An illegal toxic dump in Croatia, the theft of water from a large aquifer in southern Spain, illegal trade in ozone-depleting refrigerants in France: These are just a sample of the environmental crimes that European countries are struggling to stop. The lack of accountability for these acts stems in part from the European Union’s legal code, which experts say is riddled with vague definitions and gaps in enforcement. That is about to change.
Last week, EU lawmakers agreed a new directive which criminalizes cases of environmental damage “comparable to ecocide”, a term broadly defined as the severe, widespread and long-term destruction of the natural world. Advocates called the move “revolutionary,” both because it sets severe penalties for offenders, including up to a decade in prison, and because it is the first time an international body has created a legal pathway for prosecuting ecocide.
“This decision is the end of impunity for environmental criminals and could usher in a new era of environmental litigation in Europe,” wrote Marie Toussaint, a French lawyer and EU member of parliament for the Greens/European Free Alliance group. on X.
Environmental crime is estimated to be the fourth most profitable illegal activity in the world, worth an estimated $258 billion annually, and it’s increasing every year, according to the United Nations Environment Program and the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol. Environmental crimes are often linked to other forms of organized crime, such as smuggling and money laundering.
The new directive uses the term “ecocide” in its preamble, but does not criminalize the act by laying out a legal definition (the most widely accepted definition of ecocide was developed by an international panel of experts in 2021). Instead, it works by providing a list of “qualified offenses” or crimes that fall within its scope. These include pollution from ships, the introduction of invasive species and ozone depletion.
This list is “broad but by no means exhaustive,” Jojo Mehta, a UK-based environmental advocate and co-founder of the campaign Stop Ecocide, said in an email. The directive makes no mention of, for example, illegal fishing and carbon market fraud. “Within hours of the news breaking, we were emailed by a series of civil society actors asking ‘but will such-and-such damage be covered?'” she added.
The new law holds people liable for environmental destruction if they acted with knowledge of the damage their actions would cause. This aspect of the law is important, experts said, because it means that a permit is no longer enough for a company to avoid debt.
“If new information shows that behavior causes irreversible damage to health and nature – you will have to stop,” a member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands, Antonius Manders, told Euronews.
Advocates like Mehta hope the EU’s move will have influence beyond Europe’s borders. The main goal of the Stop Ecocide campaign is for the International Criminal Court to designate ecocide as the fifth international crime it prosecutes, after crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes of aggression and genocide. Currently, environmental destruction can only be prosecuted as a war crime at the ICC, and limitations in the law make it extremely difficult to do.
The campaign attracted a diverse group of supporters. The tiny island of Vanuatu has called for the international criminalization of ecocide as a way to limit global warming emissions, while the Ukrainian government has advocated using it as a tool to hold individuals accountable for wartime environmental destruction . The latter’s calls escalated after Russia last summer destroy the Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine, flooding more than 230 square miles, killing scores of people and spreading chemical pollution across the country.
Kate Mackintosh, the executive director of the Netherlands-based UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe, told Grist that the ICC is unlikely to adopt an ecocide law if other countries do not do so first.
“It’s not something you can just pull out of thin air,” she said, adding that any international jurisprudence must have a precedent at the national level. “That’s the way states are going to accept it.”
The EU’s 27 member states will have two years to adapt the new legislation into their penal codes. Thereafter, its implementation must be reviewed and updated at least once every five years using a “risk analysis-based approach” to account for advances in experts’ understanding of what might constitute an environmental crime. Mehta said despite its omission of some important offences, the law sets an important example for other countries. Just days before the EU vote, Belgium amended its criminal code to include the directive, make it the first country in Europe to recognize ecocide as a crime.
The ruling “shows leadership and compassion,” Mehta said. “This will establish a clear moral as well as legal ‘red line’, creating an essential direction for European industry leaders and policy makers going forward.”
