes, would be catastrophic. Oil spills can be propagated over large distances by rivers and streams as well as infiltrate aquifers and contaminate water resources for decades to centuries.

Its climate impacts would be enormous and disastrous for humanity’s carbon budget. The pipeline and its associated infrastructure are projected to cause the release of an estimated 33 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. This would put in jeopardy various international commitments, such as the Paris Climate Agreement, the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and the Ramsar Wetland Convention, and risks non-compliance with several global and regional agreements as well as net-zero-emission targets set by the countries involved. Besides its significant contribution to the global climate crisis, the EACOP project would also open a new frontier of high-risk development in neighboring areas.

Future ecocide?

The tragedy here is that all of these devastating consequences – both for the people of Uganda and Tanzania, and for the plant and animal species inhabiting the impacted areas – are predictable. The threats to the natural world and human communities are well understood. Nobody will be able to turn around after it is completed and be shocked by the irreversible destruction of the natural world that was necessary to start pumping the oil.

Premeditated destruction of nature, or ‘ecocide’, is at the core of an increasingly prominent body of international legal and political thought, which is seeking to criminalise mass damage to the natural living world at the international level. According to a panel of prominent international environmental, human rights and criminal lawyers, ecocide is defined as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”

TotalEnergies’ plan to cause premeditated, widespread and permanent damage to the environment in Uganda and Tanzania could fall under the criteria of ecocide. Building the East African Crude Oil Pipeline would be a crime against the natural world, and a disaster for the livelihoods of the people of Uganda and Tanzania.

Counterarguments and promises

Ecocidal projects are often justified by their purported economic benefits, and EACOP is no different.

TotalEnergies promises jobs and investment for the region, estimating that 11,000 new positions will be created. However, almost all of these are short-term construction jobs needed to build the pipeline, which will evaporate once it is completed. When the oil starts flowing, just 200-300 permanent jobs will remain.

Completing the pipeline would also threaten vastly more important sources of work. Over 600,000 people in Uganda are employed in the tourism sector, which depends on the preservation of the very habitats that the pipeline would destroy. Even if more permanent jobs were on offer, it remains profoundly unjust that the work being offered Ugandans and Tanzanians relies on the destruction of our natural spaces.

Growing resistance: #StopEACOP alliance

Local groups and communities have joined forces with over 260 African and international civil society organizations to form the #StopEACOP campaign. Through public mobilisation, legal actions, research, shareholder activism and media advocacy, they are exerting pressure to halt the project.

As TotalEnergies and China National Offshore Oil Corporation Ltd. are seeking a $2.5 billion loan to get the project off the ground, Stop EACOP has drafted a list of the top recent financiers (banks and insurers) that are likely to be approached to join the loan. Last week, five major banks (Deutsche Bank, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley), an insurer and a export credit agency confirmed they will not join the project loan to finance the EACOP. They join the growing list of banks (20) and insurers (8) that do not want to fund or be associated with the EACOP.

This extractive project is bound to trigger a large suite of environmental, social and human rights issues. TotalEnergies has the moral responsibility to cancel the project – and governments around the world must start prosecuting these environmental crimes for what they are: ecocide.

Robin Gairdner 10/7/21 Robin Gairdner 10/7/21

ReconAfrica: ecocide in the Kavango Basin

This blog was written by Esther Stanford-Xosei, coordinator of the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign and co-founder of the Extinction Rebellion Internationalist Solidarity Network. Additional links and campaigning resources were collated by Louise Romain, international grassroots outreach for Stop Ecocide.

This in-depth blog was written by Esther Stanford-Xosei, coordinator of the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign and co-founder of the Extinction Rebellion Internationalist Solidarity Network. Additional links and campaigning resources were collated by Louise Romain, international grassroots outreach for Stop Ecocide.

She writes about the ecocidal and genocidal impacts of the exploratory activities of the Canadian oil and gas company, ReconAfrica, for Indigenous and local communities. She suggests how a Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice can offer solutions for affected communities.

