On November 27th, the Justice and Human Rights Commission of the Peruvian Congress approved a motion to criminalise ecocide, incorporating key elements of the 2021 IEP consensus legal definition. This significant step toward adding ecocide to the Penal Code now awaits plenary approval by Congress and presidential promulgation to become law.

DRC became first African nation to formally endorse the creation of an international crime of ecocide, following September 2024 proposal from Pacific nations to add ecocide to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Azerbaijan's parliament, the Milli Majlis, has passed the first reading of a bill that would introduce the crime of ecocide into the country's Criminal Code. Proposed by President Ilham Aliyev, the bill seeks to impose custodial sentences of 10 to 15 years for those convicted of committing severe environmental damage.

The crime of ecocide was formally introduced for consideration by member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) by Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa —an event that represents a major step forward in the global effort to enshrine mass environmental destruction as a crime under international law.

Peru has taken a significant step toward criminalising ecocide, as a national congressional Technical Committee successfully consolidated three separate proposed ecocide bills into a unified legislative text.

A new report by France’s international development financing agency, Agence Française de Développement (AFD), highlights the role that ecocide law would play in “ensuring the planet’s habitability”.

On 1 July 2024, Italy’s Green and Left Alliance proposed a bill to criminalise "ecocide," based on the Independent Expert Panel’s 2021 definition. The bill must undergo parliamentary discussion, committee review, voting in both houses, and receive presidential approval to become law.

Two new ecocide bills have been introduced in Peru's parliament by members of the Perú Libre and Cambio Democrático parties, adding to a previous submission and signalling a concerted move towards amending the penal code to include ecocide, based on the Independent Expert Panel’s consensus definition formulated in 2021.

On 17 June, the governing board of the largest political party in Finland’s ruling coalition government, the National Coalition Party, officially expressed support for ecocide as an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

On 16 May 2024, opposition congressman Américo Gonza introduced a bill to Peru’s parliament proposing to amend the country’s penal code to criminalise ecocide on the national level. The proposed amendment text closely emulates the consensus definition of ecocide produced by Stop Ecocide Foundation’s Independent Expert Panel.

The Swedish Parliament (Riksdag) voted on a total of six motions, from four political parties, that contain proposals to make ecocide prohibited under international law within the framework of the International Criminal Court.

The vote in parliament was close - 153 MPs voting in line with the Foreign Affairs Committee’s recommendations (i.e. against the motions) and 150 voting in favour.

The European Council formally adopted a new environmental crime directive, which includes provision to criminalise cases ‘comparable to ecocide’. This is the latest and final vote on the new Directive and follows approval by the European Parliament in February and a landmark political agreement between the European Council, Commission and Parliament in November 2023.

Member states will now have a 24 month period, via the so-called ‘transposition’ process, in which to align national legislation with the newly adopted directive. 

On February 20, 2024, a group of Finnish Green MPs, including former Minister of the Interior Maria Ohisalo, submitted a formal written question to the government, inquiring about the administration's intentions to promote the establishment of a new standalone international crime of ecocide via the International Criminal Court.

Belgium’s Federal Parliament voted in favour of a new penal code for the country, which, for the first time in Europe, includes recognition of the crime of ecocide at both the national and international levels. Nationally, the new crime of ecocide, aimed at preventing and punishing the most severe cases of environmentaldegradation, such as extensive oil spills, will apply to individuals in the highest positions of decision-making power and to corporations.

Two official side events focusing on ecocide were held at the International Criminal Court’s 22nd Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute held at the UN in New York. Vanuatu & Samoa joined forces with the Stop Ecocide Foundation for an event on 11th Dec focusing on victims of ecocide while Estonia & Romania joined Ukraine on 12th Dec to highlight the need to address ecocide in armed conflict.

A Private Members Bill dubbed the 'Ecocide Bill', introduced by Baroness Rosie Boycott, aims to close an existing gap in UK criminal law which allows perpetrators of the most severe environmental harms to escape accountability. 

The EU has agreed to enshrine in law a new offence that aims to punish the most serious crimes against the environment. The final text emerged following several months of negotiation (“trilogues”) between the European Council, Commission and Parliament considering, inter alia, the establishment of a “qualified offence” aimed at preventing and punishing the gravest environmental harms including, as the accompanying recitals specify, “cases comparable to ecocide”. 

The Environment and Sustainable Development Committee of the Deputies Chamber of the Brazilian Congress approved Bill No 2933/2023 which aims to criminalize the most serious cases of illegal or wanton destruction of the environment, known as “ecocide”. This Bill has been authored and submitted by the PSOL party and supported by a coalition or organisations including Ecoe Brasil, Climate Counsel, Observatório do Clima and Stop Ecocide International.

Monica Lennon MSP lodged proposals for a Members’ Bill in the Scottish Parliament asking people to support an ecocide prevention law that could see big polluters jailed for between 10 and 20 years.  

The Nordic Council voted unanimously in a session in Oslo, Norway to adopt a recommendation calling for ‘the Nordic governments to participate in relevant international discussions to criminalise serious crimes against the natural environment in both wartime and peacetime.’