Could Ecocide Become a New International Crime?

Earlier this fall, three Pacific Island States – Vanuatu, Fiji, and Samoa – formally proposed adding ecocide as a crime that can be heard and punished by the International Criminal Court, which can currently try individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and the crime of aggression.

Any change to the ICC’s Rome Statute, particularly adding a new international crime, would require a massive level of diplomatic coordination and negotiation. But the future crime might hold individuals criminally accountable for severe environmental damage, such as massive oil or chemical spills or the destruction of rainforests. 

In the meantime, what does the ecocide proposal mean in practice? How might it potentially impact our understanding of ongoing destruction of the environment and the role of international criminal law? 

Joining the show to unpack the ecocide proposal are Naima Fifita, Rebecca Hamilton, and Kate Mackintosh.  

Naima is a lawyer from Tuvalu. She is the Executive Director of the Institute for Climate and Peace. Bec is an Executive Editor at Just Security and a Professor of Law at American University. Kate is Executive Director of the UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe, and Deputy Co-Chair of the Independent Expert Panel on the Legal Definition of Ecocide.  

Show Notes:  

• Naima Fifita
• Rebecca Hamilton (@bechamilton) 
• Kate Mackintosh (@Katemackintosh2)
• Paras Shah (@pshah518) 
• Just Security’s expert round up article “Why Criminalize Ecocide? Experts Weigh In” 
• Just Security’s Climate Change coverage
• Just Security’s International Law coverage
• Just Security’s International Criminal Court coverage
• Music: “Broken” by David Bullard from Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/david-bullard/broken (License code: OSC7K3LCPSGXISVI)

Transcript

Paras Shah: Earlier this fall, three Pacific Island States – Vanuatu, Fiji, and Samoa – formally proposed adding ecocide as a crime that can be heard and punished by the International Criminal Court, which can currently try individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and the crime of aggression. 

Any change to the ICC’s Rome Statute, particularly adding a new international crime, would require a massive level of diplomatic coordination and negotiation. But the future crime might hold individuals criminally accountable for severe environmental damage, such as massive oil and chemical spills or the destruction of rainforests. 

In the meantime, what does the ecocide proposal mean in practice? How might it potentially impact our understanding of ongoing destruction of the environment and the role of international criminal law? 

This is the Just Security Podcast. I’m your host, Paras Shah. 

Joining the show to unpack the ecocide proposal are Naima Fifita, Rebecca Hamilton, and Kate Mackintosh.  

Naima is a lawyer from Tuvalu. She is the Executive Director of the Institute for Climate and Peace. Bec is an Executive Editor at Just Security and a Professor of Law at American University. Kate is Executive Director of the UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe, and Deputy Co-Chair of the Independent Expert Panel on the Legal Definition of Ecocide.

Naima, Bec, Kate, thank you so much for joining the show. Naima, I want to start with you. So, the proposal for criminalizing ecocide comes from small island states. Could you start by giving us an overview of how this proposal came about? How did this development to try to add ecocide as the newest international crime emerge? 

Naima Fifita: Yeah. Thank you so much for bringing us all together. So, the push to criminalize ecocide on the international scale has really been championed by Pacific Island states, notably Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa, who argue that ecological destruction poses an existential threat to their nations and to humanity as a whole. And Vanuatu first proposed ecocide as the fifth international crime to the ICC back in 2019 I believe, and they were arguing for a legal mechanism that could prosecute individuals or entities responsible for severe environmental harm.  

And so, the drive to criminalize ecocide stems from there being a legal gap in international law. Currently, no international mechanism exists to hold individuals or corporations accountable for large scale environmental destruction not linked to war. And so, as climate change and ecological harm increasingly result from commercial and state-led activities, the Pacific Island states are responding to key issues, such as lack of accountability for environmental harm or the, you know, the existential risk that climate change poses to these nations and how immediate and severe it is, the need for international standards on environmental protection. 

