IMPUNITY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMES: THE RECOGNITION OF ECOCIDE BEFORE THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

INTRODUCTION: The significant increase in anthropogenic pressures on the global environment highlights the inadequacy of traditional mechanisms for preventing and holding parties accountable for large-scale environmental crimes. In this context, the central issue of this research lies in the impunity surrounding major transnational ecological disasters and in the gap created by the absence of a definition of ecocide within the framework of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. AIMS: The broad objective of this study was to understand the perspectives and available instruments for the prevention of and accountability for serious environmental crimes at the international level, while assessing the feasibility of including ecocide as the fifth crime under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. MATERIALS AND METHODS: To this end, a theoretical, bibliographic, and documentary methodology was adopted, employing a deductive approach, supplemented by a review of relevant legal provisions and primary data collected through technical discussions with former Court judge Dr. Sylvia Steiner. RESULTS: The findings traced the conceptual evolution of ecocide from the perspective of Green Criminology, the proposed amendment submitted by the Pacific island nations, as well as regional legislative milestones, such as the European Union’s new Environmental Crimes Directive, for example. The influence of so-called “greenwashing” and financial crime in concealing ecocidal corporate conduct was also identified. Based on all of this, it was concluded that the inclusion of ecocide in The Hague, within the scope of the ICC, faces serious dogmatic and bureaucratic barriers, represented by the Rome Statute’s historical choice not to extend its jurisdiction to legal entities, by the strictness of the traditional standard of intent, and by the incompatibility between retributive prison sentences and the urgency of ecological restoration and socio-environmental reparations. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS: The concluding remarks point out that the primary value of international criminalization does not lie in a large number of convictions by the court in question, but rather in its symbolic function and the ripple effect it exerts in compelling the internalization of the norm by national legal systems, which prove to be swifter and more effective in the coercive management of such disputes. Furthermore, there is also the possibility of creating a new system of international litigation focused specifically on environmental crimes on a global scale, a development that will positively influence the process of holding perpetrators of the crime of ecocide internationally accountable.

KEYWORDS: Ecocide; International Criminal Court; Green Criminology; International Law; International Criminal Law.