Ecocide is the Missing Crime

Image by Nik Shuliahin via Unsplash

This opinion piece published in Icarus Complex Magazine by our Executive Director, Kate Mackintosh, explains exactly what ecocide is, why it should be recognised as an international crime and how it is intrinsically related to human rights! 

Polluted air is not just an environmental issue; it is a health crisis. 

Deforestation is not only about vanishing species; it is about Indigenous Peoples losing their homes, cultures, and livelihoods. 

Melting glaciers and intensifying storms are not merely physical phenomena; they are forces displacing millions and pushing them into precarious futures as climate migrants. 

The time when environmental issues were seen as separate from questions of justice or rights has long gone. Today, there is a growing recognition that human well-being and the natural world are inseparably linked. 

Criminalising ecocide is about recognising that when ecosystems collapse so do the conditions for human dignity. And environmental destruction consistently harms the most marginalised first. Seen through a human rights approach it becomes clear: ecocide is not only an environmental imperative, it is a human rights imperative. 

Read the full article on Icarus Complex Magazine.