Prosecuting International Environmental Crimes - A Geneva Security Debate

About this Event

International criminal law is the most under used tool in the fight against environmental damage and climate harm. It has built a substantial practice for prosecuting atrocities against persons, but nothing comparable exists for the natural environment. This is partly a matter of law: the framework is more developed in wartime than in peacetime, and incomplete even where it exists, which is why the movement to criminalise ecocide has gained such force. But it is also a matter of practice. No prosecutor, international or, until recently, national, has ever indicted anyone for an international environmental crime: not for want of law, but because the expertise needed to recognise environmental destruction as a crime, charge it in terms that withstand judicial scrutiny, a…

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