Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law (adopted May 14, 2025, opened for signature Dec. 3, 2025). Available online.

Bamako Convention on the Ban of the Import into Africa and the Control of Transboundary Movement and Management of Hazardous Wastes within Africa, OAU (adopted Jan. 30, 1991, entered into force Apr. 22, 1998). Available online, archived.

Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, 1673 U.N.T.S. 57 (adopted Mar. 22, 1989, entered into force May 5, 1992). Available online, archived.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Adopted by the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, Jul. 17 1998, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.183/9 [hereinafter cited as Rome Statute  ]. عربي, 中文, English, Français, Ελληνικά, Русский, Español.

• Article 8: War crimes

• Article 25: Individual criminal responsibility

Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, 1108 U.N.T.S. 151 (adopted Dec. 10, 1976, entered into force Oct. 5, 1978). Available online.

Assembly of States Parties, Proposal Submitted by Vanuatu to Amend the Rome Statute, ICC-ASP/23/26 at Annex II (Dec. 1, 2024) [hereinafter Vanuatu Proposal]. Available online.

Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change, Advisory Opinion, 2025 I.C.J. (forthcoming) (Jul. 23, 2025). Available online.

Climate Emergency and Human Rights, Advisory Opinion, OC-32/25, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (May 29, 2025). Available online.

Office of the Prosecutor, ICC, Policy on Addressing Environmental Damage Through the Rome Statute (Dec. 4, 2025). Available online, video, questions and answers.

Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, in Report of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, U.N. Doc.A/CONF.48/14 and Corr.1 (Jun. 1972). Available online.

Lammert van Raan et al., Ecocide Law Advisory, Working Group on the National Criminalisation of Ecocide, Manual for a National Criminalisation of Ecocide (Feb. 10, 2025). Available online.

Francisco Orrego Vicuña, Responsibility and Liability Under International Law for Environmental Damage, Rapporteur’s Report, IIL, Strasbourg Session (1997). Available online.

Vicuña recommends that environmentally focused regimes build rules for compensation, prevention, restoration, and liability. The report argues for flexible liability mechanisms, including: collective reparations or international funds for damage that is widespread or from unknown sources, joint and several liability for large consortia, and access to transnational legal mechanisms.

Promise Institute for Human Rights, Proposed Definition of Ecocide (Apr. 9, 2021). Available online.

Promise Institute for Human Rights & Institute of Commonwealth Studies, International Conference on Ecocide, Human Rights & Environmental Justice (Oct. 31, 2015). Available online, video.

Legal Definition of Ecocide, Stop Ecocide Foundation. Available online (last visited Jan. 14, 2026).

Stop Ecocide Foundation, Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide: Commentary and Core Text (Jun. 2021). Available online.

The report provides an authoritative, internationally drafted legal definition of ecocide and proposes it as a fifth crime under the Rome Statute. It defines ecocide as “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.” The panel believes that criminalization is necessary to create accountability for environmental destruction that current civil and state responsibility frameworks cannot address.

Richa Syal, “Gushing Oil and Roaring Fires”: 30 Years on Kuwait Is Still Scarred by Catastrophic Pollution, The Guardian, Dec. 11, 2021. Available online.

Hayat Alvi, Accountability in the 21st Century: Ecocide and Genocide, ISA, unpublished working paper (Mar. 25, 2022). Available online.

Alvi explains how genocide and ecocide are interconnected and that ecocide inevitably leads to genocide. The author also explains how the movement behind the recognition of ecocide aims to incorporate ecocide as a fifth crime in the Rome Statute and further notes how, if ecocide is actually incorporated in the Statute, that it would be the only crime in which human harm is not required, since the harm done is against nature itself.

Kai Ambos, Protecting the Environment Through International Criminal Law?, EJIL Talk (Jun. 29, 2021). Available online.

Jelena Aparac, A Missed Opportunity for Accountability? Corporate Responsibility and the Draft Definition of Ecocide, Völkerrechtsblog (Jul. 9, 2021). Available online.

Saeed Bagheri, The Legal Limits to the Destruction of Natural Resources in Non-International Armed Conflicts: Applying International Humanitarian Law, 105 Int’l Rev. Red Cross 882 (Aug. 2023). Available online, doi.

Madison P. Bingle, How Amending Ecocide Into the Rome Statute Could Provide Vietnamese Agent Orange Victims Access to Justice, 45 U. Haw. L. Rev. 123 (2022). Available online.

