I hate to say it, but the expert panel’s definition of ecocide is crap:
- For the purpose of this Statute, ‘ecocide’ means unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.
Finding the bottom of it is like trying to find where a bowl of spaghetti begins, and when you finally do it’s psychological. We don’t need endless the epistemological theater of courts trying to decide whether so-and-so “knew” (hence what does it mean to “know”? can we really “know”?). We need entities and people to be punished for large-scale environmental harms without regard to their knowledge, IOW even if they didn’t know.
Polly Higgins Earth Lawyer — 1968–2019 June 22, 2021
The moment you’ve been waiting for! Today the expert drafting panel convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation reveals the result of 6 months of intense legal deliberations: their 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐂𝐈𝐃𝐄 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐟𝐢𝐟𝐭𝐡 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐭.
“The definition is concise and powerful, based on strong legal precedents and will mesh well with existing laws. It’s bold and workable in equal measure — governments will take it seriously.” Jojo Mehta, Chair, Stop Ecocide Foundation