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	What is Ecocide? by Polly Higgins United Kingdom   Ecocide is the extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been or will be severely diminished.   In 2010, the proposal to amend the Rome Statute to include an international crime of Ecocide was submitted by Polly Higgins into the International Law Commission (ILC). The ILC is the UN body ‘mandated to promote the progressive development of international law and its codification’. The submission was published as Chapters 5 and 6 in her first book, Eradicating Ecocide.   The purpose for creating the offence of Ecocide as the 5th international Crime Against Peace is to put in place an international law at the very top level. 122 nations (as of 2015) are State Parties to the Rome Statute. International Crime (which is codified in the Rome Statute) applies not only to the signatory States. If and when a person commits a Crime Against Peace, the International Criminal Court has powers to intervene in certain circumstances, even if the person or State involved is a non-signatory.   The Rome Statute is one of the most powerful documents in the world, assigning ‘the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole'' over and above all other laws. Crimes that already exist within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court under Article 5 of the Rome Statute are known collectively as Crime Against Peace.   They are: Article 5(1) The jurisdiction of the Court shall be limited to the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole. The Court has jurisdiction in accordance with this Statute with respect to the following crimes: 1. The Crime of Genocide; 2. Crimes Against Humanity; 3. War Crimes; 4. The Crime of Aggression   To be added: 5. The Crime of Ecocide.   The inclusion of Ecocide law as international law prohibits mass damage and destruction of the Earth and, as defined above, creates a legal duty of care for all inhabitants that have been or are at risk of being significantly harmed due to Ecocide.   The duty of care applies to prevent, prohibit and pre-empt both human-caused Ecocide and natural catastrophes. Where Ecocide occurs as a crime, remedy can be sought through national courts and the International Criminal Court (ICC) or a similar body.   Currently there is no overriding mandatory duty of care (sometimes called a fiduciary duty) to prohibit, prevent significant hazards or harm, or to pre-empt by assisting to those who are facing Ecocide. Governments, business and finance are not legally bound to be accountable for some of the biggest Ecocides, despite the risk to both humans and nature. By creating a crime of Ecocide, the enforcement of a global primary duty (to stop activities that cause significant harm) ensures that all subsequent decisions are made whereby people and planet are put first. By criminalising Ecocide at an international level, a global duty of care is created.   Ecocide, the extensive destruction of ecosystems, is occurring today. For example:   Large-scale land use that causes the direct destruction of habitats – as is the case with deforestation in most tropical rainforests; Significant pollution – for example, excess greenhouse gases from the industrial activities of the top Carbon Majors; Dangerous industrial activity where entire landscapes are destroyed – such as unconventional oil extraction.   All of the above examples are human caused Ecocides. There are also naturally occurring Ecocides, such as rising sea levels. The legal duty of care that is created here is to give assistance to such territories.   Evidence of the cumulative impact has lead to researchers proposing critical planetary boundaries; transgressing them could be catastrophic: see the Stockholm Resilience Centre: 9 Planetary Boundaries Research.   Look also to evidence from UNEPs Global Environmental Outlook, Healthy People Healthy Planet reports, which examine the severe anthropogenic impacts on the Earth system.   Ecocide Law   Ecocide law has ‘legal teeth.’ Whilst we have many international agreements – voluntary codes of conduct, UN Resolutions, Treaties, Conventions, Protocols etc – the harm escalates. Not one of these international agreements prohibits Ecocide. The power of the Law of Ecocide is that it creates a legal duty of care that holds persons of ‘superior responsibility’ to account in a court of law (both criminal and civil).   * Polly Higgins is an international lawyer, and UK based barrister. She has received a number of awards for her work advocating for a law of Ecocide. She received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from Business School Lausanne 2013, and was Honorary Arne Naess Professor at Oslo University in 2013. Her book, Eradicating Ecocide, won the Peoples Book Prize in 2011 and was updated in 2015. Access the link below for more details. Visit the related web page
