At 2021’s COP26 in Glasgow, the world’s first global citizen’s assembly put forth its view that international courts should recognise ecocide, and the European Union has encouraged its Member States to campaign for its recognition at the International Criminal Court. Belgium became the first in 2024, making ecocide punishable at both national and international levels. The new crime, which is aimed at preventing and punishing the most severe cases of environmental degradation (such as extensive oil spills), will apply to individuals in the highest positions of decision-making power and to corporations. The punishment for individuals may include up to 20 years in prison, while corporations could face fines of up to €1.6 million. In addition, Belgium now recognises ecocide as a fifth ‘international crime’ after war crimes, crimes of aggression, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Other states are taking concrete steps towards establishing new domestic crimes of ecocide, including the Netherlands, Scotland, Mexico, Brazil, England, Italy and Spain.
In order to fully protect nature, it is necessary that those that would wilfully destroy vast swathes of the natural world, in turn causing untold human harm, should be criminalised.
Ecocide will continue as long as ecocide is profitable. No possible iteration of capitalism can address this problem. This, in and of itself, is a sufficiently strong argument that capitalism must be abandoned.
We’re destroying our planet despite knowing it’s bad for us. We can talk all we want about capitalism, corruption, empire and ecocide, but underneath it all what we’re really looking at is the struggle of a thinking species to become a conscious species.