An ecological disaster and a carbon bomb

ReconAfrica is a Canadian oil and gas company engaged in the exploration and development of fossil fuels in the Kavango Basin, which spans north-eastern Namibia and north-western Botswana. The company has a petroleum exploration licence for oil and gas which entitles it to obtain a 25-year production licence as well as potentially frack an estimated 120 billion barrels of oil across an area of unique, unspoilt ecosystem, larger than Belgium. This area covers 9,800 square miles of Namibia in addition to an adjacent area in neighbouring Botswana of 13,250 square miles. Worryingly, ReconAfrica holds a 100% interest in the petroleum licence in northwest Botswana and a 90% interest in the licence which operates in Namibia. The licenses area consist of six locally managed wildlife reserves, or conservancies, and is also home to various endangered species of large mammal, such as Afrikan wild dogs, lions, cheetahs, black and white rhinoceros, white-backed vultures, ground pangolins, Afrika’s largest remaining herd of Savanna elephants as well as 400 species of birds.

Namibia is recognised as one of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, so it beggars belief that the Namibian Government would score an own goal by collaborating in ReconAfrica’s disregard of its global responsibilities to contribute to reducing carbon emissions to 1.5°C as part of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. ReconAfrica's own oil-production projections of 120 billion barrels of oil will have devastating consequences on humanity– the carbon footprint of this new oilfield could amount to a sixth of humanity’s remaining maximum potential carbon budget.*

Evidence abounds of the historically documented impacts of oil and gas exploration in environmentally sensitive ecosystems. The strategic Euro-American economic geo-political interests of governments and their corporations engaged in harmful ecocidal and genocidal extractive industries are preserved in Botswana and Namibia where mining, tourism and now oil and gas production are leading sources of income generation; most of whose commodities are extracted and exported for the benefit of foreign markets, irrespective of the harm being done to people and planet. Yet, instead of recognising the ecological debt that is owed to the Indigenous Peoples of Namibia and Botswana, and the corresponding duty to support such governments and their peoples to transition to sources of renewable energy, ReconAfrica is engaging in acts of ecosystem destruction which the Indigenous Peoples and other local communities depend on amount to genocide and ecocide. Ecocide is a possible method of genocide if it fragments or destroys vital socio-ecological and cultural relationships between humans and nature. We, in the Stop the Maangamizi; We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC), refer to this as the continuation of the ‘Maangamizi’ (Afrikan Holocaust) harm of chattel enslavement and colonialism inflicted upon all Afrikan people all over the world.

Indigenous rights violations of local communities

The regions of the Kavango East and Kavango West are home to some 200,000 people including the Kavango communities and the San; recognised as being indigenous to the Okavango Delta, whose rights to free, prior and informed consent under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples are being violated. ReconAfrica is violating those rights, coming into Namibia and Botswana without the consent of the indigenous communities. They have long ago been dispossessed of their power and are disproportionately affected by the unequal distribution, ‘ownership’ and access to land as a legacy of direct colonialism of the past but also present-day neo-colonialism. With an influx of tourism operators in the delta, Indigenous Peoples like the San, Anikhwe, Bugakhwe and other local communities were pushed out of their traditional territories to make way for wildlife management areas or concessions.

Woman from the San people, Kawe, Namibia. Image credits: Ina Maria Shikongo — Woman from the San people, Kawe, Namibia.
Image credits: Ina Maria Shikongo

Furthermore, the Kavango is the most impoverished region of Namibia with an unemployment rate of nearly 50% in Kavango East. Afrikan impoverishment is enduring in the region; despite all of the benefits that were supposed to accrue with the Okavango Delta being identified as a World Heritage Site. Instead, it became a playground of elite tourists from the USA and Europe who pay exorbitant prices for high cost safaris and tourism lodges.

Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice

The SMWeCGEC (Stop the Maangamizi; We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign) is a genocide and ecocide prevention, redress and reparatory justice campaigning formation which advocates for Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice and Planet Repairs i.e. the need to repair holistically our relationship with, and inseparability from, the earth, environment and the pluriverse. Beyond mere descriptions of the harm being caused by ReconAfrica, the SMEWeCGEC in partnership with Extinction Rebellion Internationalist Solidarity Network (XRISN) are offering to assist, Indigenous Afrikan communities in the region to better strengthen, with unifying Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice movement building and internationalist solidarity glocalisation, their own self-empowering collective resistance to the foreign transnational corporate invasion by ReconAfrica of their native territory.

