Vanuatu leads campaign to criminalize ecocide
In this edition, Vanuatu’s campaign to recognize ‘ecocide’ as a crime was propelled by the war in Ukraine.
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THE STORY
Air quality, biodiversity and ecosystem health are rarely considered to be casualties of war. The term “ecocide” was introduced by scientists during the Vietnam War to describe the indelible impact of Agent Orange. The United States, wrote David Zierler in “The Invention of Ecocide,” his 2011 book, “defoliated approximately five million acres of forests in an attempt to expose communist guerilla fighters.” The “herbicidal warfare program,” he added, targeted “entire ecosystems.”
Since then, ecocide has come to describe any such wanton and deliberate destruction of the environment by humans, from particular acts of war to commercial compulsions, such as extracting oil in the Arctic, destroying the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and mining for minerals in Venezuela.