Ecocide
The term ‘ecocide’ refers to the ‘devastation and destruction of the environment to the detriment of life’, but no legal definition between States has yet been agreed. This project promotes the discussion towards the criminalisation of ecocide.
ELI Members who are interested in actively contributing to the development of this project are invited to join the project's Members Consultative Committee (MCC). Kindly contact the ELI Secretariat if you would like to join the MCC of this project or if you have any questions concerning the project.
In my recent diaries, I have written about the cost of global military expenditure to the tune of $2.4 trillion every year, yet some still ask, where will the money come from to tackle the Climate Crisis. Pardon, seriously? Seems that destruction is far more profitable than salvage.
One can also ask the question of whether the renewed interest in the Moon has more to do with deuterium and tritium resources than as a staging point for Mars exploration. OK, for the holy grail of fusion, this is worthwhile but the more common actual use of tritium is for boosted fission weapons and hybrid fusion-fission weapons. One wonders which research will take precedence, ha.
Ukraine
Russia is committing grave acts of ecocide in Ukraine – and the results will harm the whole world
Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist who led the team that developed the world’s first nuclear weapons, quoted from ancient Hindu scriptures to illustrate his conflicting feelings about the forces his science unleashed: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” he said. In his later years, Oppenheimer longed for a future “without nation states armed for war, and above all, a world without war”.
Yet there’s another kind of loss that Oppenheimer recognised only too clearly in his readings of the Bhagavad Gita, the ancient text he turned to after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Humans now possess the power to destroy the world they live in.
This Guardian article from last year is not out of date, the ecocide in Ukraine continues merrily onward.
Gaza
War Has Poisoned Gaza’s Land and Water. Peace Will Require Environmental Justice.
As Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza continues—with nearly 20,000 dead, more than two-thirds women and children—much of the world is holding its breath in anticipation of some kind of longer-term cessation of the violence.
Sadly, however, the quieting of the bombs and guns will merely mark the end of one chapter of Gaza’s suffering. It is unclear where the 1.2 million Gazans who are now displaced—80 percent of the population—will live. Carpet bombing has rendered most of the territory’s major urban areas all but uninhabitable. But even if the matter of shelter is resolved, there is a graver problem in Gaza’s future: its environmental resources are being poisoned, depleted, or otherwise destroyed, and may take generations to recover.
Sudan
We have entered the age of ‘climate war’
Since the conflict was referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the United Nations Security Council, several individuals have been indicted. The ICC should use its resources and expertise to analyse the connection between water stress and the violence in Darfur, and publicise this worrying trend.
Armed conflict is, in turn, a source and driver of environmental harms. In Sudan, for example, armed groups seeking to profit from illegal gold mining have (with the help of the Wagner Group) polluted the land and water sources of entire communities with mercury and cyanide.
Yemen
'Ecocide': how war and climate change are often linked
In Yemen, a parched country on the southern fringe of the Arabian Peninsula, a grinding eight-year civil war has increased pressure on diminishing water supplies, Yemeni Minister of Water and Environment Tawfiq Al-Sharjabi told AFP.
"Conflicts contribute a lot to increasing the suffering of citizens through their impact on environmental resources in general and water resources in particular," he said.
Every current war contributes, there is no such thing as an environmentally friendly war.
It will be ironic that we destroy our biosphere whilst claiming that we have a right to defend ourselves.
Just a thought