Defeating the Unenforceability of Ecocide
摘要
In the past few decades, humanity has faced undeniable environmental degradation and unprecedented ecological changes, mainly because of the “Great Industrial Revolution”. The legal responses of the States usually appeared in the form of an international treaty that, in many cases, was not considered an effective solution to curb the most serious environmentally destructive activities. Ecocide appeared already at the beginning of the 1970s, but it has disappeared as an autonomous crime from the sight of international law for several decades. As a result of the work of “Polly” Higgins and “Stop Ecocide”, the international community has again revisited the idea of the criminalisation of environmentally harmful activities on the universal level. We have witnessed how ecocide legislation found its way to domestic (state-level), regional (with special regard to the law of the European Union) and international spheres. As the new Environmental Crime Directive of the European Union explicitly mentions ecocide and obliges Member States to penalise “qualified offences” more seriously, it is expected that ecocide will be intensively incorporated into the national legislation of Member States. However, in my opinion, it is a crucial question whether ecocide is merely a concept, serving as a basis for the acceptance of new environmental legislation, or a real, enforceable law under which perpetrators can be prosecuted and legal actions can be taken. I genuinely believe that the answer to the question above depends on the legislative level we examine. In my chapter, I want to elaborate on the questions of the conceptuality and enforceability of ecocide, with particular regard to how creative legal thinking can defeat the current “unenforceability” of ecocide. Additionally, it is essential to examine how various branches of law have incorporated ecocide over the past few years, including the original “cradle” of ecocide, international criminal law, and, more recently, human rights law. In this manner, the interrelatedness in international environmental law serves beneficially for ecocide, meaning that over time, there is a chance that ecocide can be recognised as a real, enforceable law. Based on the above, the main aim of the chapter is to establish an understandable and clear “web” in which the enforceability of ecocide can be provided in the context of current domestic, regional, and international legislation.