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The Fifth Crime Under International Criminal Law: Ecocide?
Abstract
Environmental crimes are a serious and growing international concern as they cause significant harm to the environment and human health. Establishing environmental offences as international crimes would be a way to end with impunity as no country, no company and no individual would easily be able to escape from international criminal justice. As environmental offences do not yet fall under the scope of crimes against humanity, a new “core crime”—ecocide—should be introduced into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. This hypothetical scenario will have an important repercussion: individuals in a position of superior or command responsibility, such as CEOs, will be criminally liable if they carry out an activity that harms the environment.
... A exploração desordenada do meio ambiente por busca de recursos bióticos e a imprudência humana frente à preservação da natureza são os principais responsáveis pelo evento denominado Ecocídio (Instituto Humanitas Unisinos, 2018). Esse termo busca definir e criminalizar através de regulamentação ambiental, a capacidade antrópica em potencializar o processo de defaunação, objetivando-se interromper e minimizar previamente os impactos ao ecossistema e os seres que o compõem (Conrado et al., 2000;Hellman, 2014). ...
Despite housing extremely biotic wealth, Brazil has been currently facing a delicate situation, once it historically suffers the impacts that result from antropic activities. Therefore, it is necessary to broaden the current knowledge upon the causes and consequences of such acts, not only for the sake of biodiversity, but also for the ecosystem as a whole. Thus; by doing that, the aforementioned problem can be avoided. To sum up, this study, through a literature review, aims at broadening the current knowledge regarding environmental remodeling, either natural or antropic ones, as well as, their impact on human beings and their consequences for the Brazilian biodiversity.
... Si bien el concepto de ecocidio estaba vinculado, inicialmente, a la destrucción de los ecosistemas en tiempos de guerra (Serra Palao, 2019: 5-13;2020: 774-775), actualmente se maneja un concepto notablemente más amplio, entendiendo por ecocidio "cualquier daño extenso o destrucción del paisaje natural, así como la alteración o pérdida del ecosistema/s de un territorio determinado" (García Ruiz, 2018: 6). Desde hace años, se aboga por incluir el ecocidio en el Estatuto de Roma como el quinto crimen contra la humanidad por el que puede conocer la Corte Penal Internacional (Gauger, 2012;Higgins, Short y South, 2013;Hellman 2014;Lay 2015;García Ruiz 2018;Serra Palao, 2019; entre muchos otros). En fecha de cierre de la redacción de este artículo, un Unidas. ...
El carácter transnacional de los problemas ambientales hace necesario que la protección medioambiental, para ser eficaz, no se limite al ámbito nacional. En este sentido, la labor desarrollada por la UE en los últimos años ha sido imprescindible para lograr una política medioambiental común y ambiciosa. En las últimas décadas se ha realizado una intensa labor legislativa para adecuar el ordenamiento comunitario a las exigencias de la protección ambiental, recurriendo al Derecho penal para responder ante los atentados medioambientales más graves. En este artículo se analiza el proceso de creación y consolidación del denominado Derecho penal ambiental de la Unión Europea. Para ello, se analizan, en primer lugar, las directrices del Consejo de Europa, que ha influenciado notablemente la política de la Unión en materia ambiental. Posteriormente, se examina la evolución del Derecho, originario y derivado, y de la jurisprudencia más relevante del, por aquel entonces, Tribunal de Justicia de las Comunidades Europeas en esta materia. Finalmente, el trabajo culmina con el análisis de la repercusión de la promulgación de la Directiva 2008/99/CE del Parlamento Europeo y del Consejo, de 19 de noviembre de 2008, relativa a la protección del medio ambiente mediante el Derecho penal, en la configuración del Derecho penal ambiental de la Unión Europea.
... Terrorism was once more proposed as a crime that could be included under the jurisdiction of the ICC or could fall under the jurisdiction of a new international criminal court (Arnold 2004;Cohen 2011), although such proposals seem to have stalled during recent years, perhaps due to the limited success of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) that deals with terrorism (Alamuddin et al. 2014;Burgis-Kasthala and Saouli 2021;Hillebrecht 2020). Initiatives to include additional crimes under the jurisdiction of the ICC also include ecocide (Crook and Short 2021;Gauger et al. 2012;Gray 1995;Hellman 2014;Higgins 2012), human trafficking (Moran 2014), piracy (Dutton 2010;Kazemi and Heidari 2019;O'Brien 2014), and, most relevant in the present context, corruption (Christensen 2017a). Legal scholars suggested that corruption could be prosecuted under a broad interpretation of the ICC's mandate, possibly as a crime against humanity (Bantekas 2006;Roht-Arriaza and Martinez 2019). ...
