By Daniel Otunge
The recent adoption of a resolution endorsing the Draft Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is a welcome move. It inches Ecocide law closer to becoming an international law.
During the deliberations, PACE observed correctly that protecting the environment against human threats has “become one of the international community’s major concerns, triggered by the understanding that the health of the planet and the well-being of humans are closely tied together.”
Although the resolution, passed on 10 April 2025, signals strong support within the Council of Europe’s parliamentary body, the Convention is not yet law. It will become law after formal approval by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, due on 14 May 2025, and ratification by Member States.
When adopted and implemented, the new Convention will be the first internationally legally binding instrument to address environmental crime, covering various offences, including ecocide. “The draft Convention builds on international treaties and legal standards relating to environmental protection, human rights and transnational crime, including a series of Council of Europe legal instruments,” the Council of Europe’s report says.
The draft Convention aims to effectively prevent and combat environmental crime, promote national and international cooperation, and set minimum legal standards for member states regarding environmental crime.
It emphasizes prevention through a broad range of punishable offences, awareness-raising measures among the general public, and cooperation with civil society and non-governmental organisations.
The inclusion of provisions in the draft Convention specifying that it “shall apply in times of peace and situations of armed conflict, wartime or occupation” is a welcome move given the wanton destruction of the environment seen lately in war-torn countries like Syria and Ukraine.
The Assembly proposed that the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide be “added to the Explanatory Report to the Convention to guide member States towards aligning the understanding of this legal concept and to facilitate its inclusion in national law.
According to the experts, “ecocide means unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”
Worldwide, like-minded people are working towards a recognition of ecocide or widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the environment as a fifth international crime so that the International Criminal Court (ICC) could prosecute it. This was occasioned by the deliberate exclusion of Ecocide from the Rome Statute.
The UN’s International Law Commission (ILC) was responsible for the first efforts toward a possible international codification of the criminal protection of the environment, mainly in the 1980s and 1990s. After rounds of deliberations on a draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind, the existence of an environmental crime committed by an individual remained excluded from the final text, only maintaining criminal liability for severe destruction of the environment in a context of war.
Thus, the Statute currently addresses environmental harm in the context of war crimes under Article 8(2)(b)(iv), which criminalizes “intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause … severe damage to the natural environment which would be excessive about the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated”.
However, this provision is limited to wartime activities. It does not cover peacetime environmental destruction, such as large-scale deforestation in Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Kenya, or the dumping of toxic wastes in poor nations.
Several nations and regions have shown support for the ecocide movement, advocating for its recognition as an international crime. Vanuatu, Fiji, and Samoa formally introduced the crime of ecocide for consideration by ICC Member States in September 2024.
In October 2024, the DRC became the first African nation to formally endorse the creation of an international crime of ecocide. Peru has taken significant steps towards criminalizing ecocide, with multiple bills introduced in parliament and the Justice and Human Rights Commission approving a motion to incorporate ecocide into the Penal Code.
Additionally, in October 2024, Azerbaijan’s parliament passed the first reading of a bill to introduce the crime of ecocide into the country’s Criminal Code. France’s international development financing agency, Agence Française de Développement (AFD), highlighted the role that ecocide law would play in ensuring the planet’s habitability. Italy’s Green and Left Alliance proposed a bill to criminalize ecocide based on the Independent Expert Panel’s 2021 definition. The governing board of the largest political party in Finland’s ruling coalition government expressed support for ecocide as an amendment to the Rome Statute of the ICC in June 2024.
To avoid rendering the Draft Convention ineffective, the PACE called for strengthening it to enable a more effective prosecution of environmental crimes. They noted certain compromises in the wording of parts of the convention, such as monitoring, that should be rescinded so that the EU can help set the pace for other regions in terms of punishing wanton environmental crimes.
The following statement by Yuliia Ovchynnykova, Member of Parliament of Ukraine and Member of the Ukrainian Delegation to the PACE, aptly captures the mood of the global community united against Ecocide:
“I believe it is essential not only to acknowledge ecocide as a profound harm to both nature and humanity, we must call for its codification in both domestic and international law. With this resolution, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe takes a significant step toward that goal, endorsing a Convention that explicitly includes particularly serious environmental offences — conduct that many term ‘ecocide’ — and aims to ensure robust and inclusive protection for the natural world. By tackling such offences alongside illegal logging, unlawful fishing, and the destruction of all forms of biodiversity — including fungi — the Assembly sends a clear and decisive message to governments: environmental crimes can no longer, and will no longer, be tolerated.”
In my view, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, due on 14 May 2025, has only one choice: Approve the Convention with amendments as suggested by PACE.
The Writer is a Communication and Environmental Law Expert.