You know, this move would really reinforce international environmental law by recognizing severe environmental harm as a violation of human rights and a direct threat to global security. In terms of the goals and strategy, it's really been multifaceted. You know, these states have rallied global support by presenting ecocide as the fifth crime under the Rome Statute of the ICC, and they have built coalitions and garnered support and engaged with other vulnerable nations and environmental non-governmental organizations, such as legal experts, activists, and this coalition building is essential to gaining the required two-thirds majority at the ICC’s Assembly of State Parties. These nations have effectively framed and posit as an ethical issue and emphasizing, you know, humanity's duty to protect the environment as a global commons. 

And then lastly, you know, the recent advisory opinions from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the upcoming one from the International Court of Justice on climate change have given small island states a stronger foundation. And these opinions, we hope, support their steps by recognizing that climate harm implicates international legal responsibilities. I think, by advancing this initiative, small island states and Pacific Island states and climate vulnerable nations, they aim to deter large scale environmental harm and also set a precedent for environmental responsibility and strengthen legal recourse for those nations that are affected. It would level the playing field between economically vulnerable nations and more powerful countries or corporations, and this campaign to criminalize ecocide represents a transformative shift in international law, one that could change the course of environmental accountability and justice on a global scale. So, it's a really exciting time. 

Paras: Yeah, definitely an exciting time and a lot happening. Kate, I wanted to talk about the proposed definition of ecocide. So, the Stop Ecocide Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization, convened an independent expert panel consisting of lawyers from around the world to formulate this proposed definition. And the definition would be, “Unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there's a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” You are Deputy Co-Chair of the expert panel. What do you see as the key elements of the definition? 

Kate Mackintosh: Thanks, Paras. I think the — perhaps the main contribution of this crime would be that there's no requirement for a prosecutor to demonstrate harm to humans in order for the crime to be committed. So, that may sound obvious, but the point of the crime, the gap that it fills, as Naima just said, it’s about treating damage to the environment as a problem and as a crime per se. So, we already have international crimes that could, under certain circumstances, cover environmental destruction, but they always require that line to be traced to how humans are harmed. 

Now, of course, we assume that there will be harm to humans if other parts of the environment are harmed, and in fact, bringing a crime of ecocide in the Rome Statute, to me, is very much about understanding that we are part of nature. We're connected with nature, and that is the missing value. But at the moment, that line to humans, you know, that has to be established. So, with the definition that you just read out, damage to the environment, as long as it's severe, widespread or long term, and committed in the way you spoke about — that, in itself, is the crime. So, I think that's the main contribution, or the main element of the definition. 

To pull out a couple of other pieces that might be worth just noticing, it's framed as a crime of endangerment. In other words, it's the creation of that risk, of that substantial risk of harm, that is the criminal act. So, it doesn't require that harm to have manifested. And this was, we thought, really important in framing environmental harm, because while some kinds of environmental destruction, like, you know, a massive oil spill, or, you know, burning acres and acres of tropical rainforest, the harm might be immediately obvious, in quite a lot of the types of things we're trying to capture, it would be quite hard to draw a line with 100 percent certainty between the destruction and the resulting environmental harm. So, we thought that this level of, there has to be a substantial likelihood of that harm occurring, was high enough to be reasonable as a level of criminal responsibility, because obviously it has to be relatively high in order to hold someone criminally responsible, without being so high that it would actually exclude some of the really important environmental damage that we wanted to include. 

And maybe the third point that I pull out, which, you have to dig a little into the definition to see this, because there's a second paragraph to the definition that you read out, where we propose definitions of some of those terms, and Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa have taken that on in their proposal. So, this particular element I wanted to highlight is that in our proposal, or now, I should say, in the proposal of the Pacific Island states, the cultural value of certain elements of the environment is recognized. So, in assessing severity of harm, a court would be able to take into account the cultural significance of different elements of the environment. And that, again, is something that I think was entirely missing from the framework of international criminal law beforehand. So, there are laws protecting cultural property, but they pretty much excluded anything that would be seen as kind of naturally incurring rather than having been made by humans.

