Literature Review

Continuing injustices and denial of rights of indigenous peoples are part of the long legacy of colonialism. Parallel processes of exploitation and injustice can be identified in relation to non-human species and/or aspects of the natural environment. International law can address some extreme examples of the crimes and harms of colonialism through the idea and legal definition of genocide, but the intimately related notion of ecocide that applies to nature and the environment is not yet formally accepted within the body of international law. In the context of this special issue reflecting on the development of green criminology, the article argues that the concept of ecocide provides a powerful tool. To illustrate this, the article explores connections between ecocide, genocide, capitalism and colonialism and discusses impacts on indigenous peoples and on local and global (glocal) ecosystems.

This article aims to assess the suitability of the concept of ‘animal dignity’ as a normative principle for the legal approach towards animals. Through an analysis of the recent debate on the applicability, meaning(s) and implications of dignity to (non-human) animals, it will defend the argument that, despite its conceptual vagueness, the concept of ‘animal dignity’ has the potential to address some of the shortcomings in the current paradigm based in animal welfare, as well as in the often proposed paradigms based in ideas of animal rights. By taking a neo-pragmatic perspective (focusing on the use rather than the exact—but impossible to pinpoint—meaning of ‘animal dignity’), it seeks to demonstrate that traces of animal dignity can already be found in positive law, e.g. in the attention given to the intrinsic legal relevance of animals and their interests. It also argues that dignity does not need to be a monolithic concept applicable in the same way to all animals, but can be adapted to species-specific needs to flourish: dignity is therefore more of a sliding scale, depending on the breadth and width of the needs of each animal species. The article concludes that introducing ‘animal dignity’ as a normative principle in the legal realm might be a desirable step towards more-than-human legalities in the Anthropocene.

This Article demonstrates that states, and arguably individuals and organizations, causing or permitting harm to the natural environment on a massive scale breach a duty of care owed to humanity in general and therefore commit an international delict, ecocide. 3 The Article then examines the extent to which ecocide could be considered an international crime. Ecocide is identified on the basis of the deliberate or negligent violation of key state and human rights and according to the following criteria: (1) serious, and extensive or lasting, ecological damage, (2) international consequences, and (3) waste. Thus defined, the seemingly radical concept of ecocide is in fact derivable from principles of international law. Its parameters allow for expansion and refinement as environmental awareness engenders further international consensus and legal development.

A wide range of actions imperil the planet and threaten the future of humanity and other species. This essay notes some examples of crimes and harms damaging to the environment and human and non-human species as well as various forms of response that have called for more effective and appropriate models of justice and law than currently prevail. This leads to a discussion of several suggestions regarding the development and expression of an earth jurisprudence and to the history of a proposal that “ecocide” be recognised internationally as a crime. Analysis of documentary sources traces this idea from debates about the concept of genocide to consideration by United Nations officials as to how crimes against the environment might be defined, and shows how near such a proposal has previously come to acceptance and enactment. The article concludes with an argument for supporting a law of ecocide as the 5th Crime against Peace.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was set up in 2002 to try cases alleging crimes against peace: genocide, war crimes, crimes of aggression and crimes against humanity. There are compelling arguments for a fifth crime against peace: the crime of ecocide. Generations to come will scarcely believe that we acted with such myopic self-interest at the cost of all life on earth. The ‘war’ that we have waged against the planet is an attack on the peaceful enjoyment of the habitats of all species. A small but important part of the change in international policy would be the creation of ecocide as a new crime against world peace. Broadly defined, ecocide is the significant damage to or destruction of an ecosystem to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment of a part of the planet will be substantially diminished.Decision-makers in companies, organisations or states that cause ecocide would be held accountable in the ICC. Accountability for the ecocide crime is not just the desire of a small number of environmental crusaders. It is a view that is gaining widespread international support from ordinary citizens, politicians and academics. As environmental lawyers, we are morally obliged to add our knowledge and voice to the debate.

