Prosecuting Ecocide: Can We Fill the Accountability Gap for Environmental Harm? [Video]
Publisher: University of British Columbia, the Toxic Crimes Project, and EnPAx Law Interest Group
Author(s): Rachel Killean, Richard Rogers, Alex Whiting, Maud Sarliève, Stavros Pantazopoulos, and Lisa Sundstrom
Date: 2022
Topics: Governance, Weapons, Waste, and Pollution
On Wednesday, January 19th, 2022, the ActInCourts Network (UBC), the Toxic Crimes Project at the Erik Castrén Institute (University of Helsinki), and the Law Interest Group of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association hosted the fifth Practitioner-Scholar Roundtable in which the potential of prosecuting ecocide was discussed and our researcher Dr. Stavros Pantazopoulous acted as moderator.
Since the inception of the idea to define and criminalize environmental harm in the 1970s, today there is a renewed momentum and support to address accountability for environmental harm. In June 2021, an Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide (‘Panel’), convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation, proposed a new definition of ecocide as an international crime. Having received both positive and critical responses, this renewed effort might initiate a process to amend the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) with Ecocide becoming the Fifth International Crime.