We need to recognise the glocal importance of their struggle to stop further oil and petroleum explorations and the possibility of fracking in Kavango East and West as well the neighbouring Botswana. This can be done by cultivating innovative ways to expose and hold ReconAfrica to account in the ‘courtroom of public opinion’ beyond the borders of Namibia, Botswana and indeed the whole of Afrika.

One such way is for the affected communities in the Okavango Delta to develop Peoples Assemblies as an alternative form of participatory democratic self-governance and decision-making regarding land and resource-use which is necessary to repair the democratic deficit inherent in the colonial state machine that remains intact. Despite waging liberation struggle, those who took over the machinery of the colonial nation-state in Namibia as recent as 1990, and Botswana in 1966, have lacked the power to: (1) reverse the consequences of the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 which carved up Afrika and arbitrarily drew up borders that exist to this day; (2) stop the harms of neocolonialism reinforcing the Berlin Conference consensus whereby large parts of Afrika were deemed to be terra nullius’ therefore serving as legitimisation for imperial powers and their corporations to extract mineral wealth and energy resources for marketisation abroad rather than for the benefit of Afrikans; and (3) effectively repair the structural violences inherent in such state ‘Bantustans’ inherited at so-called independence.

Peoples Assemblies can set up local benches of the Ubuntukgotla Peoples International Tribunal for Global Justice; an Afrikan tribunal of peoples’ humanity interconnectedness which develops and implements ‘international law from below’ to put ReconAfrica on trial for crimes of ecocide and genocide, also being spearheaded by the SMWeCGEC. These joint processes of Peoples Assemblies and local, national and international benches of the Ubuntukgotlas will enable us, in the SMWeCGEC and XRISN, to better support communities in the Okavango Delta to, not only publicise their cause, but also attract internationalist solidarity from various other communities of resistance and other progressive forces throughout the world.

Esther Stanford-Xosei, coordinator of the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign and co-founder of the Extinction Rebellion Internationalist Solidarity Network

A growing solidarity movement to Save the Okavango Delta

Across the globe, various initiatives from civil society and global institutions have raised concerns about ReconAfrica’s activities, threatening the Okavango Delta and the surrounding region from ecocide.

In June, 185 community and non-governmental organizations from around the world urged Canadian officials to investigate and take action on the massive oil and gas plans of Canadian company ReconAfrica.

Their open letter was released ahead of the company’s Annual General Meeting, and details the threats that ReconAfrica’s potential development poses for human rights, Indigenous rights, local livelihoods, drinking water for over 1 million people, the global climate, and a critical and world-famous ecosystem. Read more here.

On June 4th, a global day of action took place in various countries, such as Germany, England, Canada, South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. An amplification and action tool kit was developed by Fridays for Future Digital, Climate Strike Canada and Kavango Alive.

In July, the World Heritage Committee expressed “concern about the granting of oil exploration licenses in environmentally sensitive areas within the Okavango river basin (...) that could result in potential negative impact on the UNESCO property in case of spills or pollution” . Read the report of the Convention concerning the protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, (p. 214-217).

In September, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), Global Law Alliance and other civil society groups submitted a request to the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V) to investigate potential misrepresentations in the disclosures and public communications of Recon, and the gab between representation of the project to local stakeholders and to investors. Read more here.

Most recently, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) passed a favorable motion (motion 136) to protect the Okavango from oil and gas exploitation. While it isn’t legally binding, all adopted motions become Resolutions and Recommendations, and therefore the body of IUCN’s general policy. Campaigners are now working to make sure the motion is implemented by the Namibian and Botswana governments.

Guest User 6/19/21 Guest User 6/19/21

Ecocide due to biomass burning?

This blog post was written by Johan Vollenbroek, Senior Advisor at Mobilisation for the Environment, and Maarten Visschers, Board member at Leefmilieu. They write about the destructive impacts caused by the clearcutting of forests, such as in the United States and the Baltic region, and the need to address current EU legislation considering wood (biomass) burning as a form of sustainable energy.