Although the ICC could not retroactively prosecute the United States for its use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, adding ecocide to the Rome Statute could still promote accountability by influencing national courts, encouraging U.S. acknowledgment of responsibility, and deterring future environmental destruction. International law at the time of the Vietnam War only prohibited the use of poisons, not herbicides, which left victims without legal recourse. The proposed ecocide amendment would close this gap by recognizing large scale environmental harm as an international crime.

Kutluhan Bozkurt & Elif Naz Němec, Advancing Ecocide in International Law: A Potential Legal Tool for Safeguarding Endangered Species Amidst Climate Change, 15 JIUFL 350 (2024). Available online, doi.

Bozkurt and Němec argue that international law currently lacks adequate mechanisms to protect biodiversity and endangered species from climate change driven environmental destruction, and that criminalizing ecocide could fill this gap. They argue that existing frameworks, such as the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute, are insufficient because they address environmental harm only indirectly or in wartime contexts. The authors advocate for defining ecocide as a peremptory norm grounded in an ecocentric approach that recognizes the intrinsic value and legal rights of nature in order to strengthen global biodiversity protection.

Adam Branch & Liana Minkova, Ecocide, the Anthropocene, and the International Criminal Court, 37 Ethics & Int’l Aff. 51, 58 (2023). Available online, doi.

The authors argue that the proposed ecocide language is inadequate and may even risk rendering ecocide prosecutions ineffective and producing perverse outcomes for the environment and affected people.

Robert Bray, Fausto Pocar et al., Eur. L. Inst., Report on Ecocide: Model Rules for an EU Directive and a Council Decision (Feb. 2023). Available online.

Marília De Nardin Budó, Os limites coloniais da criminalização do ecocídio perante o Tribunal Penal Internacional (The Colonial Limits of the Criminalization of Ecocide Before the International Criminal Court), 14 Sortuz 343 (Nov. 2024) (Braz.). Available online

The author aims to engage in the debate of the international criminalization of ecocide, starting from the field of Latin American critical criminology, informed by decolonial literature, indigenous climate studies, and Southern green criminology. Through theoretical and documentary research, the author aims to understand how the stated objectives of the criminalization of ecocide at the international level inform the cognitive and material bases of the operationalization of the international criminal justice system, especially with regard to the colonial origins of genocide, ecocide, and the actual operation of the ICC itself.

Ammar Bustami & Marie-Christine Hecken, Perspectives for a New International Crime Against the Environment: International Criminal Responsibility for Environmental Degradation Under the Rome Statute, 11 GoJIL 145 (Jun. 12, 2021). Available online, doi, archived.

Byung-Sun Cho, Emergence of an International Environmental Criminal Law?, 19 UCLA J. Envtl. L. and Pol’y 11 (2000). Available online, doi.

Eliana T. Cusato & Emily Jones, The “Imbroglio” of Ecocide: A Political Economic Analysis, 37 Leiden J. Int’l L. 42 (2024). Available online, doi.

Cusato and Jones argue that the current push to codify ecocide at the ICC is entangled with neoliberal economic logics that depoliticize structural drivers of environmental destruction. They critique the “technocratic universalism” of international criminal law and call for a political-economic reframing that exposes capitalism’s role in ecocidal harm.

Helena Duffy & David Tollerton, Genocide/Ecocide: Culture, Public Debate, Language, 31 Holocaust Studies 1 (2025). Available online, doi.

The authors discuss how Holocaust studies have increasingly incorporated ecocritical and zoocritical perspectives to move beyond the field’s traditional focus on human actors. It shows how emerging scholarship challenges longstanding anthropocentrism by examining non-human agency, environmental metaphors, and the ecological dimensions of Nazi ideology and policy. It suggests that future work in environmental genocide studies will further illuminate how the destruction of humans and environments intertwined during the Holocaust.

Aaron Dumont, Ecocide: A New Hope to Save the Environment or Just Another Dead Loss?, 5 JILPAC 63 (2022). Paywall, doi.

It is questionable whether the current proposed ecocide language is likely to be adopted, particularly its mens rea requirement, because redefining knowledge exclusively for the crime of ecocide in the Rome Statute would be in systematic contradiction with the rest of the Statute. Dumont suggests instead using “in conscious disregard” instead of “knowledge,” as is the case for the responsibility of superiors under Article 28(b)(i) of the Rome Statute.

