ELI’s Executive Director, Andrea Crosta, joined a distinguished panel at the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) 31st session to discuss Ecocide 

ELI’s director Andrea Crosta with distinguished experts joined forces to provide insight and expertise regarding “ecocide”, which is broadly understood to mean mass damage and destruction of ecosystems – severe harm to nature which is widespread or long-term. Committed repeatedly over decades, is a root cause of the climate and ecological emergency that we now face.  

As the Earth continues to experience massive environmental damage, which exacerbates the climate crisis, threatens lives, undermines livelihoods, and destroys biodiversity, the criminalization of ecocide could strengthen existing regulatory measures and the enforcement of environmental crimes.

Andrea Crosta discussed how ELI’s work and research on the Criminal Convergence of environmental crime with other serious crimes/Transnational Organized Crime can help the efforts to criminalize Ecocide and make it the fifth crime to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)

Other panelists included:

• Jojo Mehta, Chair, StopEcocide Foundation
• Richard Rogers, Global Diligence LLP; Executive Director, Climate Counsel
• Seema Joshi, Director of Campaigns, Global Witness

The session was moderated by Justice Antonio Benjamin, Supreme Court of Brazil.

Right now, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) lists four crimes:

• Genocide

• Crimes Against Humanity

• War Crimes

• Crimes of Aggression (recently added)