Environmental Damages, an International War Crime?

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is considering expanding its mandate to include environmental crimes.

The ICC prosecutes the most serious crimes against international humanitarian law. Its statute was adopted at the Rome Conference in 1998. Thus, the ICC is not competent to judge international crimes not listed in this founding text. Since 2002, when it came into effect, the exhaustive (and relatively limited) list of offenses that the ICC can prosecute includes the following:

• Crimes against humanity,

• Genocide,

• War crimes,

• and crimes of aggression.
  

This limited competence has recently been challenged by the ICC's Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan. In early February 2024, he expressed a desire for the ICC to be able to prosecute "environmental crimes."

According to him, it will not be necessary to amend the ICC's statute. Why? Because environmental impacts on people and nature "fuel" war crimes or crimes against humanity. The prosecutor further explained that Attacking a nuclear power plant, a dam, using chemicals, for example, to finance a conflict through the extraction of precious minerals, all of this can cause environmental damage, occurring in a context of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or even crimes of aggression.

This approach shows how harm to people and the environment could be jointly prosecuted in the near future. Indeed, in an increasingly tense geopolitical context, natural resources are likely to fuel new conflicts through the energy transition, which requires the exploitation of rare and precious minerals.

Vulnerable populations living in conflict-prone areas will be even more impacted by the consequences of climate change (droughts, water and food shortages, rising sea levels, etc.), which will fuel social tensions.

In practice, such cases already exist since in 2021, at least two cases for "crimes against humanity" were filed with the ICC against Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for his role in the deforestation of the Amazon.

The Office of the Prosecutor has therefore launched a public consultation on a new general policy project aimed at establishing responsibility for environmental crimes under the Rome Statute. The goal is to expand its jurisdiction to international crimes by 2024.

This is a reality to consider now, as in 2016, the ICC announced that it would look into "ecological destruction, illegal exploitation of natural resources, or illegal land dispossession."

The rise and standardization of international environmental justice is something all actors need to anticipate: civil society, associations, businesses, investors, and states.

Also in February, the French Constitutional Council gathered judges and global experts to discuss justice, future generations, and the environment.

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