Ecocide (from Ancient Greek 'home' and Latin 'to kill') is the destruction of the environment by humans. Ecocide threatens all populations that are dependent on natural resources for maintaining ecosystems and ensuring their ability to support future generations. The Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide describes it as 'unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts'.
Common causes of ecocide include war, pollution, wanton overexploitation of natural resources and other industrial disasters. The term was popularised by Olof Palme when he accused the United States of ecocide at the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment due to the country's use of Agent Orange and other herbicides/defoliants during the Vietnam War.
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (adopted 1998, enforced 2002) makes no provision for the crime of ecocide in peacetime, only in wartime. Ecocide in peacetime was to have been included in the Rome Statute, but was removed due to objections by the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. The disparity stemmed from the colonial powers' objections to inclusion of cultural genocide, during negotiations that had led to the creation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the CPPCG, or Genocide Convention, adopted 1948, enforced 1951).
Ecocide has been made national law in several countries, with many more countries and the European Union considering introduction of such a law. Stop Ecocide International and others are working to introduce ecocide in peacetime into the Rome Statute, making it both international and national law. Several countries – including Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga, and Vanuatu – have supported criminalizing ecocide under international law.
Ecocide is a common theme in fiction, with many films and books set in a post-ecocide world, including James Cameron's Avatar films, Blade Runner, Mad Max, WALL-E, Interstellar, Threads, and Soylent Green.
Definition The Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide, convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation described ecocide in 2021 as 'unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts'.
Ecocide may occur with or without intent. Environmental lawyer Polly Higgins distinguished between ascertainable and non-ascertainable ecocide, with the former having a clear human cause while the latter does not. An example of non-ascertainable ecocide is destruction due to extreme weather events related to climate change.
Arthur H. Westing discussed the element of intent in relation to ecocide, stating that 'Intent may not only be impossible to establish without admission but, I believe, it is essentially irrelevant.'
Causes
Genocide
Ecocide can threaten a people's cultural and physical existence, and several studies have shown that ecocide has genocidal dimensions. Destruction of the natural environment can result in cultural genocide by preventing people from following their traditional way of life. This is especially true for Indigenous people. Ecocide resulting from climate change and resource extraction may become a primary driver of genocide worldwide. Some Indigenous scholars have argued that ecocide and genocide are inextricable. Furthermore, in recent debates the connection between capitalism and ecocide has been subject to discussion. Scholars such as Crook, Short and South have argued that capitalist exploitation further exacerbates the impact of climate change and subsequently leads to further cases of ecocide. At times the relationship between landscape, capitalism and war has been viewed in more ambiguous manners. For example, in the case of the countryside of South Lebanon after the 2006 Lebanon War, Khayyat argues through the concept of 'resistant ecology'; that while war shapes landscape, landscapes adapt to its impacts to resist devastation through both human and non-human means.
Mainstream understanding of genocide (as defined by the United Nations) restricts genocide to acts committed against the bodies of individual people. Some genocide researchers argue that this human rights framework does a disservice to colonised Indigenous people who experienced social death with the loss of relationship to their land but who were not killed in the process of colonisation. An example of such an argument is found in Van Solinge's work on the exploitation of natural resources in parts of the African continent.
Climate change and mass extinction The ongoing mass extinction of species has been called ecocide. US environmental theorist Patrick Hossay argues that modern industrial civilization is ecocidal.
Climate change may result in ecocide. For example, ocean acidification and warming causes damage to coral reefs, although ecocide of coral reefs has also been attributed to causes not related to climate change. Criminalization of ecocide under the Rome Statute has been proposed as a deterrent to corporations responsible for climate change, although others argue that criminalizing ecocide will not address the root causes of the climate crisis.
Examples Even though ecocide is recognised as a crime in a small number of countries, many examples of environmental destruction have been described as ecocide by academics, journalists, politicians and others.
Vietnam War
One of the most controversial aspects of the U.S. military effort in Southeast Asia was the widespread use of chemical defoliants between 1961 and 1971. 20 million gallons of toxic herbicides (like Agent Orange) were sprayed on 6 million acres of forests and crops by the U.S. Air Force. They were used to defoliate large parts of the countryside to prevent the Viet Cong from being able to hide weaponry and encampments under the foliage, and to deprive them of food. Defoliation was also used to clear sensitive areas, including base perimeters and possible ambush sites along roads and canals. More than 20% of South Vietnam's forests and 3.2% of its cultivated land were sprayed at least once. 90% of herbicide use was directed at forest defoliation.
