Literature Review

A resolution by the UN General Assembly was passed effectively declaring access to a clean and healthy environment as a fundamental human right. The resolution calls on international organizations and business enterprises to increase efforts to ensure everyone has access to a clean environment.

Abstract: The concept of ecocide was developed in response to the ecological war of the Vietnam through a legal simulation by Galston. In Galston's view, just as the destruction of human groups is a crime against humanity and has been criminalized as genocide, the destruction of ecosystem(s) is a crime against humanity and must be criminalized as ecocide in a treaty. However, the international community has so far failed to implement Galston's idea and criminalize ecocide as an international crime. Using a descriptive-analytical approach and library resources, this research examines the process of developing this concept as well as its essence in Galston's legal perspective and to evaluate it. It aims to familiarize the legal community with the theory of ecocide crime, to provide a ground for ecocide criminalization at the four levels of local, national, regional, and international, as well as for the emergence of an universal criminal policy to protect the Earth against severe, widespread, or long-term ecological damages.

Abstract: When natural environment is under an attack, humans suffer too but should Ecocide which literally translates into killing the environment be made a criminal offence and if yes, then how will such a law work out? Considering the current inadequacies in environmental governance and increasing catastrophic consequences, very recently, a proposal has been made in order to include ecocide as the fifth international crime. If and when promulgated as law, this should yield in a novel historic shift towards adopting a non-anthropocentric approach. Implementation of ecocide as a legal command, albeit an appreciable idea, involves certain challenges in terms of drafting and promulgating such command as a rule or standard. This paper, through a law and economics perspective, while discussing the various shortcomings, critiques the definition for its standard-like approach. Legally and economically, promulgation of any command can be either in the form of rules or standards. However, considering the lack of consensus and inconsistent usage of the terms in the definition, the proposal seems to be a closer fit within the latter category. This however, not only falls inconsistent with the envisioned aim of creating certainty and predictability but also falters within a sound regime of cost benefit analysis. The idea is to propose a combination of ex ante determination of law i.e., formulation of rule and ex post liability in the contingency of the said rule being violated. This is especially important considering the penal repercussions associated with the crime. That being said, it is acknowledged that even the implementation of rules might have certain shortcomings yet the idea is not to prove that ecocide as a rule is intrinsically the best; instead, it is at least perceived to be better than the rest.

Abstract: This article discusses the effect of Ecocide on the environment. The human activities have led to the destruction of the ecosystem. As a result of this destruction, the vegetation that plays a vital role in supporting the healthy and peaceful existence of human in their natural habitat has been greatly affected by the pollutant arising from these human activities. These activities arise from nuclear warfare exploitations of resources, dumping of harmful chemicals and other human activities that negatively impact on the ecosystem. This paper is of the opinion that the globe should come out with enabling law to persecute individuals and nations. Currently, there is only one provision in the Rome Statute which mentions environmental damage. It is Article 8 (2) (b) (iv). Article 8 is concerned with war crime. Ecocide is part of several domestic criminal codes, but it has not yet been accepted as an international crime by the UN. Stop Ecocide foundation strives to make ecocide an international crime by recommending amendments to the Rome Statute of international criminal court. Ecocide should be made the fifth crime against humanity. There should be an award of fine and penalties against defaulters as this will go a long way in protecting the environment.

Increasing demand for avocados to export to the U.S. has led to an illegal practice in Mexico where avocado trees are planted in fir forests, then fir trees are cut down to allow the avocado trees to thrive. This practice violates Mexican legislation that translates to the General Act for Sustainable Forestry Development, aimed at protecting vulnerable forest ecosystems. Hansen discusses Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES), a method of conservation through incentives which allows for benefits to be derived from the environment in exchange for supporting services, one example being soil formation. In Mexico, the profitability of farming avocados outweighs the profitability of participating in PES programs, which has led to disregard for the government’s efforts to encourage sustainable farming practices. Though Mexico’s PES is written into national law, it fails to take into account the value of avocados as a cash crop export, and Hansen concludes that more regulations need to be put into place by the government to implement and enforce PES programs to protect forests.