Paras: Thanks for that overview. And anytime you have a group of lawyers trying to agree on a proposed definition, there will be, you know, different views and areas of disagreement. Where were some of the fault lines in the discussion, or areas where different views might have emerged? 

Kate: Well, I think all of our conversations could be framed as kind of going between the two poles of what is such a high threshold that it's likely to be accepted by states, but then again, won't capture the harm that we're trying to prevent, and what is broad enough to encompass the harm that we're obviously trying to prevent, but might be a bit too broad to be acceptable. So obviously, we drew on existing law for the definition, so, we're hoping, by that, to already have achieved some kind of potential consensus, as well as to be legally, you know, robust as a proposal. 

But there was still some kind of wiggle room between those, between those two poles on almost every element of the definition, actually. I mean, one I could mention that we went back and forward on was on the threshold of harm — whether it would be possible to define an absolute level of harm which would be sufficient for a crime of ecocide, or whether that somehow had to be crafted as some sort of proportionality or balancing test. And we were, well, really advised by the environmental lawyers, actually, on the panel. So, that's not my background. I come from, you know, human rights and international criminal law. And it seemed to me that the easiest way to address this was, we just look at environmental treaties. We see what they ban, we add an extra threshold of harm, and there we go. We've got ecocide. 

And what those of us who weren't so familiar with international environmental law discovered was that there really weren't any thresholds, and that's not how the legal system deals with human interaction with the environment, I would say. And it's all about balancing and proportionality. And principles are established, perhaps at an international level, and then they're reflected nationally through administrative regulations. And the core principle — and as I said, we drew very much on existing law for and established legal notions in drafting the definition — the core principle, of course, is the one of sustainable development, which is to say, it's not that we leave the environment as some pristine — I mean, “the environment.” I'm using that language, right? We are part of nature. The way we interact with nature does not equate to not having any impact on it. There’s massive impact. Obviously, we use all sorts of elements of the natural environment in order to live and be well, but the important thing is to do that in a way that's sustainable, so that nature can repeat and can exist for future generations of ourselves can similarly live in that way.

So, we tried to craft a standard that would reflect that in the language of international criminal law, and we came up with this standard of what we've called “wanton” — we use the terms either unlawful, so, if something's already unlawful, that's easy. If it's not unlawful, we thought we'd still could be prohibited by this new international crime if it's completely out of proportion to this principle of sustainable development, essentially. And we use the language “unlawful and wanton,” because that is familiar language to international criminal law, but with it, and by defining “wanton,” we try to capture the principle from international environmental law of sustainable development. So, it may be that an area of land is cleared to build, you know, desperately needed housing, for example. That will, without a doubt, cause destruction, but that can be done in a way that's sustainable, and we obviously understand — and here again, this also reflects the North/South conversation, right? The conversation from Global South countries, who are like, oh, right, so we have to now no longer use our natural resources because you've massively overused, you know, your stock in the Global North, while you were industrializing. So, we also tried to bring that in and make some kind of mechanism in the law which could be used by a judge to consider all of those different claims, and we did it through this standard of “unlawful and wanton.”

Paras: Very interesting. I definitely would want to be a fly on the wall in those discussions. Bec, in your analysis for Just Security, you write that the primary benefit to be derived from the international criminalization of ecocide would be the expressive message that the International Criminal Court sends when it investigates a particular type of behavior. Can you help us unpack what you mean there?

Rebecca (Bec) Hamilton: Sure, but before I actually get to the question, I sort of feel like I need to make an admission, which is that I've come to this whole conversation around criminalizing ecocide with a really skeptical starting point in terms of the wisdom of bringing any additional behavior within the remit of international criminal law, because international criminal law systematically spotlights immediate and visible, direct harms, while obscuring upstream causation and structural factors. And it's a system that is already overburdened, underfunded and in this geopolitical structure that is skewed against people who are marginalized, right? So, I feel like I should say that that was my starting point.  

