>Ecocide is loss, damage or destruction of ecosystem(s) of a given territory(ies)… such that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants has been or will be severely diminished
– definition submitted by Polly Higgins to the UN Law Commission in 2010
It seems like the sort of thing that should already be covered under existing property laws then.
I'm not really sure what the need is to create an entirely new concept called "ecocide" when you could just consider it destruction of property/theft/vandalism/whatever
The problem is that property laws are local or national, because it's assumed that I need physical access to your property to do anything. If I fire a rocket at your property from some other country, I would be violating all kinds of air space regulations or maybe even international treaties on weapons.
We now have a better understanding of the unintended, global consequences of small, national actions.
Then it seems like the real need is for a better international enforcement mechanism. As cancerous as it is, maybe international copyright law could be an inspiration? I'm just highly skeptical of creating a whole new category of offense when our existing legal framework should already have ways of dealing with this kind of externality
The key is finding pragmatic ways to react to a finding of harm that will result in positive change.
After WWI, the League of Nations was formed, in large part to mitigate the risk of war. Unfortunately, the primary known way to punish a warring nation is with a war.
That's because you can't expect every country to submit. Russia will not, China will not.
The same way the US would not stop bombing the middle east and Africa or overthrow legitimate governments in Latin America if them, China and Russia decided to sanction America.
How many square miles (or square meters) of territory have they lost due to sea level rising? This should probably exclude erosion but could be an interesting additional point/counter.
That would establish a) that they've suffered damages and b) the scope of said damages. Identifying the guilty parties would be the next challenge but it's a starting point.
This question already quite complicated. Under your definition, is a territory lost if it's still above sea level, but is not arable anymore e.g. because of desertification? What if it's still arable, but the region's traditional crops produce less yield because of a temperature rise?
Guilt would seem to depend on per capita emissions, not total emissions. I don't see why the size of the nation would permit its citizens to pollute more per capita.
If so, many vulnerable nations would probably be guilty, which is probably how the law should work, but might not be how they expect. Many small, vulnerable nations emit more per capita than IPCC recommendations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous....
Eventually, nations will probably make laws against people polluting like they have now against littering. One of the purposes of laws is to regulate behavior that affects others.
A lot of it is out of their control as well as there being a scale issue - for instance if you're a country like Niue which has a population of 1,000 and a total GDP of $10 million and you're thousands of kilometres from the nearest country that gives aid rather than relies on it, then you have limited options with what you can do. Getting goods to the country means it has to come from NZ which is almost 3,000 killometres away, that's a lot of oil for the ships. There's limited ability to use green power as it has a high up front cost and isn't going to be able to provide consistent enough power (relying on wind, or tides, or daylight). It's not economic to ship trash off shore to recycle so it's burnt.
Things will change as the west advances, for instance a single wind turbine and batteries could power a country like Niue completely renewably, couple that with solar powered shipping and you start to see a change.
But, these countries have very limited natural resources, technical expertise, and are constantly at the mercy of the elements. Any change to make them greener will have to be paid for and be driven from wealthier countries and it makes more sense, environmentally, to spend that money on those wealthier countries where it can go further to reduce more emissions.
Maybe go to Tuvalu and try some of their imported water, or eat some of their famous canned cargo "meat". Tuvalu and other islands really are becoming uninhabitable for humans so let's be nice ya?
You're right no one is doing anything evil. I'm glad you realize that, because a lot of folks get hung up on morality and forget to process the actual concrete situation before their eyes.
Tuvalu isn't the International Space Station. If a population of 10,000 people have to import food and water, then their state has failed and it's time to wake up and start doing some accounting and maybe ask for help to stabilize the situation. Note when I say stabilize, I don't mean the medical definition where a patient can simultaneously be "stable" and also teetering on the edge of death, I mean true stability, like a bar of gold sitting at the bottom of a hill.
No one is doing anything evil. Despite that there are still a lot of problems with how basic needs like food and water are met in Tuvalu and solving those problems is going to be expensive and politically/socially very complicated. My cousin in Aotearoa burned his brother's house down because he didn't want to share gravel from his quarry. You think these men would share food with eachother if everything went off? Or water? There are tons of little blood feuds like that out here that would go off if it suddenly turned out there were no more boats coming.
