Criminalizing Ecocide

Authors

Rebecca Hamilton, American University, Washington College of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2024

Abstract

Amid widespread acknowledgment that we live on a planet in peril, the term “ecocide” packs a powerful rhetorical punch. Extant regulatory approaches to environmental protection feel insufficient in the face of the triple threat of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. International criminal prosecution for ecocide, by contrast, promises to meet the moment, and a recent proposal to introduce ecocide into the canon of core international crimes is gaining traction. Assuming the push to criminalize ecocide continues to gain momentum, this Article argues that the primary (and perhaps, sole) benefit that international criminal law can offer in this context is its expressive power and, that being the case, it is vital to clarify exactly what the expressive message of ecocide should be. The recent burst of scholarly attention to the proposed ecocide definition has largely bypassed this normative groundwork. This Article calls for time to be invested in grappling with hard questions about what exactly the harm is that ecocide seeks to vindicate which, in turn, requires determining how best to conceptualize the relationship that humans have with the natural environment. The Article contends that if the proposed legal definition of ecocide is codified as an international crime, it risks being used to prosecute those who are already marginalized, while reinforcing the artificial (and damaging) conceptual separation of humans from nature that is already entrenched in international law. Nonetheless, there is a window of opportunity, currently open, to embed within the ecocide definition a position that understands humans as inseparable from nature, which would align ecocide’s expressive message with long-standing Indigenous epistemologies, emerging human rights jurisprudence, and cutting-edge earth science. Time spent now on re-imagining the normative justification for ecocide’s criminalization could put international criminal law in the rare position of being at the vanguard of a progressive movement to build a greener international law.

Recommended Citation

Rebecca Hamilton, Criminalizing Ecocide, (2024).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/facsch_lawrev/2247