Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa want international criminal court to class environmental destruction as crime alongside genocide
Three developing countries have taken the first steps towards transforming the world’s response to climate breakdown and environmental destruction by making ecocide a punishable criminal offence.
In a submission to the international criminal court on Monday, they propose a change in the rules to recognise “ecocide” as a crime alongside genocide and war crimes.
If successful, the change could allow for the prosecution of individuals who have brought about environmental destruction, such as the heads of large polluting companies, or heads of state.
This sounds good on paper but it’s hard to imagine implementing it in a meaningful way.
For example, the #1 polluter in the world is the US Dept of Defense. Their crimes against the environment are so devastating and numerous, future generations will never forgive us for allowing it. You’re telling me the ICC would issue ecocide arrest warrants for US generals, secretary of state, and commander in chief?
I wish it would happen, but unfortunately this will probably be applied just like other ICC actions: A cudgel for stronger nations to punish misbehaving weaker nations, while never applying the same justice to powerful nations who misbehave.
My understanding is that the overall argument for international law is not primarily its enforceability, but the definition of norms that let states pressure each other in a particular direction.
Note also that the US has never recognized the ICC to begin with.
But the US is not the only player. EU countries tend to also pollute a lot but also tend to be more international law oriented. This then reverberates in many other parts of the world.
In all, don’t expect the crime of ecocide to cause heads to roll and don’t put too much faith in it, but also don’t underestimate it’s value as a political tool.
On top of that can you imagine the US actually punishing its heads of state for anything on behalf of an international organization?
The US is literally funding and helping carry out the genocide and war crimes against an entire people with absolute impunity. Its two parties fully support it. Its corporations and universities fully collude with it and name and shame employees and students that don’t in public, so their livelihoods are affected.
It seems all these international organizations can do is publish statements that the law is being broken. At least the history books have a legal, contemporary point of view, i guess. Peak performative justice.
It’s not just the US. Most countries aren’t doing any meaningful change to counter climate change. It’s just net zero by 2300, ban straws here, make stupid soda caps that stick to the bottle, performative trash separation that gets dumped together, magic carbon offsetting and climate summits of empty promises that overall net more pollution due to heads of state and heads of corporations traveling somewhere rather than if it hadn’t happened at all. Just kicking the can down the road, while living through the hottest summers on record.
Hey it would show they meant business.