And yet, everything that Naima and Kate have said about this huge environmental blind spot that not only international criminal law, but I would say international law in general has, is there and it needs accounting for, and I also think it is going to come no matter what, right? This is the reason why the ecocide conversation has just captured the public imagination. And so, I think the question then becomes, okay, well, how do we make the best of it while being really conscious of the limitations of international criminal law, but also its strengths? And this gets me to the point about expressivism, because I think there's often confusion in the public mind when they hear about proposals for international criminal law. They're thinking about a trial at the ICC. They're thinking about people being convicted in The Hague. That is not what this conversation is fundamentally about. At least, it's not going to be about that for quite a long time. And that's only a tiny piece of the international criminal law system anyway.

The much bigger piece, I think, of what international criminal law has to offer is that it has a global platform through which it can express what are the norms that the international community believes should be around a particular type of behavior, what are the relationships that need to be valued and preserved under the law? And that is really, I think, the work that this entire conversation we're having around ecocide is doing, and I think, you know, people can sort of reasonably ask, well, is this just, you know, a nice conversation for elites to be having with each other? 

But I really think it's more than that. This conversation gives space to civil society. It gives legitimacy to regulators and domestic courts. It gives news hooks to the media to really embrace the bottom-up domestic efforts that are already underway, that have been led by indigenous communities for a long time prior to this conversation sort of hitting mainstream headlines. These efforts try to get their country's legal systems to understand the relationship between humans and the environment differently, and so that's why I think it's so important that the expressive message that we're communicating at the international level, through the definition and through the conversations around it, is really working to enhance these understandings from traditional knowledge about the relationship between humans and the environment, to underscore that interdependency, the interconnected nature of the relationship, and to move us away from this false binary that Western legal systems have entrenched between humans on the one hand and everything else on the other, right, to push back against the idea that you can trade off environmental harms for social and economic benefits, instead of recognizing that harm to one is ultimately harm to all.  

Kate: I think Bec makes really, really great points, and I also think the expressive value is crucial to a crime of ecocide. But I would just like to add that, I guess the other elements that I think will be brought in pretty early on, and in fact, may already be coming in, because, as Bec says, I don't know how long we're going to have to wait to see somebody prosecuted for ecocide at the ICC, but that is not really the point. The point is what's happening around the conversation.  

And one of the things I think that is happening, and that has great potential to happen even more, is a real deterrent effect on corporate behavior — corporate behavior that damages the environment. So, I consider, and I've kind of floated — I am not somebody with any expertise on corporate decision-making, I have to tell you — but I have run this past people who do have that expertise, and they seem to really agree with this, that the impact on business decision-making of the potential of being indicted or not even indicted, even, you know, investigated and preliminarily investigated, connected with an international crime, could be really quite significant in a way that the potential for a political leader to be potentially indicted for war crimes, you know, the deterrent effect of that — I mean, we don't know what it is, but it doesn't seem to be huge, right? If we look around us right now.  

Corporate actors are very different. I mean, they're much more rational. They're much more sensitive to share price and reputation. I mean, I guess political actors are sensitive to reputation, but being indicted for war crimes by the ICC for some of them may be a boost to their reputation. So, I see, really a lot of potential for shifting decision making — deterrent impact in corporate boardroom discussions. And I think that that's something — I know that that's something that's already happening. I've had anecdotal reports. I've seen law firms that have put out guidance to their clients about ecocide as something that's coming down the tracks. So, I think that's beyond the expressive value. I think that's actually something that could shift behavior. And obviously, that is the point of bringing in this crime. That's what we need to do. We need to shift behavior. So, I would add that as something which I think is already happening because of this discussion.