The chemicals used continue to change the landscape, cause diseases and birth defects, and poison the food chain. In combination with bombings and poaching by locals for their erroneously valued horns, Agent Orange led to the extinction of the Vietnamese Javan rhinoceros, reducing the population to 12 or less individuals in Cát Tiên National Park where the final individual of the subspecies was killed by a poacher in 2010. The aforementioned ecocides, bombings, poaching and wildlife trafficking fuelled by the war from locals also furthered the declines of several other native Vietnamese species such as the Indochinese tiger, Asian elephant, Edward's pheasant, northern white-cheeked gibbon, and saola. Official US military records have listed figures including the destruction of 20% of the jungles of South Vietnam and 20-36% (with other figures reporting 20-50%) of the mangrove forests. The environmental destruction caused by this defoliation has been described by Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, lawyers, historians and other academics as an ecocide.
Russian invasion of Ukraine
As of April 2025, the Russian-Ukranian war caused an estimated UAH 4.0 trillion in environmental damages, equivalent to USD 99.8 billion during the first three years of the war. According to a report by the Yale School of the Environment, some 687,000 tons of petrochemicals have burned as a result of shelling, while nearly 1,600 tons of pollutants have leaked into bodies of water. Hazardous chemicals have contaminated around 70 acres of soil, and likely made agricultural activities temporarily impossible. Around 30% of Ukraine's land is now littered with explosives and more than 2.4 million hectares of forest have been damaged.
According to Netherlands-based peace organization PAX, Russia's 'deliberate targeting of industrial and energy infrastructure' has caused 'severe' pollution, and the use of explosive weapons has left 'millions of tonnes' of contaminated debris in cities and towns. In early June 2023, the Kakhovka Dam, under Russian occupation, was damaged – causing flooding and triggering warnings of an 'ecological disaster.'
The Ukrainian government, international observers and journalists have described the damage as ecocide. The Ukrainian government is investigating more than 200 war crimes against the environment and 15 incidents of ecocide (a crime in Ukraine, since 2001). Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine's prosecutor general Andriy Kostin have met with prominent European figures (Margot Wallstrom, Heidi Hautala, Mary Robinson and Greta Thunberg) to discuss the environmental damage and how to prosecute it.
Deforestation in Indonesia
Indonesia has one of the world's fastest deforestation rates. In 2020, forests covered approximately 49.1% of the country's land area, down from 87% in 1950. Since the 1970s, log production, various plantations and agriculture have been responsible for much of the deforestation in Indonesia. Most recently, it has been driven by the palm oil industry, which has been criticised for its environmental impact and displacement of local communities.
The widespread deforestation (and other environmental destruction) in Indonesia is often described by academics as an ecocide. The situation has made Indonesia the world's largest forest-based emitter of greenhouse gases. It also threatens the survival of indigenous and endemic species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) identified 140 species of mammals as threatened and 15 as critically endangered, including the Bali myna, Sumatran orangutan and Javan rhinoceros.
Chernobyl disaster
After the disaster, of pine forest directly downwind of the reactor turned reddish-brown and died, earning the name of the 'Red Forest'. Some animals in the worst-hit areas also died or stopped reproducing. The disaster has been described by lawyers, academics and journalists as an example of ecocide.
Niger Delta oil pollution
The effects of oil exploration in the fragile region of Niger Delta communities and environment have been vast. Local indigenous people have seen little improvement in their standard of living while suffering serious damage to their natural environment. Some of the hazardous damage of oil and gas exploration in the ecosystem are life-threatening which includes air pollution, water pollution, noise pollution etc. Affecting the aquatic lives, human health, also leads to deforestation. According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more than 7,000 oil spills between 1970 and 2000.
It has been estimated that a clean-up of the region, including full restoration of swamps, creeks, fishing grounds and mangroves, could take 25 years. The Niger Delta is one of the most polluted regions in the world. The heavy contamination of the air, ground and water with toxic pollutants is often used as an example of ecocide.
Amazon rainforest deforestation
Damage to the Amazon has widely been described by indigenous groups, human rights groups, politicians, academics and journalists as an ecocide and a genocide. Indigenous chiefs and human rights organizations have submitted an Article 15 communication against former president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and genocide for harm to Indigenous people and destruction of the Amazon. Another has been submitted for ecocide by indigenous chiefs.
Gaza war
International law
There is no international law against ecocide that applies in peacetime, but the Rome Statute makes it a crime to: