Ecocide, genocide and the disregard of alternative life-systems

Ecocide is a structurally reoccurring phenomenon contributing to a serious disequilibrium in the Earth-system that buttress all planetary life. Ecocide is also a possible method of genocide if it fragments or destroys vital socioecological and cultural relationships between humans and nature. Practises that inflict ecocide are hence often responsible for the destruction of ecological and social life-systems that face adversities due to deteriorating ecological conditions. This article therefore articulates the importance of an international crime of ecocide that can prosecute perpetrators for acts of ecocide as well as ecocidally induced physical and cultural genocide under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In doing so, it outlines the structural drivers of ecocide, articulates the links between ecocide and genocide, and argues that the failure to establish an international crime against ecocide and its genocidal effects is a deeply rooted and unacceptable legal-epistemological disregard of alternative life-systems’ intrinsic right to existence by international law. In response, this article calls for an international crime of ecocide and its genocidal violence under the ICC not as a legal silver bullet but as a tool for larger processes of decolonisation which must be coupled with alternative methods of enforcement and resistance.