Bec: I mean, I would just sort of add to that. I'm not willing to hang my hat on an international criminal prosecution, you know, through the ICC, being a deterrent yet, given how far off it is and how few people will, in fact, be prosecuted. But I think what I sort of take Kate's point to also be reflecting is, simply having this conversation about its future criminalization is having all these other effects in a range of domestic legal spaces. And the uptick that we've seen in domestic legislation that is criminalizing ecocide, as well as what's happening in the conversations in in regional forums, what's happening in regulatory spaces — I think all of that is combining to start to move the needle on this deterrent impact, such that those conversations are filtering into the boardrooms, which is exactly where we want them to happen 

Paras: Thanks for your views on that. And of course, criminal law has many different functions, retribution, creating an accurate historical record, expressive value. A lot there with this potential crime. 

Another forum for parallel discussions around climate justice will be the annual U.N. climate conference, COP29, that kicks off later this month in Baku, Azerbaijan. And the participants there will be discussing various aspects of climate justice, including funding for loss and damage, which has been on the agenda the last few years. How do these efforts to criminalize ecocide fit into other efforts to safeguard the environment at a global level? 

Naima: Maybe, to start off — but, you know, I think without preventative measures like ecocide laws, the frequency and severity of climate impacts may and arguably have already outpaced available funding. And I was just reading a statement by the South Pacific community saying that the Pacific region really only has access to 23 percent of the climate finance of the $100 billion pledge that was made 14 years ago in 2009. And so, we really need to unlock these resources, and criminalizing ecocide would create legal consequences for these, you know, irresponsible environmental actions, and reinforce loss and damage efforts by addressing the underlying causes of climate related harms, rather than solely treating the symptoms. 

And maybe this is more in response to the previous line of questioning, but I just want to point out that for ecocide to be — the campaign around ecocide spearheaded by these Pacific Island countries, is really interesting because, you know, in their traditional legal systems or their domestic legal systems, there's already this sentiment in place. You know, we have Kapu systems, in which, you know, there are acts of environmental degradation that are punishable by law, or if there's an individual or a corporation that is extracting resources and it's to the detriment of the ecosystem as a whole, or to the community, you know, they're punishable. And so, what we're really seeing is just, like, this being raised up to the international level through the Rome Statute and through the International Criminal Court. But it's kind of a translation that's taking place, and I think it'll be fascinating to see how the elements that are so prevalent and present in customary authority and traditionally indigenous authority are manifested through this new mechanism.

In terms of the COP, you know, I think, again, it'll be an opportunity to kind of to bring an ethical dimension to the discussion around ecocide and emphasize that environmental destruction is not merely an economic or logistical issue, but a profound ethical concern. And this will hopefully help shift global climate policy towards recognizing ecological preservation as a moral duty, which may lead to stronger and more binding commitments across all sectors at COP29 and beyond. But the question has always been about enforcement, how to enforce, and I think this is just probably something that spur a little more negotiation and tangible outcomes in terms of how we enforce these international and environmental protections. 

Bec: I just wanted to say I what resonates for me so much in that is this notion of translation, of translating norms and protocols and custom that already exists in so many communities around the world who live closest to the natural environment and haven't become disconnected from the natural environment in the way that so many people living in the Metropol have. And so, you know, we have this — it's funny, I was at the Islands and Small States Institute for the first half of this year focused on small island states who are bearing, first and worst, the brunt of the planetary crisis that we're in in terms of climate. So, on the one hand, they’re clearly the victims of this. The effects of it are not equally distributed, but they're also the communities that have the most capacity for resilience and for other legal systems to learn from in the way that they are approaching this key question of the twenty-firs century, which is, what is the relationship between humans and the rest of our natural world, and how are we going to do this better in the future than we have in the past? 

