Our Executive Director, Kate Mackintosh joined a distinguished gathering in the margins of the United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice to discuss the importance of creating a crime of Ecocide.

Hosted by the states of Vanuatu and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the event included ministers, government officials and MPs from Ghana, Guatemala and Tahiti, united in their commitment to end the destruction of our shared environment.

Ecocide in Peru: Repsol and the Colonial Regime of Permission, Ignasi Bernat Molina, Environmental Politics (May 2025).

This paper examines the 2022 Repsol oil spill in Peru as a case study, demonstrating how the disaster resulted from long-term decisions by both Spanish and Peruvian states. It argues that ecocide must be understood within a colonial matrix that enriches fossil capital while creating conditions for ecological destruction.

Thanks to the stellar work of our research assistants Ava Schuster and John Dover, our annotated bibliography on international criminal law and environmental protection is fully updated! We’re excited to share the most powerful reads we have come across. Today’s highlight:

The Destruction of Indigenous Communities’ Landscapes: An Aggravated Form of Ecocide? Jérôme de Hemptinne & Helena Szczupak, EJIL:Talk! (May 2025)

This piece explores whether peacetime industrial destruction of Indigenous landscapes constitutes an aggravated form of ecocide.

Our Executive Director Kate Mackintosh was honoured to assist Monica Lennon as a member of her expert advisory committee. She spoke to BBC Radio Scotland to explain the bill.

Date: June 12, 17:00 – 21:00 
Location: International Institute for Social Studies (ISS), The Hague 

Please join us on June 12 for a seminar featuring UCLA Law Professor Hiroshi Motomura, who will present his most recent book: 

Borders and Belonging – Toward a Fair Immigration Policy

Part 7: Liability of Legal Entities, Corporate Workers and Public Servants

Some new ecocide laws create liability for companies as well as individuals. These include those in the EU, Belgium and France. 

This means that the legal entity as a whole, as opposed to natural persons within it, can be held accountable for environmental harm. This is important at the national level, where individuals might hide behind the “veil” of the corporate structure to avoid liability. 

Part 6: Creation of Harm or Risk?

Some crimes consist in bringing about harmful consequences, while others consist of creating a risk of harm. These offences of “endangerment,” are committed regardless of whether the harm materialises. 

Part 5: The Mental Element

Mens rea refers to the criminal intent or awareness a suspect has regarding the wrongfulness of their actions. In cases of environmental harm, the issue of mens rea is complex since potential violators rarely aim to cause environmental damage; rather, harm is a byproduct of profit-driven activities. 

Part 4: The Unlawfulness of Conduct

There is currently a debate over how a crime of ecocide at national level should relate to other environmental laws and regulations. If an act is not in violation of environmental regulations, can it still constitute the crime? This is less relevant at the international level, as the fact that something is permitted under national law does not exclude it from being an international crime.  

Part 3 : Prohibition of Acts vs Prohibition of Consequences 

Most of the new legislation – laws in Belgium and Jalisco(Mexico) and proposals in Mexico (federal), Brazil, the Netherlands, Italy, Peru, and Scotland – describe the crime through the consequences of acts (or omissions), rather than listing prohibited acts. Acts amount to ecocide when and if they threaten or cause a certain level of harm to the environment. The International Proposal takes this approach, prohibiting acts which cause a substantial risk of harm without detailing which actions create that risk.  

Part 2: The Definition of Environment

As ecocide encompasses harm to the environment, the definition of environment governs what kinds of harm can be criminalized. While there is no accepted definition of the environment in international law, the International Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide follows the language of the Environmental Modification Convention to define the “environment” as “the earth, its biosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, as well as outer space”.  

The International Law Commission and the International Committee of the Red Cross both consider that the concept of the environment includes both human and natural elements as they constitute a complex system of interconnections that cannot be treated as discrete. 

April 24: Armenian Genocide Memorial Day

Today, April 24th, marks Armenian Genocide Memorial Day, an annual day of remembrance for the victims of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. This tragic chapter in history saw the systematic mass killings and starvation of approximately 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, motivated by ethnic and religious intolerance. 

The Promise Institute was founded in honor of those who perished, to work towards a world in which such atrocities are never repeated.

Part 1: The Treshold Of Harm

This series breaks down the seven key elements of adopted and proposed ecocide legislation, why they matter and how they have changed in comparison to the international proposal.  

Xuchen Zhang and Kate Mackintosh conducted an extensive comparison of existing and proposed laws. In this series, we present their findings in bite-sized pieces, examining each element in detail to highlight its significance. 

A Practical Guide for Transposing the ECD’s Qualified Offence

EU Directive 2024/1203 on the protection of the environment through criminal law (ECD) came into force on 20 May 2024. It requires all EU Member States to introduce national laws addressing environmental crimes, including the most serious cases—so-called “qualified offences,” which may closely resemble ecocide. 

Our Legal Associate Amanda Brown, a doctoral researcher at SOAS University of London, joined the expert panel on Human Rights at Sea: Contemporary Challenges, co-hosted by the Hellenic Branch of the International Law Association and the Athens Public International Law Center, where she spoke about the challenges of documenting human rights violations at sea, with a specific focus on Greece’s systematic practice of expelling asylum seekers into Turkish waters.

On February 12, we gathered at the Asser Institute in The Hague for the launch of Ecocide Law Advisory (ELA) and the Manual on the National Criminalisation of Ecocide—two initiatives dedicated to advancing the effective criminalization of ecocide at national and international levels. 

Xuchen is part of the team that works with the ICC OTP to develop a policy paper on accountability for environmental crimes under the Rome Statute, and she is on the roster of Ecocide Law Advisory. She also contributed to our submission on the Gaza conflict to the Arms Trade Treaty Working Group, and our brief on the UK water crisis for the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Most recently, she has co-authored an article comparing new and proposed national ecocide laws with executive director Kate Mackintosh which is pending publication. 

We invite you to explore our annual report, a dynamic digital magazine highlighting the many significant events of the past year. From fostering global collaborations to driving meaningful change: we’re proud of the progress we’ve made together. 

Please join us on Wednesday 12 February for the launch of Ecocide Law Advisory, as well as the Manual on the National Criminalisation of Ecocide. 

• Ecocide Law Advisory is a partnership between The UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe and Climate Counsel to provide expert legal advice and training on the drafting and implementation of ecocide laws 

• The Manual on the National Criminalisation of Ecocide offers solutions to issues raised by the 2024 EU Environmental Crimes Directive to support effective criminalisation of serious environmental harm within the EU.

We are very proud that the Executive Director of the UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe had the honour of appearing before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on behalf of the State of Palestine, alongside Ambassador Ammar Hijazi and Professor Nilufer Oral. Together, they argued that state responsibility for climate change must encompass the climate impacts of armed conflict and occupation.