Alexander Dunlap, The Politics of Ecocide, Genocide and Megaprojects: Interrogating Natural Resource Extraction, Identity and the Normalization of Erasure, 23 J. Genocide Res. 212 (Apr. 2020). Available online, doi.

Alexander Dunlap, The “Solution” Is Now the “Problem:” Wind Energy, Colonisation and the “Genocide-Ecocide Nexus” in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, 22 Int’l J. of Hum. Rts. 550 (2018). Available online, doi.

Dunlap takes a look at the wind energy generating site in the Coastal Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca, Mexico. Despite the wind energy being marketed as a great solution for saving the environment, the fact that it uses fossil fuel is ignored. Furthermore, the space needed for the wind turbines forces the indigenous people to move from their land, ignoring the value that the indigenous people have for their land, their culture, and the sea. The continuous use of this land by foreign companies reflects the same tactics used during colonialism and even the erasure of indigenous people and their plight.

Vincenzo Elia, Ecocide to Effectively Stimulate the Integration of International Environmental and Criminal Laws, 15 Asian J. Int’l L. 1 (2025). Available online, doi.

Vincenzo contends that ecocide should be designed to bridge the gap between international environmental and criminal law. She proposes an integrative model linking state responsibility, individual criminal accountability, and preventive environmental governance, arguing that this hybrid approach better operationalizes sustainable-development principles.

Richard A. Falk, Environmental Warfare and Ecocide—Facts, Appraisal, and Proposals, 4 Bull. of Peace Proposals 80 (Dec. 1973). Paywall, doi.

Anja Gauger, Mai Pouye Rabatel-Fernel, Louise Kulbicki, Damien Short & Polly Higgins, Hum. Rts. Consortium, Ecocide is the Missing 5th Crime Against Peace (Jun. 2013). Available online.

Matthew Gillett, Georgia Moloney & Anne-Lise Chaber, Proving Ecocide: The Plight of Pangolins as a Case Study for Fusing Ecological Science with International Law, 25 Int’l Crim. L. Rev. 1 (Mar. 2025). Available online, doi.

Anastacia Greene, The Campaign to Make Ecocide an International Crime: Quixotic Quest or Moral Imperative?, 30 Fordham Envtl. L. Rev. 1 (2019). Available online.

Anja Habersang, Tackling Terricide, Not (Only) Ecocide: Further Exploring the Nexus Between Social-Ecological Destruction, 22 Globalizations 323 (2025). Available online, doi.

Habersang makes connections between terricide, and the ecocide-genocide nexus to social-ecological destruction. Terricide—defined as the destruction, killing, or death of planet Earth—is connected to the activities of mining and how it destroys nature through ecocide. These activities are done in developing countries looking for minerals through mining using dangerous chemicals. Destroying the environment further destroys the symbiotic relationship that the communities have with themselves and with the land.

Rebecca J. Hamilton, Criminalizing Ecocide: An Opportunity to Embed the Inseparability of Humans from Nature Into the Law, 38 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 69 (May 2025). Available online, doi.

Rebecca J. Hamilton, Criminalizing Ecocide, WCL, 1 (Aug. 2024). Available online.

The current definition of ecocide assumes that humans are separable from nature, a colonialist perspective. The current definition views nature as a commodification that inevitably sacrifices under human use. The author proposes a new definition that assumes humans are inseparable from nature to strengthen the expressive message of ecocide.

Thomas Obel Hansen, Accountability for Environmental Crimes in Conflict Zones: Why Expanding the International Criminal Court’s Jurisdiction Is Not the Best Solution, 56 N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. 879 (2024). Available online.

Oscar Van den Heede, Ecocide as a Fifth Core Crime in the Rome Statute, 55 N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. 435 (May 2023). Available online.

Ethan A. Heller, Unleashing Ecocide: Conscripting International Prosecutors into the Fight Against Climate Change, 35 Geo. Envtl. L. Rev. 89 (2022). Available online.

Adding ecocide as a fifth crime under the Rome Statute would fill a gap and allow the ICC to prosecute attacks on the environment that occur during peacetime. Currently, environmental damage is mentioned in Article 8 of the Rome Statute, but the prohibited conduct is limited to wartime where environmental harm is incident to human harm.

Kevin Jon Heller, Skeptical Thoughts on the Proposed Crime of “Ecocide” (That Isn’t), Opinio Juris (Jun. 23, 2021). Available online.

The Independent Expert Panel’s definition of ecocide carries symbolic value, but it is legally weak, anthropocentric, and unlikely to be adopted by the states most responsible for major environmental harm.