In terms of the COP conversation, I think we can never say enough times that we're doing the conversation a disservice when we talk about it being “humans,” in general, that caused this, right? The question is, which humans? It is not all humans that caused it. It wasn't the humans that are living in small island developing states right now, but they are bearing the brunt of this crisis, and that's why the loss and damage fund is so crucial, as Naima said, as a moral imperative, in addition to every other aspect of it. So, that's where we need to see the movement right now,

Kate: Maybe it's worth just saying — this has come up really clearly in everything that Naima said and what Bec has just said — but maybe, just seeing as we're focusing on ecocide in this conversation, maybe one thing that's worth saying is that, for all the power that, you know, we variously believe lie in the creation of this international crime, it obviously has to be embedded in a whole series of other moves. So, none of us think that criminalizing ecocide is going to solve this problem, right? So, you know, reparations, loss and damage. I mean, that's massively important. This is one small element, I think, a crucial element, and a missing element. But there is no way that any of us think criminalizing ecocide is going to, you know, do enough to solve the situation we're in. It's just one crucial piece.

Bec: Just 100 percent on Kate's point there. At the same time, it's an interesting point to have to convey publicly that, on the one hand, you know, I don't think, for example, there's going to be a trial in The Hague anytime soon. At the same time, I think the conversation that we're having around the effort to get there is going to have really quite rapid payoffs in domestic and regional legal systems. So, we've got sort of all of these things happening at once, and you don't want to sort of overpromise or oversell on what can happen at the international level. 

At the same time, you don't want to undersell the reverberations that the effort towards that can have domestically and regionally. And if we look, you know, my birth country of Aotearoa, huge movements underway there. When we look at what's happening with transitional justice in Colombia, we're seeing the same grappling with, what is the relationship between humans and the natural world. The jurisprudence coming out of Ecuador. And so, while the picture at The Hague I expect to be very slow. I think there is a lot that is moving really, really quickly at local and domestic levels. And you can't actually separate these two things out from each other. They're all working together. And so that is a hopeful conversation, I think.

Paras: Yeah, a lot of hope and momentum. Any effort to amend the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute will take a Herculean effort by states in terms of coordination, resources, negotiations. What are the one or two biggest trends that each of you is watching for going forward? 

Kate: I think one is what Bec has been alluding to in terms of the movements and national level. I mean, there's a really significant development at E.U. level. So, this May, the environmental crime directive was — a new environmental crime directive was issued, the old one was updated — and it contains in it the obligation on all E.U. member states to criminalize acts equivalent to ecocide, which they frame as a qualified or aggravated offense in the directive, within two years, so by May 2026. So, this is a really interesting shift for the European E.U. member states. E.U. member states basically are going to be obliged to introduce a crime that's pretty much equivalent to the crime that's been proposed by Vanuatu Samoa and Fiji into their national laws. 

So, with that one stroke, you wonder whether they're, you know, whether things might not move actually quite fast if there's one whole group. And obviously, European states represent a fairly significant chunk of the membership at the ICC. I mean, you've got Latin America, Africa and Europe as the main sort of blocks that are participants to the ICC. And already, one of those regions is actually got binding law that's coming into force by May 2026. And as Beck also alluded to, there are proposals for laws all over the world, well outside Europe and actually Latin America, then, is the area where that's happening, as well as the developments in Colombia and in Ecuador. There are proposals for an ecocide law, I think, in Brazil, Mexico, Peru, I think Chile, if I'm not wrong. So, I mean, these are still proposals at the moment, but it looks like things are moving on a national level much, much faster than we expected. 

And of course, that shifts the conversation at the ICC as well, because if states have already criminalized something in their national laws, there's going to be much less objection to amending the statute to bring it in line with that. So, I think it's not being driven — if we look at The Hague and the, of course, the last amendment was the crime of aggression, which is hyper-political, and it went very slowly, and it took a long time — this is a completely differently shaped movement. This is something that's happening — I mean, as Naima, you know, put it so well — it's reflecting existing laws in different jurisdictions. It's also emerging as a new element of criminal law in a number of regional and national jurisdictions around the world.  

