Ecocide legislation gives moral values a seat at the corporate table.
Ecocide legislation aims to create a future where morals and values have shifted towards an appreciation that without the natural world, we don’t have anything.
I am incredibly grateful to have collaborated with Stop Ecocide International on this illustration, envisioning the future of our corporations, where morals, values and a priority for the health of our natural world all have a real seat at the table.
When you think about the atrocities of Genocide, how does it make you feel? Disgusted? Angry? Scared? Devastated?
Genocide is ingrained in us (most of us) as a heinous, unspeakable, vicious crime. It’s a recognised crime that deserves a just punishment.
When you think about fracking, mining, tilling, bottom trawling, whaling, single use plastic production… how does it make you feel? Chances are it upsets and worries you, but it doesn’t cut as deep as it does the former.
This is more than unfortunate, since all of these hazardous activities combined are driving us outside of our planetary boundaries (1) , and into the Holocene (our planets 6th mass extinction) (2). Simply put, these legal, non-criminalised dangerous activities are driving us into history.
Ecocide legislation aims to create a future where morals and values have shifted towards an appreciation that without the natural world, we don’t have anything.
Today, many of those in senior positions of decision-making power are guided by short-term profits and are personally protected by the limited liability of a corporation or the impunity that comes with being part of a ruling government. Existing regulatory frameworks have failed to protect us. Establishing a new international crime of ecocide at the International Criminal Court, alongside genocide, where it belongs, will draw a moral red line beyond which it is no longer morally or legally acceptable to act.
This illustration depicts a scene in the future, post 2030, where the idea of profit at any cost is still a tempting proposition. However, with an international crime of ecocide in place, those in power have learned to think twice, and remind themselves that they could be held personally criminally liable if their decisions are deemed to have led directly to devastating environmental damage, such as vast chemical or oil spills or the clear-cutting of primary rainforests.
If you believe that causing the most severe forms of environmental destruction should be an international crime, you can urge global governments to declare support for making ecocide an international crime by signing Stop Ecocide International's petition here.
1 – www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html
2 – www.worldwildlife.org/stories/what-is-the-sixth-mass-extinction-and-what-can-we-do-about-it
Great article