ABSTRACT
The concept of ecocide, mass damage and destruction of nature, dates back to the Vietnam War. Still, legal systems fall woefully short of addressing the ongoing ecocide. International environmental law lacks coherence and an overarching normative framework. The global economic system has no corresponding global governance system. Including ecocide as a crime in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court would be the first new international crime since 1945. Since the proposal of a definition of ecocide in 2021, interest from states and transnational organisations has soared. By focusing on the risk of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment, without requiring direct negative impact on humans, criminalising ecocide introduces responsibility for the worst violations of rights of Nature. It constitutes a legal red line: to here but no further. When international criminal law for the first time takes nature into account, this is a transformative step in an anthropocentric system. Ecocide law could be a ‘green swan’—a small change in one place within the system, which catalyses big changes of the whole, paving the way for a more respectful relationship between human society and nature.