Jérôme de Hemptinne, Concluding Observations on the Influence of International Environmental Law Over International Criminal Law, 20 J. Int’l Crim. Just. 1287 (Nov. 2022). Paywall, doi.

Austin Jenish, Explainer: What Is Ecocide and How Is It Treated in International and Domestic Law?, Earth.org (Jul. 3, 2025). Available online.

Jenish notes that while the Rome Statute does not specifically ban ecocide, the closest it gets to an ecocide provision is Article 8(2)(b)(iv). That Article states that intentional attacks, with knowledge that they will cause severe damage to the natural environment, can be construed as a war crime. Because of this high threshold, no ecocide crimes have been tried by the ICC. The author adds that if the Rome Statute were to include ecocide specifically as a strict liability crime, it would dilute the gravity of the original meaning of ecocide.

Anna Jenkin, The Case for an International Crime of Ecocide, 26 NZJEL 221 (Jan. 2022). Available online.

Michael Karnavas, Ecocide: Environmental Crime of Crimes or Ill-Conceived Concept?, Opinio Juris (Jul. 29, 2021). Available online.

Rachel Killean, Ecocide’s Evolving Relationship With War, EAS 1 (Jun. 2025). Available online, doi.

Killean challenges the idea that international legal codification is the most effective path forward, arguing that ongoing regional and domestic efforts to incorporate ecocide are also meaningful. She also identifies a crucial limitation of an ICC amendment: even if ecocide were internationally codified, its applicability to wartime environmental harm would remain narrow because principles like lex specialis and lawful combatant immunity govern during armed conflict. As a result, military necessity can justify significant environmental damage, raising the threshold for prosecution and limiting the potential impact of an ecocide provision.

Rachel Killean & Damien Short, A Critical Defence of the Crime of Ecocide, Envtl. Pol. 6 (Apr. 2025). Available online, doi.

Killean and Short critique the Independent Expert Panel’s definition of ecocide, arguing that the qualifiers “unlawful” and “wanton” reproduce anthropocentric biases. The authors contend that the mens rea of “knowledge of a substantial likelihood” fails to address planetary-scale harm and they advocate for a shift toward ecocentric accountability.

Abbey Koenning-Rutherford, Dishonoring the Earth: Ecocide as Prosecutable Genocide Against Indigenous People, 111 Geo. L.J. 1495 (Jun. 2023). Available online.

Jessica C. Lawrence & Kevin Jon Heller, The Limits of Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute, the First Ecocentric Environmental War Crime, 20 Geo. Int’l Envtl. L. Rev. 61 (Apr. 2007). Available online.

Debbie Legge & Simon Brooman, Reflecting on 25 Years of Teaching Animal Law: Is it Time for an International Crime of Animal Ecocide?, 41 Liverpool L. Rev. 201 (2020). Available online, doi.

Legge and Brooman argue that existing animal welfare and environmental law frameworks have failed to adequately protect animals, despite increased recognition of animal sentience and ecological harm over the past 25 years. They also argue that the proposed international crime of ecocide should be expanded to include a distinct concept of “animal ecocide,” which would recognize animals as sentient beings harmed in their own right rather than merely as collateral victims of environmental destruction. Incorporating animal ecocide into international criminal law would strengthen accountability for large scale harm to wild animals and move legal protection beyond anthropocentric environmental frameworks.

Kate Mackintosh, Ecocide is the Missing Crime, Icarus Complex (Oct. 22, 2025). Available online.

Kate Mackintosh, Olivia Swaak-Goldman, Grant Dawson & Gaspard van der Woude, Promise Inst. for Hum. Rts., Wildlife Crime: Testing the Waters for Ecocide (2023). Available online.

The authors argue that serious wildlife crime—particularly when it threatens the survival of an entire species—fits squarely within the proposed international definition of ecocide, because it causes severe, widespread, and long-term environmental harm. They contend that prosecuting wildlife crime as ecocide could fill major accountability gaps, strengthen international cooperation against transnational trafficking networks, and provide a powerful legal and symbolic tool to protect biodiversity.

Kate Mackintosh & Lisa Oldring, Watch This Space: Momentum Toward an International Crime of Ecocide, Just Security (Dec. 2022). Available online.

