The Promise Institute
for Human Rights (Europe) News
The Manual on Prosecuting International Environmental Crimes is based on expertise we gained supporting Ukraine’s efforts to investigate and prosecute environmental harm resulting from the Russian aggression. Drafted in partnership with Climate Counsel, the Manual takes the lessons learned from the Ukraine context to build a guide that applies in both conflict and peacetime in any jurisdiction around the world.
The Manual sets out the legal architecture for prosecuting environmental destruction demonstrates how these legal tools can be applied in practice. It offers a step-by-step guide to what can be done within existing legal frameworks while helping to build the practical foundations that any future international crime of ecocide will also require.
It also includes five case studies that work with fictionalised examples of contemporary environmental destruction to demonstrate how legal accountability can be pursued in practice.
🌍 Understanding the Elements of Ecocide Law: A Seven-Part Series 🌍
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.