A new campaign called ‘End Ecocide on Earth’ aims to equate ecocide with genocide. Dr. Damien Short, Director of the Human Rights Consortium (HRC), Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at the School of Advanced Study in the University of London, and Prisca Merz, a London-based analyst and the initiator of the 'End Ecocide in Europe' discuss this issue.
The securitization of serious environmental threats is something that has been on the cards for some years, however in the past attempts to securitize the environment have largely failed. The fact that this champagne is happening at all is an indication as to how public opinion is changing toward environmental protection. There are a number of serious issues which need to be understood; including determining what environmental disasters we are talking about, what genocide actually means, and how effective the International Criminal Court, which campaigners hope will be empowered to judge of cases of ecocide actually is.
