Ecocide: Toward Autonomous Environmental Crimes

Alongside the introduction of a crime of ecocide in the Rome Statute, initiatives to criminalise ecocide on the domestic and European level are on the rise. The developments on ecocide crimes provide an opportunity to review the administrative dependency of current environmental criminal law systems. A problem in current (domestic) environmental criminal law is that serious cases of environmental harm (that could be qualified as ecocide) often cannot be prosecuted as long as the private operator complies with the conditions of the administrative permit. This is related to the unlawfulness requirement. This chapter argues that for serious cases of environmental harm (potentially amounting to ecocide) criminal liability should be possible, irrespective of compliance with a permit. Hence, they should be formulated as autonomous crimes. In this respect, an important step has been taken in the recently adopted revised Environmental Crime Directive of the European Union.