Janet J. McIntyre-Mills, Mphatheleni Makaulule, Patricia Lethole, E. Pitsoane, Akwasi Arko‑Achemfuor, Rudolf Wirawan & Ida Widianingsih, Ecocentric Living: A Way Forward Towards Zero Carbon: A Conversation about Indigenous Law and Leadership Based on Custodianship and Praxis, 36 Systemic Prac. & Action Research 275 (2023). Available online, doi.

The authors ask for ecocide to be added as the fifth crime of the Rome Statute. However, they also seek to expand the definition of personhood to include nature as a person so that the cases surrounding ecocide are made even more impactful by viewing nature as important as a human. The authors note that some laws around the world, such as in Australia, have expanded the definition of personhood to include rivers. Bolivia and Ecuador have done something similar by including the rights of Pachamana (Mother Earth) into their constitution. However, these moves have not been enough to stop the erosion of nature and the connection that the people of the country have to the nature and the culture, such as an indigenous systemic approach to forest protection. Therefore, the next step is to include nature as part of the personhood definition. The work that indigenous Africans, such as Kenya’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, is also recognized together with the impact they have made in the discussion of climate change.

Jojo Mehta & Julia Jackson, Editorial, To Stop Climate Disaster, Make Ecocide an International Crime. It’s the Only Way, The Guardian, Feb. 24, 2021. Available online.

Liana Georgieva Minkova, Ecocide, Sustainable Development and Critical Environmental Law Insights, 22 J. Int’l Crim. Just. 81 (Mar. 2024). Available online, doi.

Minkova argues that mainstream attempts to criminalize ecocide rely on the norms of traditional international environmental law. These include, for example, balancing environmental protection and economic benefit. Minkova argues that because environmental harm increasingly comes from everyday industrial activities and not just war, defining ecocide through a traditional international law framework risks normalizing ecological destruction as part of necessary economic progress.

Liana Georgieva Minkova, The Fifth International Crime: Reflections on the Definition of “Ecocide”, 25 J. Genocide Res. 62 (2023). Available online, doi.

Minkova discusses the definition of ecocide and its possible incorporation into the ICC. She discusses the different routes the ICC Prosecutor can take when dealing with the issue of ecocide.

Camila Misko Moribe, Flávio de Leão Bastos Pereira & Nathalia Penha Cardoso de França, Ecocide: A New Challenge for the International Criminal Law and for Humanity, 4 JICL 28 (2023). Available online, doi.

The authors argue that ecocide should be recognized as an independent international crime under the Rome Statute because existing war crimes and genocide provisions inadequately address large scale environmental destruction, particularly absent armed conflict. They also argue that environmental devastation can function as a method of genocide by destroying the ecological foundations of social groups, and that international criminal law must evolve toward a biocentric framework recognizing the environment as a worthy subject of legal protection in its own right.

Najiba Mustafayeva & Javid Rahimli, The Inclusion of Ecocide: Legal Challenges and Prospects for the Rome Statute, CILJ (Dec. 2, 2024). Available online.

The authors argue that while it is important to recognize ecocide in the Rome Statute for many reasons, there are challenges in achieving this goal, in part, because ecocide has not been recognized as a crime under customary international law. For this reason, ecocide will struggle when paired with other crimes under the Rome Statute that were already considered norms before the Statute’s adoption.

Rosemary Mwanza, The Right to a Healthy Environment as a Catalyst for the Codification of the Crime of Ecocide, 117 Am. J. Int’l L. Unbound 189 (2023). Available online, doi.

Rosemary Mwanza, Enhancing Accountability for Environmental Damage Under International Law: Ecocide as a Legal Fulfillment of Ecological Integrity, 19 Melb. J. Int’l L. 586 (Dec. 1, 2018). Available online.

Emma O’Brien, An International Crime of “Ecocide”: What’s the Story?, EJIL Talk (Jun. 11, 2021). Available online.

Michael G. Palmer, The Case of Agent Orange, 29 CSEA 172 (Apr. 2007). Available online, doi.

Cansu Atılgan Pazvantoğlu, Ecocide as a Separate Crime Under the Rome Statute: A Legal Analysis of the Discourse, 55 EPL 57 (2025). Available online, doi.

The author’s main claim is that existing provisions of the Rome Statute are insufficient to adequately address large-scale environmental destruction, and therefore the debate over whether ecocide should be added as a separate crime is both necessary and timely. The author evaluates how current charges (such as crimes against humanity or war crimes) fail to capture the scale, nature, and intent of ecocidal harm, and argues that a standalone offense could fill these gaps. The author positions the recognition of ecocide as essential for strengthening international criminal law’s ability to protect the environment.

