What if the International Criminal Court could prosecute ecocide? The debate remains open, and a new proposal is adding momentum to the discussion.
Taking ecocide beyond the laws of war and recognising it as a crime against humanity. The idea is to take ecocide beyond the limits of the laws of war and recognise it as a crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, alongside genocide and crimes against humanity. The debate has been ongoing for some time, and it is now being revived in academia thanks to the UNESCO Chair in “Economic Systems and Human Rights” established at the National University of La Plata in Argentina. Although based in Argentina, the proposal has strong Italian roots. La Plata is home to the largest Italian community in the country, and the Chair is directed by the Italian professor Francesco Vigliarolo. According to Vigliarolo, what is at stake is a major shift in legal thinking. Today, international law recognises environmental destruction as a crime only when committed during armed conflict. His proposal calls for recognising it instead as an offence against humanity as a whole, regardless of whether it occurs in times of war or peace.
At the heart of Vigliarolo’s proposal is a critique of the way economic theory has treated the environment and human rights for decades: as “externalities”—issues considered outside economic calculation rather than fundamental components of the common good. “Individual interests cannot take precedence over shared goods, collective well-being and the socio-cultural infrastructures that unite us,” Vigliarolo said while presenting his proposal to the Italian Chamber of Deputies.
The proposal is based on a specific idea: human rights should become the foundation for rebuilding the economy on a universal scale, starting from a key principle that places the environment at the basis of economic systems. In a world where exporting waste produced by the Global North means, in his words, “not impoverishing but destroying communities”—and ultimately the planet itself—the environment can no longer be treated as secondary.
This interpretation is also reflected in the word itself. From the Greek oikos (“home”), Vigliarolo defines ecocide as “the killing of humanity’s home.” The concept dates back to the 1970s, when it was first used in relation to Agent Orange, the powerful herbicide and defoliant sprayed by the United States military during the Vietnam War between 1961 and 1971 to destroy forests for military purposes.
Under the 1998 Rome Statute, environmental destruction is recognised only under Article 8, as a war crime. The provision criminalises attacks that knowingly cause “widespread, long-term and severe” environmental damage, but only during an international armed conflict and only when the damage is clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage. This means that environmental destruction committed in peacetime—and actions carried out by companies or non-state actors—falls outside the Court’s jurisdiction, which applies only to individuals. Although the term ecocide, first coined in 1970, has gained increasing attention, it has never received a legally binding international definition, despite recent attempts such as the proposal developed by Stop Ecocide International in 2021.
The Council of Europe has also encouraged this direction. Through Resolutions 2398 (2021) and 2477 (2023), it has called on member states to introduce the crime of ecocide into national legislation and to consider recognising it as a crime subject to universal jurisdiction. Since 2022, a committee of experts has been working on a new convention.
The European Union has also taken a significant step with Directive 2024/1203 on the protection of the environment through criminal law. For the first time, the directive introduces a category of “qualified offences”, broadly comparable to the crime of ecocide. It provides severe penalties for the most serious environmental disasters, including massive, widespread and irreversible environmental damage. Those responsible may face prison sentences of up to ten years, while multinational companies may be subject to substantial financial penalties. However, the directive must still be transposed into the national legislation of each EU member state and, in any case, its scope remains limited to Europe. The crucial step is still missing: making ecocide a crime recognised and prosecuted globally. It is precisely within this legal framework—which currently recognises environmental destruction only as a war crime and only under specific conditions—that the proposal discussed in the Italian Parliament seeks to redefine ecocide as a crime against humanity.
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