Voor Nederlands klik hier

This blog post was written by Johan Vollenbroek, Chairman at Mobilisation for the Environment, and Maarten Visschers, Board member at Leefmilieu. They write about the destructive impacts caused by the clearcutting of forests, such as in the United States and the Baltic region, and the need to address current EU legislation considering wood (biomass) burning as a form of sustainable energy.

Ecocide of forests as a direct consequence of biomass burning.

Between 2012 – 2020 the burning of wood pellets as an energy resource in Europe has doubled from 15 - 30 million tons per year. The method used for harvesting wood for pellets is through industrial clearcutting of forests. In reality, natural forests are also clearcut and are transformed into monocultures of trees. In the last 60 years, 20% of the natural forests in the Southeast of the US have been transformed into plantations: a disaster for biodiversity. In the Baltic States and Sweden, the same ecological catastrophe occurs: Ecocide due to biomass burning.

CO2 emissions of wood burning are higher than of coal burning

European climate legislation still considers wood burning (also called biomass burning) a form of sustainable energy. The scientists at the European Academies' Science Advisory Council (EASAC) say that nothing could be further from the truth. The CO2 emission of burning trees is 15% higher than that of burning coal and twice as high as gas. It takes between 5 - 10 decades for the planted trees to recapture the same amount of CO2 emission that was released during the process of burning. This additional CO2 emission exacerbates the climate crisis we are in. Within the next decade CO2 emissions must be reduced by at least 50% (compared to 1990) to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Better maintenance of existing forests, more varied forests and planting of new, biodiverse forests are the best climate solutions and the best solutions to halt the loss of biodiversity. In 2018, this was emphasized by 800 scientists in a letter to the European Commission. At the beginning of 2021 more than 500 scientists and economists asked US President Biden, EU Commission President Von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, Japanese Prime Minister Suga and South Korean President Moon in a letter to stop defining the burning of biomass as being carbon neutral in the European Renewable Energy Directive.

Industrial clearcutting is disastrous for biodiversity

Nevertheless, the use of wood pellets as biomass is still rising. The harvesting of wood for production of wooden products, paper fibre and wood pellets takes place through industrial clearcutting. Hectares of forest are continuously being destroyed. This contrasts with the far better solution of selective cutting in which only a few trees per hectare are cut. Industrial clearcutting is profitable for forestry companies. Hectares of forest, one after the other, can be cut down to produce pellets. However, the effects on the soil and biodiversity are catastrophic. The number of bird species in forests is plummeting and carbon stored in the soil is being released. This is ecocide.

Image credits: Clearcutting in Southeast of the US (Dogwood Alliance)

Southeast of the United States

In the Southeast of the United States, 16 million hectares of forest have been clear-cut in the period between 1950-2010. This is a stretch of land four times the size of the Netherlands. This means that 20% of the entire natural forests in this region has been clear-cut. The forests have been replaced by monotone tree plantations and biodiversity has entirely vanished in these areas.

However, clearcutting is still the method used to harvest wood in these protected forested wetlands, to produce wood pellets. The American wood pellet producer Enviva is the world's biggest supplier of wood pellets. Enviva is the owner of nine big wood pellet factories in the Southeast of the US and is expanding significantly. In 2019, over 15 million tonnes of wood pellets were exported from the US to Europe.

Figure 1: Conversion of natural forest to tree plantations from 1950-2010 (source: Dogwood Alliance, Stand4Forests Reports Series, 2020)

Figure 2: Production wood pellets in the Southeast of the US for biomass burning for sustainable energy in Europe (source: Dogwood Alliance).

Baltic states

In the Baltic states clearcutting is also used on a massive scale as a method of harvesting for the production of wood pellets. A recent report from nature organisation Estonian Fund for Nature (ELF) describes the disastrous ecological consequences of wood extraction in the forests in Estonia. The flying squirrel, capercaillie, black stork and hundreds of mosses, fungi and lichen, are all species threatened with extinction. 25% of forest birds have been lost in 20 years.

