The ecocide wave: what is the role of international criminal law in enforcing sustainability?

As the time to mitigate the effects of the global climate crisis runs out, proposals to resort to criminal law as the ultima ratio remedy are rapidly gaining support. In this context, the recent European Parliament’s vote (April 2023) in favor of a new Environmental Crimes Directive which prohibits environmental damage and calls States to sanction serious offences in this context accordingly does not come as a surprise. This Draft Directive has been inspired by the developments taking place at an international level, following archipelago-State Vanautu’s call to recognize ecocide as an international crime. In June 2021, an Independent Expert Panel presented a consensus definition of ecocide aimed at making “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” the fifth international crime under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The possible amendment of the ICC’s Rome Statute to include ecocide as an international crime raises important enforcement questions such as the need to recognize corporate criminal accountability or the urgency to review attribution mechanisms in the context of environmental damage. Whether this proposal is grounded on anthropocentric views, in line with the UN General Assembly’s new recognition of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment or on an ecological view, is to be defined. The present article aims to contribute to the debate on the legal foundations of an unprecedented judicial tool to react against the destruction of the environment: the crime of ecocide.