Anastacia analyzes the movement to include “ecocide” as a fifth crime against peace, which could then be heard by the International Criminal Court. The term “ecocide” was first used in the 1970s in reference to American chemical warfare in the Vietnam War and now more broadly refers to substantial destruction or unreasonable degradation of a particular ecosystem or the environment in general. Greene examines how recognizing environmental damage as a crime can fit into international law, but deciding whether there should be a criminal intent requirement poses a major roadblock. In the 1980s, the International Law Commission considered whether environmental damage should fit into the code, analogizing it to genocide in the eyes of the law. Greene details how individual countries have made ecocide a crime, including the theories driving the imposition of a duty of care to the environment, ecocide and morality, and deficiencies in current international law seeking to protect the environment. Greene concludes that establishing ecocide as a punishable crime requires defining the term, implementing an intent requirement, and determining causation.

Kotzé and French argue in their article that major environmental treaties, legislation, and sustainable development goals largely ignore the value of nature for its own sake because the institutions that create and pass them thrive on unchecked growth. They call upon Rockström’s planetary boundaries framework as a tool which they contend should be used to guide individuals and larger institutions to better respect ecological limits. Finally, Kotzé and French conclude that the UN World Charter for Nature should be considered as a potential instrument to guide the world’s nations to collectively recenter their focus on environmental protection around authentic ecocentrism.

This Reflection starts from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as unprecedented occasio to reflect on the approach to international law, which—it is contended—is anthropocentric, and its inadequacy to respond to current challenges. In the first part, the Reflection argues that there is, more than ever, an undeferrable need for a change of approach to international law toward ecocentrism, which puts the environment at the center and conceives the environment as us, including humans, non-human beings, and natural objects. To encourage the incorporation of ecocentrism in the entire discipline, the Reflection will rely on some insight of ecofeminism, whose potential has not been fully investigated in international legal scholarship. In the second part, the Reflection illustrates what an eco-centric international law would mean, imagining three possible applications: first, what the author has called environmental global health, which is connected to the current pandemic and puts into question the proposals dealing with global health that completely miss the theorization of the environment as a whole; second, how actors of international law would change according to an eco-centric perspective; and, third, how the rules prohibiting the use of force might be reconceptualized. The analysis contained in these pages cannot itself exhaust all the possible nuances of the legal reasoning, but it is aimed at being a provocative starting point for a change in the mindset and approach of international legal scholarship.

In this paper, Murray argues that law as it has historically been conceived is not an adequate tool for responding to complex ecological concerns. Murray discusses four possible mergers of ecology with law: Ecosystemic Law, Earth Jurisprudence, Resilience Theory, and other approaches that embrace philosophical complexity theory. Moving beyond current environmental law paradigms, Murray suggests that the animal as an “intensive body of affect in a complex social-ecological assemblage” has a unique capacity to position itself between ecology and law so as to prompt a reimagining of both concepts. Because of this, Murray believes that animal lawyers have the ability to lead the way in exploring better ways to create legal precedent for the protections of the relationships between humans and the natural world.

While efforts are being made to grant legal rights to non-humans, Norman believes that the very notion of the human legal subject is outdated. She criticizes the concept of the “rational autonomous individual,'' introducing the idea of the Cosmic Person as an entity which normalizes ecocentrism, embodying interdependency, connectedness, and experience as facets of its life and character. Norman proposes universe, planet, and person as the three nodes of generativity within which all humans coexist, suggesting that the human-Earth relationship can only be fulfilled when its complexity is recognized and embraced—rather than avoided—by the law.

Derning and Andreas examine constitutional protections for natural resources in New York and Florida. Between the 1960s and 1990s, Florida enacted state conservation land purchase programs in recognition of the state’s unique ecosystems that became under threat from growing populations. Florida undergoes constitutional reform every 20 years to make amendments to the state constitution, which added additional management provisions for the “Florida Forever” land conservation efforts. Since 2000, some Florida public officials have attempted to deliberately violate constitutional protections for conserved land, but any attempts have luckily been unsuccessful. New York has a comparable constitutional clause called the “Forever Wild” clause, which protects vast tracts of forest land including the Adirondack and Catskills Forest Preserves. Any attempts to undermine this clause, implemented in 1895, has been rejected by New York voters, maintaining the protection of these lands. Both of these constitutional protections have proved beneficial to maintaining environmental protections, but lack in establishing accountability for public officials violating provisions. Using these two constitutional provisions as models, Derning and Andreas demonstrate U.S. voters are in support of natural resource protections, and encourage other states to propose similar amendments to their own state constitutions.

The purpose of this text is to provide an overview of how environmental law is being developed in three countries of Latin America, with particular focus on protection and management of forest resources.