Image credits: Clearcut logging in Estonia (Estonian Fund for Nature)

The removal of dead wood from forests for biomass burning is fatal for insects and invertebrates. Dead and damaged trees usually form a nourishing microclimate and cause a new generation of trees to grow in such places. These microhabitats are inhabited by thousands of invertebrates that are an essential part of the food chain, supplying food for other invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

Removal of biomass burning as a source of sustainable energy in the European Renewable Energy Directive (REDII)

The European Commission is currently evaluating the Renewable Energy Directive (REDII) and will publish an improved version at the end of June. The European Parliament will make a decision in September. Nature organisations insist that biomass burning should not be included as a source of sustainable energy. They call on the European Commission and the European Parliament to remove biomass burning as sustainable energy from the Directive.

Further sources:

Report by Biomass Magazine, 23/07/2020: EU wood pellet demand expected to increase in 2020
Press article, Politico, 03/26/2021: The ‘Green Energy’ That Might Be Ruining the Planet
Documentary (43min): Burned, are trees the new coal?
Booklet by Dogwood Alliance, 2019: Biomass Investigation, Global Markets for Biomass Energy are Devastating U.S. Forests
Report by the Southern Environmental Law Center, 2018: Burning Trees for Power
Article, Mongabay, 20/10/2017: Estonia’s trees: Valued resource or squandered second chance?

Deze gastblog maakt deel uit van een serie bedoeld als toegewezen plaats voor de talrijke mondiale bewegingen/campagnes tegen de verwoesting van ecosystemen om hun narratiefs en perspectieven te delen.

Onderstaande post is geschreven door Johan Vollenbroek, voorzitter bij Mobilisation for the Environment, en Maarten Visschers, bestuurslid bij Leefmilieu. De blog gaat over de destructieve impact van industriële kaalkap ten behoeve van biomassaverbranding zoals onder meer plaatsvindt in het Zuidwesten van de VS en de Baltische Staten. De noodzaak tot aanpassing van de huidige EU-regelgeving wordt benadrukt. In deze regelgeving wordt biomassaverbranding ten onrechte aangeduid als duurzame energiebron.

Ecocide van bossen als gevolg van biomassaverbranding

In de periode 2012 - 2020 is de verbranding van houtpellets voor energieopwekking in Europa verdubbeld van 15 naar 30 miljoen ton per jaar. De winning van hout voor houtpellets vindt plaats door industriële kaalkap van bossen. Daarbij worden in praktijk ook natuurlijke bossen gekapt en omgezet in houtakkers. Zo worden moerasbossen in het zuid-oosten van de VS opgeofferd voor houtpellets. In de laatste 60 jaar is 20% van het natuurlijk bos in het zuid-oosten van de VS omgezet in plantages. Desastreus voor de biodiversiteit. In de Baltische Staten en Zweden speelt eenzelfde ecologisch drama zich af. Ecocide als gevolg van biomassaverbranding.

CO2 uitstoot houtstook hoger dan steenkolen

De Europese klimaatwetgeving ziet houtstook (ook aangeduid met biomassaverbranding) nog steeds als een vorm van duurzame energie. Niets is minder waar zeggen wetenschappers van de European Academies' Science Advisory Council (EASAC). De uitstoot van CO2 bij houtstook is 15% hoger dan die van steenkool en tweemaal zo hoog als die van gas. Het duurt 50 tot 100 jaar voordat aangeplante bomen deze CO2 weer hebben opgenomen. Deze extra boost aan CO2-uitstoot kan het klimaat nu écht niet gebruiken. Binnen de komende 10 jaar moet de CO2 uitstoot met 50% (ten opzichte van 1990) zijn gereduceerd om de doelen van het Parijs Akkoord te halen. Beter beheer van de huidige bossen, gevarieerdere bossen en aanplant van bio diverse bossen zijn de beste klimaatoplossingen. Ook om het verlies aan biodiversiteit een halt toe te roepen. In 2018 hebben 800 wetenschappers dit benadrukt in een brief aan de Europese Commissie. Begin 2021 hebben meer dan 500 wetenschappers en economen in een brief aan President Biden(VS), voorzitter van de Europese Commissie Von der Leyen, voorzitter van de Europese Raad Charles Michel, premier Suga (Japan) en President Moon (Zuid-Korea) verzocht biomassaverbranding niet op te nemen als klimaat neutraal in de Europese richtlijn hernieuwbare energie.