Ricardo Pereira, After the ICC Office of the Prosecutor’s 2016 Policy Paper on Case Selection and Prioritisation: Towards an International Crime of Ecocide?, 31 Crim. L. Forum 179 (2020). Available online, doi.

Kelly Pisimisi, Criminalizing Environmental Degradation and Devastation: New
Prospects for the ICC Rome Statute?, 38 Am. U. Int’l L. Rev. 419 (2023). Available online.

Darryl Robinson, International Environmental Crimes and Ecocide, in Research Handbook on Environmental Crimes and Criminal Enforcement (Susan L. Smith & Iina Sahramäki eds., Jul. 16, 2024). Paywall, doi.

Darryl Robinson, Ecocide—Puzzles and Possibilities, 20 J. Int’l Crim. Just. 313 (May 2022). Available online, doi.

Robinson argues that defining ecocide is especially difficult because seemingly simple approaches, such as criminalizing all large scale environmental harm conflict with environmental law’s balancing standards and its acceptance of certain high impact activities when they serve important social needs. He further argues that although every proposed solution has shortcomings, combining elements like domestic law and a narrowly defined harm threshold may provide a more workable way to identify and address unjustified environmental harm.

Darryl Robinson, Your Guide to Ecocide, Opinio Juris (Jul. 16, 2021). Part 1 available online, Part 2: The Hard Part available online.

Catherine Savard, What Mens Rea for Ecocide in the Rome Statute?, Int’l J. of Hum. Rts. (forthcoming 2025). Available online, doi.

The general rule on mens rea in Article 30 fails to implicate the most environmentally harmful acts, such as those involving corporate resource exploitation. The recklessness mens rea standard established by the Independent Expert Panel’s Legal Definition of Ecocide is the best, with a willful blindness standard being an acceptable potential alternative.

David Scheffer, Corporate Liability Under the Rome Statute, 57 Harv. Int’l L.J. 35 (Jul. 7, 2016). Available online, video.

Vanessa Schwegler, The Disposable Nature: The Case of Ecocide and Corporate Accountability, 9 Amsterdam Law Forum 71 (2017). Available online.

The author contends that ecocide should be an international crime and evaluates the relationship between ecocide and corporate actions, arguing they are inextricably linked. The author examines current methods of corporate accountability in international law.

Vrishank Singhania, The Proposed Crime of Ecocide: Ignoring the Question of Liability, Opinio Juris (Feb. 16, 2022). Available online.

Milena Sterio, Crimes Against the Environment, Ecocide, and the International Criminal Court, 56 Case W. Res. J. Int’l L. 223 (2024). Available online.

Prosecutions would most likely be limited in scope and impact even if ecocide is added to the Rome Statute because of the Court’s inability to prosecute corporations, its complicated jurisdiction and gravity thresholds, and limited resources. National-level prosecutions and civil litigation are likely to create more deterrence.

Hazrat Usman, Muhammad Mohsin Faraz & Sidra Zakir, Ecocide Under the Rome Statute: ICC-Driven Human-Rights Protection and Corporate Accountability, 4 SSS 635 (Jun. 2025). Available online, doi.

The authors argue for revisions to the draft ecocide definition in order to align it with the ICC’s complementarity standard. The authors contend that a few revisions would turn ecocide into an affirmative duty to prevent harm to the environment, leading to accountability on the domestic level as well. The authors also examine how corporate leaders can be accountable under modes of liability in the Rome Statute.

Arthur H. Westing, Arms Control and the Environment: Proscription of Ecocide, 30 The Bulletin 24 (1974). Paywall, doi.

Xuchen Zhang & Kate Mackintosh, Converging Standards? Ecocide Laws & Proposals in Comparative Perspective, 9 Global Just. J. 3 (2025). Available online.

The authors argue that after the Independent Expert Panel’s Definition of Ecocide, there has been a clear convergence across national and regional efforts to criminalize ecocide, especially in the structure of key elements of the offense. However, they also highlight that while the “building blocks” of the crime now look broadly similar, there remain significant divergences in how jurisdictions define thresholds, liability for legal persons, mens rea, and whether the act versus consequence is criminalized, and it remains uncertain whether a fully harmonized definition will emerge internationally.

Institute of Medicine, Veterans and Agent Orange: Health Effects of Herbicides Used in Vietnam (National Academy Press, 1994). Available online, doi.