Spain’s Foreign Affairs Parliamentary Committee has just passed a resolution calling on the government to study the possibility of criminalising ecocide at national and international levels. The resolution has 3 parts, urging the Spanish government to:

1. Study the possibility of proposing the inclusion of the crime of ecocide in Spanish criminal law.

2. Study the possibility of supporting the initiative of Vanuatu and the Maldives to amend the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to include the crime of ecocide.

3. Study the possibility of proposing amendments to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to include the crime of ecocide.

The resolution was proposed to the committee by parliamentarians Mariona Illamola and Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas of the Junts Per Catalunya party. The original motion was more strongly worded, urging the Spanish government to actually propose ecocide law nationally and internationally. With a modification to “study the possibility” of doing so, a strong majority was reached in the committee with all but one of the represented parties supporting the resulting motion.