Industriële kaalkap desastreus voor biodiversiteit

Kaalkap in het zuidoosten van de VS (foto Dogwood Alliance)

Ondanks bovenstaand stijgt het gebruik van houtpellets voor biomassaverbranding verder. De winning van hout voor de productie van houtproducten, papiervezel én houtpellets vindt plaats door een systeem van industriële kaalkap. Daarbij worden hectaren bos tegelijkertijd gekapt. Dit in tegenstelling tot selectieve houtkap waarbij slechts enkele bomen per hectare wordt gekapt. Industriële kaalkap is voor bosbouwbedrijven financieel rendabel. Hectares bos kunnen achter elkaar worden gekapt voor houtpelletproductie. De effecten op de bodem en biodiversiteit zijn echter desastreus. Zo daalt het aantal bosvogels drastisch. Koolstof opgeslagen in de bodem komt bij de kap vrij. Het is een vorm van ecocide.

Het Zuidoosten van de Verenigde Staten

In de periode 1950-2010 is er door middel van industriële kaalkap 16 miljoen hectare natuurlijk bos verdwenen in het zuidoosten van de Verenigde Staten. Dat is een gebied van ongeveer vier maal de oppervlakte van Nederland en komt neer op 20% van de natuurlijke bossen in het zuidoosten van de VS. In de plaats zijn monotone boomplantages (‘houtakkers’) geplant. De gehele biodiversiteit in deze gebieden is verdwenen.

Nog steeds vindt er kaalkap in de beschermde moerasbossen in het zuidoosten van de VS voor houtpelletproductie plaats. De Amerikaanse houtpelletproducent Enviva is `s werelds grootste leverancier. Enviva is eigenaar van negen grote houtpelletfabrieken in het zuidoosten van de VS en wil dit aantal fors uitbreiden. In 2019 zijn ruim 15 miljoen ton houtpellets vanuit de VS geëxporteerd naar Europa.

Figuur 1. Omzetting van natuurlijk bos naar houtplantages in de periode 1950-2010 in het zuidoosten van de VS (bron: Dogwood Alliance, Stand4Forests Reports Series, 2020

Figuur 2. Productie houtpellets in Zuidoost- VS ten behoeve van biomassaverbranding voor ‘duurzame energie’ in Europa (bron: Dogwood Alliance).

Baltische Staten

Ook in de Baltische Staten vindt grootschalige houtwinning voor houtpelletproductie door middel van kaalkap plaats. Een recent rapport van de natuurorganisatie Estonian Fund for Nature (ELF) beschrijft de desastreuze ecologische gevolgen van de houtwinning voor de bossen in Estland. De vliegende eekhoorn, auerhoen, zwarte ooievaar en honderden mossen, schimmels en korstmos soorten worden in hun voortbestaan bedreigd.

Kaalkap in Estland (foto: Estonian Fund for Nature)

Ook het verwijderen van dood hout (resthout) uit bossen voor biomassaverbranding is desastreus voor insecten en overige ongewervelde dieren in het bos. Dode en beschadigde bomen vormen een microklimaat en zorgen ervoor dat een nieuwe generatie bomen op dergelijke plaatsen gaan groeien. Deze microhabitats worden bewoond door duizenden ongewervelde soorten. Deze ongewervelde dieren vormen op hun beurt een belangrijk onderdeel van de voedselketen van het bos en leveren voedsel voor andere ongewervelde dieren, amfibieën, reptielen, vogels en zoogdieren.

Biomassaverbranding schrappen uit de Europese richtlijn Hernieuwbare Energie

De Europese Commissie evalueert op dit moment de Richtlijn Hernieuwbare Energie (REDII) en publiceert eind juni een verbeterde versie. Het Europees Parlement zal in september een besluit nemen over deze verbeterde versie. Natuurorganisaties zijn van mening dat biomassaverbranding niet langer door Europa als duurzame energie mag worden gezien. Zij roepen de Europese Commissie en het Europees Parlement op om biomassaverbranding te verwijderen als bron van duurzame energie in de Richtlijn.

