Eoin Jackson

In September 2024, a group of Pacific Island states proposed that environmental destruction be criminalised under international law as a crime of “ecocide”.

Ecocide has been defined by a team of expert lawyers 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 being caused by those acts”.

Should this proposal be accepted, then individuals responsible for major acts of environmental destruction could find themselves before the International Criminal Court (ICC) facing charges similar to those levelled against war criminals and persons accused of crimes against humanity.

Ireland must support this proposal and play its part in creating an effective international framework to hold individuals accountable for serious harm inflicted on the natural world.

The international legal system has been slow to adapt to increasing evidence that individuals are knowingly contributing to the crippling of our ecosystems. The first formal call for ecocide to be recognised was issued by Vanuatu in 2019, and it has taken until 2024 to even bring the proposal forward for full consideration.

In the meantime, we have seen mounting evidence of multiple environmental crises, including the damage wrought upon vulnerable communities by climate change, the increasingly concerning diminution of global biodiversity and the ever-growing piles of plastic dumped wastefully into our rivers and oceans.

Human-caused environmental disasters of this kind often transcend borders, which makes it difficult for national legal systems to fully hold individuals accountable even where it is evident they have knowingly contributed to the damage. Ecocide would bridge this gap in our legal system by allowing lawyers at the ICC to investigate, and, where necessary, charge individuals responsible for wreaking havoc on nature.

Ireland does not at present have any law criminalising ecocide. However, several domestic jurisdictions, including France and Belgium, have introduced similar laws, while the EU has recently expanded its Environmental Crime Directive to encompass conduct which could be deemed “comparable to ecocide”.

As ecocide gains momentum, the same crime should be available to international lawyers trying to hold actors accountable for severe environmental harm occurring on a mass-scale. Introducing ecocide at the ICC would help to ‘join the dots’ on these wider efforts and ensure a coherent mechanism exists at all levels of the law to protect people and planet.

A lack of domestic progress on introducing ecocide should not serve to deter Ireland from stepping up to support the proposal.

Ireland is a party to the Rome Statute, which governs who can be prosecuted, and the type of crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC. In order for ecocide to be considered one of those crimes, an amendment to the Rome Statute is required, which needs support from at least two-thirds of those who are party to the Statute.

Before such an amendment can be brought forward, there are a number of procedural hurdles that require the support of a large body of states to overcome. This means, alongside other states, Ireland will need to determine whether it will support bringing forward the proposal and eventually the adoption of an amendment. In doing so, Ireland will likely find itself faced with the dilemma often witnessed in international negotiations.

Many vulnerable states are in favor of ecocide, seeing it as a means of seeking justice for the damage caused to their people by continuing acts of environmental harm. It is likely however, that some Western states will be concerned at the potential for the ICC to drag its citizens into the dock to face charges for actions that have propped up a fossil-fuel driven and exploitative economic system. With support from corporate lobbyists and powerful backers, they could exert influence behind-the-scenes to stall or complicate efforts to formally recognise ecocide.

Ireland can use its position as a wealthy developed economy to help address any potential concerns and ally itself with the Pacific Island states in the fight for environmental justice.

What can Ireland do in practice to support the proposal? Firstly, it can publicly declare its approval of the proposal. This would provide a strong Western voice to bolster the efforts of the Pacific Island states to take this proposal forward.

Secondly, it can work behind-the-scenes to build up a coalition of like-minded states to support the proposal. A ‘green alliance’ of this kind would be highly effective in challenging any attempts to derail approval of an amendment.

Finally, Ireland can use its strong reputation as a leader on humanitarian issues to call attention to current acts which could be considered ecocide, and use these examples as a means of generating further public support for the proposal, ensuring pressure remains on states to rapidly advance this amendment and begin opening the first ecocide investigations as soon as possible.

Ecocide will not solve global pollution, but it does ensure there is international recognition that mass-scale deliberate destruction of the environment will be met with strong enforcement mechanisms to deter such destruction from happening.

Ireland must support the effort to render ecocide a crime at the ICC and do what it can to prevent any delay to ecocide’s formal recognition.

Eoin Jackson is a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Irish rapporteur at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.