So, in a way, I think we can expect something in the Rome Statute much more quickly than we first anticipated. And then if it does get to the Rome Statute, of course, we don't have to wait for something to be prosecuted in The Hague. Obviously, any of the states who've accepted that amendment would be able to prosecute that domestically as well. So, it's that interplay of what's happening with existing law, with emerging law at national and regional, that's a really interesting trend, I think, and it's making this develop much faster than we might have anticipated. 

Bec: There's clearly momentum building from the bottom up. The public is increasingly understanding that the crisis that we're facing — the triple planetary crisis, in fact — needs to be addressed with whatever tools we can get our hands on. Obviously, there are communities all around the world that have understood this very well for a long time, and it's, you know, now their voices are being amplified.  

But we were talking about translation — translation from custom and protocol in sort of indigenous communities and other local communities that are closest to the environment. If this move towards ecocide really does sort of continue to gain steam at a kind of exponential rate, I will just be watching out with a concern that the rush to get it done doesn't mean that we just fall back into traditional Western legal system approaches to the relationship between humans and the environment that that got us here in the first place, frankly. 

It is hard to do that translation work. It is hard to reset a legal system from a position that has always understood that environment could be traded off for social and economic gain to something that has a fundamentally different starting position, and that reflects traditional knowledge. And so certainly, the interest is there. The momentum is there. And the question is, is it going to be able to live up to the best of expectations that a true and thorough translation can be done, or is it just going to give the appearance of that by saying, well, we're moving on ecocide, but without fundamentally addressing within the international legal system the need to reconceptualize the relationship between humans and nature from the one that has been embedded in Western legal thought. 

Naima: Wow. I just love everything that's been said. And, you know, I think what we're talking about is justice as both process and outcome and ensuring that, you know, the process around, you know, criminalizing ecocide, or any of these, you know, the requests that are made to international courts and tribunals for advisory opinions on climate change and human rights, like, making sure that these processes are reflecting a standard of truth-seeking, really, that are far beyond the patterns of negotiation and compromise that tend to characterize present-day relations. It's a process of consultation and decision-making that is principled, that is candid and is fact based.  

And so, at all levels, the capacity to manifest justice and commitment to doing so has to be strengthened. Those that are just and equitable are really indispensable foundations for any unified global movement for the common good, right. And so, beyond establishing new bodies or concluding new agreements, the international community has to make the fulfillment of promises that are already made, a keystone of all future efforts. And just touching briefly again on COP, you know, an international conference that's characterized by concern for status and reputation and national interest or credit and blame, for example — it's going to struggle to generate any useful insights, no matter how many sessions are devoted to the sharing of best practices or lessons learned. And so, we've seen all of this before, and you know, I think we can really pull from — or we can be inspired to replace those kinds of discussions or spaces, but with a culture of exploration and an earnest search for appropriate solutions in full recognitions that all involved will, at times, encounter setbacks and fall short. You know, this is — so we're learning, and this learning is a mode of operation for us collectively, both for those at the front lines and for those countries that have a bit more time, you know.  

I think in terms of, you know, the trends that I'm looking out for, you know, amending the Rome Statute to include ecocide will definitely be an uphill task, and as Kate mentioned, it's not a fix-all, catch-all solution, and it's going to require significant coordination and diplomatic finesse among states. But one major trend that I'll be watching for, and I am watching for, is the growing coalition and unity among these climate vulnerable nations, particularly small island developing states and their regional allies. They're mobilizing around climate justice, and they're using platforms like the Pacific Island Forum and the Alliance of Small Island States to champion ecocide, criminalization, with other vulnerable regions, such as the Caribbean, and partnering with environmental NGOs. These coalitions are gaining momentum and international visibility. And they're really doing it right because they're focusing on just processes as a means to obtaining just outcomes.  