This article contributes a critical study of efforts to internationalize the investigation and prosecution of corruption. The efforts to internationalize anticorruption enforcement are visible, for instance, in calls for an International Anticorruption Court (IACC) or an Anticorruption Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (APUNCAC). Inspired by a historical sociological perspective, this article investigates mobilizations around these initiatives, how mobilizers frame their engagement, and the ideological context in which they operate. In particular, the article zooms in on elites and how they push for states to internationalize the investigation and prosecution of corruption. This article situates the efforts of these elites in a larger historical context and compares the push to internationalize anticorruption enforcement to earlier legal mobilizations in the field of international criminal justice focused on atrocity crimes.
... If carbon emissions are at the forefront of the causes of global warming, then the obvious question is why continue to emit such dangerous planet-altering substances into the atmosphere. From a critical criminological perspective, ecological destruction accompanying natural resource extraction such as the oil and gas industries, coal mining, logging and so on should be proceeded against under an international law of ecocide [49]. ...
Purpose of Review
The object of this article is to review recent criminological writings on climate change and its implications for violence.
Recent Findings
Criminological literature tends to focus on either the negative consequences of climate change, such as for example an increase in violence due to increases in warm temperatures, or the causes of global warming, such as activities and omissions by nation-states and transnational corporations that foster ongoing carbon emissions.
Summary
The article provides insight into climate change-related crimes through the lens of criminology. It does this by examining the relationship between temperature changes and human behaviour, climate change and social strains, and the re-casting of crimes of the powerful as ecocide since they contribute to global warming. Related issues pertaining to contrarianism and the securitisation of natural resources, both of which protect and sustain particular sectional interests rather than the public interest, are also considered.
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Ante esto, buscamos enfrentar la siguiente pregunta: ¿qué puede aportar el Derecho, en el contexto de la educación jurídica, para modificar esta concepción de la naturaleza que ha degradado al Planeta? Por lo tanto, el objetivo de este artículo es analizar las premisas del Derecho Ecológico y proponer su inserción en la educación jurídica, como una nueva forma de pensar el Derecho Ambiental.
Para ello, buscamos primero verificar algunos vínculos entre la crisisambiental y la aparición de zoonosis como la COVID-19
Comunidad académica y COVID 19. Volumen I
OBRA COLETIVA
Reflexiones sobre los quehaceres universitarios
de la acción social, la investigación y la docencia
en contextos de pandemia y post pandemia
en Costa Rica y Brasil
The aim of the present essay is to analyse whether extraterritorial obligations of due diligence in environmental matters could be an effective alternative when dealing with the phenomenon of the ‘relocation of dangerous companies’. In other words, since environmental damages caused outside a state of war are still not considered international crimes and an eventual inclusion of ecocide in this list faces serious difficulties, we will explore if and to what extent due diligence procedures imposed by the home state have the potential to achieve the intended purposes of penalties applied
to international crimes.
Current Brazilian policies on environmental protection have become a worldwide concern since President Bolsonaro’s election in 2018. Not only have his speeches been aggressive and critical of environmental protections, but many of his actual decisions have shown a very dangerous negligence of populations and interests affected by environmental harms. As a consequence, different environmental crises have plagued the country without any adequate response by public agencies or emergency plans to diminished harms. This essay uses a regulatory approach to demonstrate how the recent large withdrawal of environmental protection instruments in Brazil have supported a harmful and unlawful political agenda. First, we reconstruct the historical narrative of Brazilian environmental policy between the years 2018 and 2021, demonstrating through journalistic reports and social organizations’ alerts, how the speeches, actions and omissions of the Brazilian government may have contributed to the present environmental situation. Using an environmental justice perspective, we demonstrate a lack of legitimate influence on political decisions related to environmental protection. Subsequently, we discuss the existing legal instruments to respond to the political abuses in the Brazilian legal system, in order to demonstrate their insufficiency to deal with this scenario. Finally, we evaluate international criminal law as a possible answer to the ongoing environmental abuses in Brazil.
Since the beginning of Jair Bolsonaro´s presidential mandate, existing Brazilian
environmental regulations started being rolled back to benefit a small, but powerful, Brazilian
bourgeoise, the so-called “Brazilian agribusiness.” The process of deregulation in
Brazil (regulatory rollback) is responsible for significant environmental and social harm,
which affects largely marginalized peoples and indigenous communities in the Brazilian
Amazon rainforest. It is also responsible for operating, and maintaining, dynamics of
social inclusion and exclusion which are deepening the democratic deficit in Brazil, which
is here denominated as the “mechanisms of environmental victimization.” To demonstrate
the Brazilian regulatory rollback the authors analyse legislative and regulatory
amendments since the beginning of Jair Bolsonaro´s mandate. Through this analysis, the
authors seek to demonstrate how the symbiosis between state and corporate interests
can promote significant social and environmental victimization.
