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The drive to criminalize environmental offences has gained remarkable momentum. The movement to sanction ecocide – the large-scale, long-term destruction of ecosystems –seeks to redefine accountability for environmental harm. While attempts to secure international recognition of ecocide as a crime on par with genocide remain contested, these efforts have already begun to reshape domestic and regional legal landscapes.
Individual countries and blocs have responded with varying degrees of enthusiasm and resistance, forging distinct paths toward or away from codifying ecocide in their criminal justice systems. Some have long had national laws for ecocide-style crimes, while others are currently in the process of codifying ecocide or have sparked intense debates about doing so. At the same time, civil society organizations, indigenous communities, and Small Island States are actively pushing the boundaries of these legal and political discussions worldwide.
This panel aims to broaden the conversation by examining how various countries, regions, and international organizations conceptualize, debate, and implement criminal liability for environmental destruction. We seek to understand how environmental norms are negotiated, challenged, and redefined across different jurisdictions.
We invite contributions that investigate how norms surrounding ecocide emerge, falter, gain traction, or spark counter-movements at the national, regional, or international levels. We are particularly interested in papers that explore the following themes:
- Codification and Political Processes: How is ecocide currently being codified, debated, or contested in the Global North or Global South? What do these legislative processes, judicial decisions, and the associated political discourses look like?
- Norm Contestations and Civil Society: Which civil society groups, NGOs, business interests, or indigenous leaders are advocating for or resisting the criminalization of ecocide? How do these actors engage in the discourse, and what specific strategies, campaigns, or narratives are they deploying?
- Global-Local Interactions: In what ways are ecocide debates influenced by international advocacy or transnational networks? Conversely, how do local or regional experiences with environmental harm feed back into global discourse and potentially inform international norms?
We welcome a broad range of methodological and disciplinary approaches from environmental politics and closely related fields, including international relations, public policy, political theory, political geography, and comparative politics.