All living kinds, human and nonhuman, require rights to water. A UN Declaration upholds rights to clean drinking water and basic sanitation for humans, and some environmental legislation seeks to assure minimal flows of water in ecosystems. However, such rights are situated within complex social and political relations that are often far from equal. The distribution and management of water is entangled in issues such as ethnicity, class, gender, and levels of enfranchisement, and is heavily dependent upon how beliefs and values about water are represented in dominant narratives. Although water has been regarded a “common good” for millennia, many forms of collective ownership of freshwater have been overridden by colonial appropriations and by attempts to enclose and privatize water resources and to reframe them as commercial assets. An accelerating global water crisis caused by climate change, intensifying farming, and the over-allocation of water resources reveals unsustainable pressures on freshwater ecosystems. There have been concomitant losses of access to water for less powerful human communities, and most particularly for nonhuman beings. As a result, approximately two hundred species become extinct every day. Widespread environmental degradation has caused indigenous communities to critique the exploitative practices of colonial societies and to promote alternate and more egalitarian visions of human-nonhuman relationships. Inspired by these alternate cultural beliefs and values, and sometimes in alliance with indigenous people, conservation organizations and environmental activists have sought ecological justice to protect nonhuman beings and their habitats. Many are demanding that the UN should declare “rights for nature” and that the International Court of Criminal Justice should define “ecocide” as an international crime. Anthropologists have challenged dominant dualisms about culture and nature, providing accounts of diverse cultural worldviews in which all living kinds inhabit a nonbifurcated world. They have underlined the fluid interelationalities between human and nonhuman beings and the material environment. Building on a strong disciplinary history of advocating for human rights, they are exploring ways to articulate nonhuman needs and interests, for example, in new forms of river catchment management. There is growing consensus about the need to encourage forms of “pan-species democracy” that will ensure that all living kinds have sufficient rights to water and to the conditions that enable them to flourish.

Twenty-five years ago, in the first issue of Animal Law, the author offered an account of why legal rights do not need to be restricted to human beings. Here the author expands upon that account to provide a review of the ongoing struggle of the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) to obtain legal rights for nonhuman animals. The Author outlines habeas corpus cases the NhRP has brought on behalf of chimpanzees and elephants in New York and Connecticut and provides a view of the New York and Connecticut Pet Trust Statutes, which grant certain nonhuman animals the right to be named a beneficiary of a trust, thereby implicitly creating their legal personhood. This Article further argues that legal personhood does not attach to humans alone and illuminates the varieties of judicial responses it has encountered in its effort to persuade courts to assign legal personhood to nonhuman animals.

With legal animal rights on the horizon, there is a need for a more systematic theorisation of animal rights as legal rights. This article addresses conceptual, doctrinal and normative issues relating to the nature and foundations of legal animal rights by examining three key questions: can, do and should animals have legal rights? It will show that animals are conceptually possible candidates for rights ascriptions. Moreover, certain ‘animal welfare rights’ could arguably be extracted from existing animal welfare laws, even though these are currently imperfect and weak legal rights at best. Finally, this article introduces the new conceptual vocabulary of simple and fundamental animal rights, in order to distinguish the weak legal rights that animals may be said to have as a matter of positive law from the kind of strong legal rights that animals ought to have as a matter of future law.

Rattling the Cage explains how the failure to recognize the basic legal rights of chimpanzees and bonobos in light of modern scientific findings creates a glaring contradiction in our law. In this witty, moving, persuasive, and impeccably researched argument, Wise demonstrates that the cognitive, emotional, and social capacities of these apes entitle them to freedom from imprisonment and abuse.

Global health and environmental wellbeing are mutually reinforcing and interdependent. This mutuality invokes two major analytical orientations: it emphasizes a direct nexus between ecological strategies and global health outcomes. These in turn revitalize the essential quest for comprehensive policies and responsible strategies for enhancing both ecology and health within the discourse of sustainability. With orientation towards political conception of corporate responsibility, I problematize the root questions of the democratic embeddedness of the firm under conditions of weakened institutional structures. I highlight the inherent power relations in global health and ecological governance through literature mapping. I address the question: Why and how might ecological strategies be embedded in corporate day-to-day actions to produce optimal outcomes that have positive effects on global health and human dignity? Besides resource and ethical/political constraints, there are several micro-political, geopolitical, industrial, institutional and structural impediments to ecological and health sustainability. This grim diagnosis is clearly a description of a ‘disturbingly fascinating’ pathology of global capitalism whose industrial effects culminate in the accumulation of more profits for a few at the expense of the ecological sustainability of the majority. That notwithstanding, there are several grounds for optimism with a move from anthropocentrism to humanistic eco-centrism via deliberative democratic procedures. Here, the centrality of human dignity is emphasized. This study provides an interdisciplinary theoretical model that seeks to reorient strategies towards restoration, protection, mitigation, adaptation, harm avoidance and innovative sustainability of the whole economic gamut and biodiversity that supports global health. Thus, I rearticulate ecological sustainability in terms of its most fundamental means and end: sustainable global health and the tutelage of human dignity.

This paper explores the restructuring of America away from unsustainable practices such as massive fossil-fuels consumption and towards an ecodemocracy, which is defined as the restructuring of our society towards maximum conservation and equal rights for all species.

In an article published in 1995, Paul Shrivastava coined the notion of an ecocentric management paradigm. The ecocentric paradigm provided an integrated and holistic view of the organization at peace with the natural environment. This paper updates the idea of ecocentricity and enriches it with facts and fears that have emerged since then. We suggest that Shrivastava's original formulation was an improvement of the industrial paradigm, advance an alternative reconceptualization of ecocentricity and discuss some of the possible obstacles to the emergence and adoption of ecocentric management. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.