And then maybe another trend is just increasing focus on aligning international environmental law and human rights law. I think criminalizing ecocide — this conversation is totally related to what's happening at the ICJ and, you know, these developments suggest the shift in the entire legal landscape that has the potential to bolster the case for ecocide as a prosecutable offense. And as this perspective gains traction, it will likely support advocates for ecocide by framing environmental harm as a breach of these fundamental international norms, and basically increase the pressure of states to adopt legally binding climate protections, which is what all of this is about. 

Kate: Beautifully said, Naima.

Paras: Yeah, thank you so much to each of you for those reflections and thoughts. Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you'd like to add? 

Bec: Naima, you always speak so, so beautifully, to just capture what is it, the essence of a conversation and the just processes for just outcomes. But the other thing in what you said is about learning, and I wanted to ask both of you, actually, if we could give listeners some recommendations for reading, and just in that spirit of learning. I'm trying to tell all my law students at the moment, you might not think that you’re an environmental lawyer or a climate lawyer, but actually, we're all fundamentally going to be in one way or another, just as citizens of this century. So, I would love to hear, what are a couple of your favorite pieces to read or books in this space that we could recommend? 

Kate: I would say that I highly recommend the books written by Julian Aguon, which I think are really beautiful, very immediate, poetic, fantastic pieces. I would also like to say that we have a fantastic bibliography on ecocide, or actually, on international criminal law and the protection of the environment more broadly, on ecocidelaw.com. So, if you go to ecocidelaw.com and look up publications and bibliography, I think it is — we actually have a list of all the publications we could find since 1970 that have been written in this area. It's actually up to date only to the end of last year, but within the next two weeks, it will be up to date, because there are some fabulous students from UCLA School of Law who are working on updating it just now. So, thank you, Bec for giving me the opportunity to plug this resource, which UCLA law students have put together, which I think captures a really wide breadth. And the interesting thing, of course, is how that's exploding. So, the number of publications, I think this year, they've already got to 45, for example, you know. So, the interest is increasing. So, I'd also recommend that people look there for more scholarly articles. 

Naima: In Julian's work, yes, definitely all that he has written. No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies, it’s just a wonderful lens through which to view everything that's happening with respect to climate justice and the role of climate vulnerable communities and Pacific Island states. I think it's a must read.  

Anything by Maxine Burket. I see all of her work has just guided and infused in all of, you know, these sentiments that I strive to share on climate justice, climate reparations, you know, ex-situ nationhood, and what that looks like for climate-displaced communities. And then lastly, I'd say one of my favorites is a publication that was actually released by the Baha’i International Community. They have a U.N. Office that that releases statements on sustainable development, gender equality and other issues. But this publication is called One Habitation, One Homeland, and it really speaks to, you know, the profound opportunity that's being presented through the climate crisis to align or reorganize our entire society with patterns that are just more commensurate with humanity's needs and for the natural world's needs and protection.

Bec: I'm so glad I asked. I love all of that. In terms of just beautiful reads, and I think as listeners are going to be heading into a U.S. election next, and maybe want to just come offline for a little bit and breathe, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass is just the most gorgeous thing to immerse yourself in and really, again, capture that sense of what might be possible if we looked at things differently than the way our current dominant legal systems have been structured. And then I've also been on an absolute sort of devouring Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito’s this new volume, More than Human Rights. Usha Natarajan and Julia Dehm’s Locating Nature, another in that more academic, but I think really useful as we're thinking about what are the possibilities for doing this differently than the systems that have got us to the point that we are right now, which are clearly going to have to change for the sake of everyone going forward. 

Paras: Naima, Bec, Kate, thank you again for joining the show. 

Naima: Thank you all. 

Kate: It was a pleasure.

Bec: Thank you so much for hosting us, Paras.

Paras: This episode was hosted and produced by me, Paras Shah, with help from Clara Apt.

Special thanks to Megan Corrarino, Naima Fifita, Bec Hamilton, and Kate Mackintosh. 

You can read all of Just Security’s coverage of the International Criminal Court and environmental crimes, including Naima, Bec, and Kate’s analysis, on our website.  

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