Event: Seminar/Webinar: "Criminalising Ecocide: Promise and Peril"
Date: Wednesday 13 March 2024
Time: 15:00 - 16:30
Venue: VC102, IT 福利在线免费, University of Malta, Msida Campus
The of the University of Malta will be holding a seminar and webinar titled 鈥淐riminalising Ecocide: Promise and Peril鈥.
The event will take place on Wednesday 13 March 2024, between 15:00 and 16:30 (CET) at the University of Malta鈥檚 Msida Campus, , Room VC102. Registration via this link by Monday 11 March 2024, is required, as spaces are limited.
Virtual participation on Zoom is also possible and registration accessible is required for online attendance.
Abstract: "Criminalising Ecocide: Promise and Peril" - A conversation with Professor Rebecca Hamilton.
Amid widespread acknowledgment that we live on a planet in peril, the term 鈥渆cocide鈥 packs a powerful rhetorical punch. Extant regulatory approaches to environmental protection feel insufficient in the face of the triple threat of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.
International criminal prosecution for ecocide, by contrast, promises to meet the moment, and a recent proposal to introduce ecocide into the canon of core international crimes is gaining traction. Assuming the push to criminalise ecocide continues to gain momentum, this Article argues that the primary (and perhaps, sole) benefit that international criminal law can offer in this context is its expressive power and, that being the case, it is vital to clarify exactly what the expressive message of ecocide should be.
The recent burst of scholarly attention to the proposed ecocide definition has largely bypassed this normative groundwork. This Article calls for time to be invested in grappling with hard questions about what exactly the harm is that ecocide seeks to vindicate which, in turn, requires determining how best to conceptualise the relationship that humans have with the natural environment. It draws on normative debates from within the environmental literature regarding the value of nature, and contextualises this discussion within the emerging jurisprudence on human rights and the environment.
The Article contends that if the proposed legal definition of ecocide is codified as an international crime, it risks being used to prosecute those who are already marginalised, while reinforcing the artificial (and damaging) conceptual separation of humans from nature that is already entrenched in international law. Nonetheless, there is a window of opportunity, currently open, to embed within the ecocide definition a position that understands humans as inseparable from nature, and this position reflects both long-standing Indigenous epistemologies as well as cutting-edge earth science. Time spent now on re-imagining the normative justification for ecocide鈥檚 criminalisation could put international criminal law in the rare position of being at the vanguard of a progressive movement to build a greener international law.
About Rebecca Hamilton
is a 2024 U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the Islands and Small States Institute, working on climate vulnerability and resilience in the context of small island states. She is a Professor of Law at American University, Washington College of Law.
Prof. Hamilton previously served as a lawyer in the prosecutorial division of the International Criminal Court. Prior to entering academia, Hamilton worked as a journalist for the Washington Post, and Reuters. Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, Hamilton is a graduate of the University of Sydney and received her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
The event will be hosted by , Director of the ISSI.
Further information is available by email.