Verdere bronnen:

Verslag van Biomass Magazine, 23/07/2020: EU wood pellet demand expected to increase in 2020
Persartikel, Politico, 03/26/2021: The ‘Green Energy’ That Might Be Ruining the Planet
Documentaire (43min): Burned, are trees the new coal?
Boekje van Dogwood Alliance, 2019: Biomass Investigation, Global Markets for Biomass Energy are Devastating U.S. Forests
Verslag van de Southern Environmental Law Center, 2018: Burning Trees for Power
Artikel, Mongabay, 20/10/2017: Estonia’s trees: Valued resource or squandered second chance?
Milieuonderzoek, Wageningen Universiteit, 21/11/2019: Inzichten in duurzame export van houtpellets uit zuidoosten VS
Brief van Poolse wetenschappers, Biofuelwatch, 27/07/2020

Guest User 6/15/21 Guest User 6/15/21

Ecocide in Mar Menor?

This blog post was written by lawyer and environment consultant, Eduardo Salazar Ortuño. He writes about Mar Menor near Murcia in the south east of Spain, the largest hypersaline coastal lagoon in Europe. This unique ecosystem is widely believed to be a site of increasing ecocide, mainly due to mining waste and agrochemicals.

This blog post was written by lawyer and environment consultant, Eduardo Salazar Ortuño. He writes about Mar Menor near Murcia in the south east of Spain, the largest hypersaline coastal lagoon in Europe. This unique ecosystem is widely believed to be a site of increasing ecocide, mainly due to mining waste and agrochemicals.

The Mar Menor, located in the Region of Murcia, is the largest hypersaline coastal lagoon in Europe. It has a surface of 135 km2 and a maximum depth of 7 m. It is connected to the Mediterranean Sea through three channels or gullies. Due to these environmental peculiarities, there is a great ecological wealth, represented by bird fauna and emblematic and/or endangered marine species.

All of the above justifies that it has been granted various national, European or international protection figures as a wetland protected by the Ramsar Convention, Specially Protected Area of Interest for the Mediterranean in accordance with the Barcelona Convention, Natura 2000 Network Special Conservation Area and natural space partially protected as a Regional Park and Protected Landscape, in accordance with regional regulations of the Region of Murcia.

Damaging effects of industrial activity

Image credits: Marcial Guillén (Agencia EFE

However, despite these figures and their natural, cultural, scenic, historical and economic values, the Mar Menor is in serious danger due to the impacts caused by human beings over the last decades, such as mining waste with the presence of heavy metals that reach the lagoon with the contribution of rainwater; the dredging and widening of the Estacio channel in the 70s, which produced physical-chemical changes with a significant drop in salinity and temperature; the chaotic urban development in its shores; and above all for the nutrients contained in the agrochemicals used in intensive and industrial agriculture that takes place in its environment and that are discharged directly or at the water table.

All these aggressions, tolerated by the Administrations whose purposes were to ensure the rational use of natural resources, have led the Mar Menor to such a state of deterioration and eutrophication, which in 2016 and 2017 produced an explosion of phytoplankton with the consequent darkening of the waters, which prevented the marine plants from being able to photosynthesize, causing the disappearance of 85% of their grasslands.

In October 2019 as a result of the contamination of its waters and heavy torrential rains, an episode of anoxia broke out that led to the death of three tons of fish and crustaceans.

Image credits: ANSE, Ecologistas en Acción

Local investigation and the criminalisation of ecocide

Since 2017, as a result of a previous investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office in which the Nature Protection Service of the Civil Guard actively collaborated, an Investigating Court of Murcia has analyzed the behaviors of dozens of agricultural entrepreneurs in Campo de Cartagena - Cuenca slope to the Mar Menor and the adjacent aquifer -, as well as some state authorities of state and autonomous administrations.

