Yesterday, via announcement at a monthly plenary session, the European Parliament officially declared its support of the inclusion of ecocide-level crimes into the European Union’s revised Directive on protection of the environment through criminal law.
The proposed text uses language extremely close to the consensus international definition of ecocide (June 2021) proposed by the Independent Expert Panel convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation.
“It is greatly encouraging that the European Parliament is taking the concept of ecocide seriously. As with genocide and crimes against humanity in 1945, the global community is today faced with a new kind of threat: severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment, of a kind that breaches existing legal obligations and corresponds to the emerging concept of ecocide. This is a most significant first step, as the EU seeks to play a leadership role in taking the region and the world to a more benign environmental future.” — Professor Philippe Sands KC, international lawyer and writer, Co-chair of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide.
Source: Stop Ecocide International.
“We salute this great step towards making ecocide a crime by establishing a legal framework that protects nature from mass damage, while it guides us on how to co-exist with nature with an eternal perspective in mind. Let us set the EU law as a first step, and then make ecocide an international crime before the International Criminal Court.” – Nina Macpherson, Chair, Ecocide Law Alliance