Until the neocolonial period, there were massive land thefts in the pacific. A lot of the best land for fishing and farming was taken and converted to resorts and suburbs by people who have incorrectly taken the resources of wealthy nations for granted. In order to achieve stability, a lot of people have to move, buildings need to be cleared, ecosystems need to be restored. It all costs money, and it's only going to become more expensive as the situation develops over the next ten years.
I'm glad you see all states as blameless in this situation, because the work required to investigate and assign blame is a huge waste of time and resources. The facts are that there is a massive food and water crisis brewing in the pacific ocean; there are local actions which can help to stabilize communities in anticipation of said crisis; there are also measures that foreign stateses can take to reduce their emissions and such efforts could help avert or mitigate what will most certainly be a very wet and deadly refugee crisis.
Fine polluters proportionally based on net greenhouse gas emisions put the money into some kind of foreign aid fund.
Not sure why precedent is required, as such would be a logical fallacy; I will give an example because it sounds like that would reassure you that such policy could be just: in the U.S. you can sue the federal government to repeal regulations formed by arms of the executive branch. The requirements are different for different agencies, but for NOAA no damage to life or property is actually required for such a suit. One can simply argue that their rule is based on poor quality research.
Of course it’s a money grab. I don’t think any of these countries are interested in retribution so much as wanting to preserve their current lifestyles. Increased flooding and storms means those lifestyles become more expensive.
Prices for most things would be (much, much) more expensive in Tuvalu than Mississippi, pretty much everything has to be imported at very small scale and high cost and if it's remotely affordable it's because of aid from countries like New Zealand and Australia subsidising it.
Without putting too fine a point on it; if their way of life was being preserved in a large first-world community it might be a reason for government get involved or declaring a national emergency or somesuch. It isn't a very impressive standard.
People can go and live in a very basic way if they like; that is on them. There are communities that do it here and there. It just doesn't look like the Tuvaluvians have made that choice, and we know the vast majority of people prefer having luxury and comfort. Tuvaluvians are probably a lot like everyone else in the world in that they want to improve their living standard by an order of magnitude rather than keep on living with basically nothing on some island somewhere.
It is easy to romanticise subsistence lifestyles but very few people voluntarily choose them when they see an alternative. The consensus position is wealth and infrastructure is the right choice. It is reasonable to assume they also want this and that their actions are generally aligned to improving their position rather than holding steady.
There is no holding steady. Pouring more money on the situation in the hopes of maintaining the status quo will just get lots of people killed... more than the normal amount of people who usually get killed. Glamour is opium for the masses, it's a high-level mind-control spell cast on oppressed people to confuse and persuade them. Most victims of glamour will never actually have access to the fantastical things that they've witnessed and as they get wise to that, they start to break stuff. Remember the Oktober Revolution komrade? If Tuvalu really leans into that strategy, they'll be setting the course for their own destruction and also depriving the continental world of a good role model for climate hazard mitigation; any effective strategies from the pacific will eventually be exported to continental coasts and interiors as their situations degrade at a slower rate.
By specifying "prominent" climate change deniers, I meant those deniers who were in a position to know better, and whose actions were intended to mislead a large number of other people.[1][2] Also, as I said, the world I was describing is a dystopia and not a world I "want" (but not least because it is one where major European cities are under water).
Could be interesting with a twist: none of the eco doom came true, but the adherents gained power in the run up years. So climate deniers are hunted down because they break a provably wrong orthodoxy. Much like the journalist who use to work for Newsweek but left because of he’s not allowed to publish evidence that the gas attack in Syria never happened will commit suicidal next week by two gunshots to the back of the head.
> Much like the journalist who use to work for Newsweek but left because of he’s not allowed to publish evidence that the gas attack in Syria never happened...
That's not what happened. Newsweek did not publish his story about a dissenting opinion/analysis that was leaked from OPCW. Just because someone has a dissenting opinion, doesn't make it "an evidence the gas attack never happened". The gas attack happened. At most people are disputing who did it.
>Ecocide is loss, damage or destruction of ecosystem(s) of a given territory(ies)… such that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants has been or will be severely diminished
– definition submitted by Polly Higgins to the UN Law Commission in 2010
0. https://ecocidelaw.com/ecocide-law-2/