	What can violence/conflict people learn from the governance debate by Duncan Green Strategic adviser, Oxfam GB   In November I spent a day among conflict experts to discuss the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) research on Addressing and Mitigating Violence. There are piles of case studies and thematic papers on the website; the seminar was part of bringing them all together into some kind of overarching narrative.   The starting point for the programme was the World Development Report 2011 on ‘Conflict, Security, and Development’. WDRs are often highly influential, and this one is credited with moving the debate on from a focus on war, pacification, demobilization etc to consider repeat cycles of violence, the role of institutions, and the idea that violence goes much wider than episodes of armed conflict.   Since then there has been progress both on policies and responses, captured in the recently agreed SDG 16 to ‘Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels’.   In classic IDS fashion, the speakers stressed that violence is really complicated: different types of violence (gender-based, criminal, armed) interlink both with each other and with broader political processes. How people experience it is shaped by age, gender, poverty, ethnicity, religion. Local, national and global violence is all interwoven.   I was asked to be a ‘scavenger’ (interesting new job title) and feed back impressions at the end of the day. Here they are:   There were many parallels with the kinds of discussion I’ve been having with governance people (Doing Development Differently, Thinking and Working Politically). This included a rejection of best practice approaches in favour of helping different solutions and responses to emerge from different contexts.   An example from Pakistan’s Swat Valley: After the military kicked out the Taliban, the international community came in to support the formalization of the rule of law. But at same time, an entirely parallel process emerged, as local jirgas and the police and judicial system started renegotiating their relative roles, without any involvement of the internationals. In different parts of the Valley, this led to big differences between local institutions and lots of innovation, including on the involvement of women. The internationals were amazed by the flexibility and innovation on display.   One place where the discussion seemed an improvement on the governance debate is an explicit rejection of a purely ‘elite pact’ approach.   The way different factions of the political and economic elite reach agreement (or fail to) is undoubtedly important, but in some corners of governance discussions, it seems to be the only thing anyone wants to talk about.   One speaker characterized the 1990s as a time when civil society was the fad, ‘then we rethought and grabbed onto the next thing – elites and political settlements’.   But she, along with many others, stressed the any lasting security means building the social contract between citizens and state, not just getting a quick fix between factions of the elite that stops the fighting, but then either reverts to conflict, or leaves poor people still exploring daily violence (as they have after many so-called peace settlements). At worst, the ‘peace’ becomes the peace of the graveyard, a mere absence of conflict, with none of Amartya Sen’s ‘freedoms to be and to do’.   This got me thinking about language. ‘Violence’ is more useful than ‘conflict’ in that it isn’t just an issue for states with conflict – Yemen, Libya and so on. We also see it in the US, or Mexico, India, or other advanced economies. But maybe we need to go even further – does ‘violence’ really capture the experience of poor people?   I went back to the World Bank’s great Voices of the Poor study of the 1990s, which found that perhaps the most essential characteristic of living in poverty is uncertainty, anxiety and fear of what the future may bring.   Perhaps the opposite of peace is not war, but anxiety. Could IDS, the Bank or someone else repeat that exercise, and produce a ‘Voices of the Anxious’ study for the 21st Century?   One implication is that we need a better mix of disciplines in the room – how can you understand anxiety and fearfulness without psychologists? Or hybrid institutions without anthropologists? And of course, a shift from outsiders to insiders, both outsider-insiders (middle class aid or research types from the capital who may not understand everything out in the villages, but have a better chance of doing so than foreigners), or (even better) insider-insiders from the affected communities.   Which brought us back to another IDS’ tradition – a focus on participation, and taking the time to understand what is going on. Crucial, but there were real doubts that such approaches might be incompatible with the rhythms and practices of today’s aid business and (particularly in the week after the Paris attacks) an increasing focus on security and counter-terrorism, rather than any broader concepts.   http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/what-can-violenceconflict-people-learn-from-the-governance-debate-and-vice-versa-report-back-on-a-day-discussing-new-ids-research/ http://www.ids.ac.uk/idsresearch/addressing-and-mitigating-violence http://www.eldis.org/go/latest-news/news/addressing-armed-violence-challenges-and-approaches#.Vvm_TEdq1hE
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