ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the call for an international crime of ecocide under the International Criminal Court (ICC) and what it might tell us about the discipline of international law. It argues that the proposal for an international crime of ecocide rests on an assumption that the anthropocentrism of international law can be transcended by expanding its universal reach – an assumption that the chapter troubles. Rather than foreclosing the possibility of a crime of ecocide, the chapter reflects on how international lawyers reach for a universal law under the jurisdiction of the ICC when they call for an international crime of ecocide. It reads the campaign for an international crime of ecocide alongside Indigenous law, and considers what legal traditions international lawyers tend to overlook when we rush too fast towards more universal international law. It suggests that the crime of ecocide relies on an international law that is abstracted from the ‘ground beneath our feet’, rendering an international crime of ecocide less conducive to reciprocal legal relationships with the land than what we make it out to be. In return, the chapter argues for slowness and prudence in how we approach the desire for more international law in response to our environmental predicament.