Ecocídio e o Tribunal Penal Internacional Resumo: O presente artigo de revisão de literatura analisa o crime de ecocídio, caracterizado pela ofensa massiva ao meio ambiente capaz de provocar a morte de animais ou vegetais, ou por tornar inapropriados o uso das águas, o solo, subsolo e/ou o ar, e ocasionando também graves danos à vida humana. Utilizando o método hermenêutico, o artigo utiliza a interpretação declaratória para demonstrar que as práticas ecocidas podem ser consideradas como crime contra a humanidade previsto na alínea k do artigo 7° do Estatuto de Roma. Para este enquadramento é imprescindível que se preencham os requisitos objetivos e subjetivos do tipo, quais sejam, um ataque generalizado ou sistemático a uma população civil, praticado de forma dolosa, exigindo-se ainda o objetivo político do ataque como fim específico do crime. Por fim, o artigo conclui pela insuficiência da mera adequação do crime de ecocídio aos delitos contra a humanidade, propondo uma Emenda ao estatuto de Roma para incluir o tipo penal de ecocídio de forma autônoma. Palavras-chave: Direito Ambiental; Crimes contra a humanidade; Tribunal Penal Internacional; Princípio da legalidade; Estatuto de Roma. Ecocide and the International Criminal Court Abstract: The present review article analyzes the crime of ecocide, which is characterized by a massive environmental offense capable of causing the death of animals or plants, or of rendering inappropriate the use of water, soil, subsoil and/or air, and, also, causing serious damages to human life. Using the hermeneutical method, the article uses declaratory interpretation to demonstrate that ecocidal practices can be considered as a crime against humanity provided for in Article 7 (k) of the Rome Statute. For this framework, it is imperative that the objective and subjective requirements of the type, e.g. a generalized or systematic attack on a civilian population, practiced in an intentional way, be demanded, and the political objective of the attack is also demanded as a specific purpose of the crime. Finally, the article concludes that the mere inclusion of the ecocide crime as an offense against humanity does not suffice to address its matter. Therefore, an amendment to Rome’s Statute, aiming to include ecocide as an autonomous criminal type, is suggested. Keywords: Crimes against humanity. Environmental Law. International Criminal Court. Principle of legality. Rome Statute.
At the beginning of the renaissance of international criminal law in the 1990s, the law on crimes against humanity was in a fragile state. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) decisively contributed to the consolidation of customary international law on crimes against humanity and paved the way for its first comprehensive codification in Article 7 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). At the same time, the ICTY in its early decisions already showed a certain inclination to broaden the scope of the application of the crime by downgrading its contextual requirement. More recently, this tendency culminated in the complete abandonment of the policy requirement. While this ‘progressive’ facet of the ICTY's jurisprudence largely took the form of obiter dicta, the Situation in the Republic of Kenya has confronted the ICC with the need to ‘get serious’ about the present state of the law. This has led to a controversy in Pre-Trial Chamber II about the concept of organization in Article 7(2)(a) of the Statute. While the majority essentially follows the path of the more recent case law of the ICTY, the ICTR, and the Special Tribunal for Sierra Leone and supports a liberal interpretation, Judge Kaul prefers to confine the term to state-like organizations and generally calls for caution against too hasty an expansion of the realm of international criminal law stricto sensu. This comment agrees with the main thrust of the Dissenting Opinion and hopes that it will provoke a thorough debate.
This article examines what makes a crime against humanity a crime against humanity as opposed to an ordinary offense under domestic criminal law. One answer is to say that any systematic or widespread attack against a civilian population which is sponsored, supported or condoned by the State is a crime against humanity. Another interpretation is that any widespread or systematic attacks against civilians which “infringe on basic human values” should be classified as crimes against humanity. This paper will use the Rome Statute and emerging case law of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to argue that neither of the two main approaches taken thus far is satisfactory. The first approach severely limits crimes against humanity in a way that fails to account for the realities of modern warfare since most international crimes today are not committed by State actors or persons having any formal links with State institutions. The second approach, advanced by the majority of ICC judges, seems so broad that it can lead to international involvement in isolated incidents of insufficient gravity to warrant international community intervention.The paper makes a two-pronged argument in making the case for an amendment of the definition of crimes against humanity used at the ICC. First, ICC judges need to refrain from launching a covert judicial offensive to broaden the current definition of crimes against humanity contained in the Rome Statute. Second, ICC States Parties should amend the Rome Statute to expand the scope of crimes against humanity to cover any massive violations of human rights committed by states or other organizations or groups, irrespective of whether they are sponsored by private or public institutions. In this way, they will provide a conceptual mooring for a crime that captures the popular imagination but whose historical development has led to confusing and inconsistent judicial positions in its interpretation and application.
What makes crimes against humanity crimes against humanity? Legal Studies Research Paper Series Working Paper No
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