While this judicial instruction is being developed, focused on the specific contamination by nitrates of certain actors and the tolerance of specific authorities of the Segura Hydrographic Confederation, critical voices are raised with the current configuration of ecological crimes in the Penal Code, to cover situations of such extreme and massive degradation of an ecosystem. As a result of this criticism to which the limitations of current ecological crimes lead by their dimension, penalties, prescription of behaviors and dependence on administrative regulations, the idea of considering the "crime of ECOCIDE" as engine of justice in the disaster that occurred in the Mar Menor arises.

Image credits: Julia Albadalejo, demonstration on June 9th, Murcia

The figure of ECOCIDE, as a concept that responds to the massive aggression to an ecosystem and, in this case, thanks to extreme negligence and deliberate clandestine and constant dumping, is the one that best adapts to the serious damage that the Mar Menor has suffered during the last decades and would serve to give a response from the Law at the height of the circumstances. A partial conviction based on the crimes currently included in the Penal Code may not be exemplary and not serve to reverse the current trend that suffocates the salt lake. Therefore, the Mar Menor must become another symbol of the need to establish this new legal figure.

Likewise, the crime of ECOCIDE is the other side of the coin of the powerful initiative that has emerged to grant rights to the salt lake through a Popular Legislative Initiative. Both new institutions must serve so that, from an ecocentric perspective, it is possible to restore ecological balance to the Mar Menor.

Further sources:

Blog post from Stop Ecocidio Spain, 11/09/2020: Queremos un mar menor sin ecocidio

Press: Can Spain fix its worst ecological crisis by making a lagoon a legal person? The Guardian, 18/11/2020

Platform promoting the Legal Personality of the Mar Menor through a Popular Legislation Initiative (in Spanish): ILP Mar Menor

Video (in Spanish): 500.00 signatures to stop ecocide in Mar Menor and ILP call for signatures

Introduction

Bearing the Weight of Ecological Devastation

Addressing the crisis

“Unfavourable-declining”

A huge opportunity

Time is short but it is not too late.

The state of the world’s reefs

“The road to hell is paved with good conventions”

Legal frameworks and enforcement

The economic status quo

New legal paradigms

Ecocide

Conclusion

Echoes of Ecocide: Panama’s Struggle Against Mining and Inequality

Minera Panama = Ecocide.

Civic Response

Just Transition

Supreme Court declares mining contract unconstitutional

Call to Action

Business within planetary boundaries: how a new ecocide law can help

What is ecocide?

If we are to protect the Earth from unthinking and reckless destruction, we need to change the rules.

Ultimate goal - ecocide as international law

Investors want it too

What ecocide means for business

Ecocide law is a law for our time and it is on its way.

We have entered the age of ‘climate war’ – Our global institutions must be up to the challenge

The Paradigm Shift for a Healthy Connection of Peoplewith the Ocean in this UN Ocean Decade

Rights of Nature and Ecocide Law

Shared Principles

Two Sides of One Coin

Towards a Paradigm Shift

Support the Campaigns

The first steps

Mule love this

We are Interwoven

One more threat in a fragile region

A disaster in the making

A multilateral coalition against Belo Sun

Solutions rooted in Indigenous principles

Context

So what is Terricide?

Conclusion

The world’s longest electrically heated oil pipeline

Environmental, human and climate impacts of EACOP

Future ecocide?

Counterarguments and promises

Growing resistance: #StopEACOP alliance

An ecological disaster and a carbon bomb

Indigenous rights violations of local communities

Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice

A growing solidarity movement to Save the Okavango Delta

Ecocide of forests as a direct consequence of biomass burning.

CO2 emissions of wood burning are higher than of coal burning

Industrial clearcutting is disastrous for biodiversity

Removal of biomass burning as a source of sustainable energy in the European Renewable Energy Directive (REDII)

Ecocide van bossen als gevolg van biomassaverbranding

CO2 uitstoot houtstook hoger dan steenkolen

Industriële kaalkap desastreus voor biodiversiteit

Biomassaverbranding schrappen uit de Europese richtlijn Hernieuwbare Energie

The Paradigm Shift for a Healthy Connection of People
with the Ocean in this UN Ocean Decade