“Ecocide” is used as a weapon of war in Ukraine. It should be one of the crimes tried at the International Criminal Court

Since February 24, 2022, Russia has been waging simultaneous wars in Ukraine: a conventional, hybrid or cyber war and one against the environment, “ecocide”.

Ecocide, used as a weapon of war, is accompanied by the systematic destruction of the country’s civilian infrastructure and energy network. But ecocide is not just the collateral damage of conventional warfare; In the case of Ukraine, the goal is to make the country’s regions uninhabitable for civilian life.

Russia is ensuring it inflicts maximum damage on Ukraine’s military campaign by destroying infrastructure and roads and forcing authorities to invest time and resources in rebuilding them. Every resource invested in saving or rebuilding a region, be it human or material, deprives the military-industrial complex of that same resource. This is a broad war tactic aimed at limiting Ukrainian capabilities in several sectors, particularly military.

I am a professor of international relations in the history department at Université Laval and my co-author Sophie Marineau is a doctoral student in history at the Université catholique de Louvain. The war in Ukraine and the international response to the conflict have been the focus of our research since 2014.

A conscious gesture

The word ecocide comes from the Greek word oïkos (house) and the Latin word caedere (kill): the act of killing the earth.

According to historian David Zierler, ecocide is the deliberate destruction of ecology and the environment as a weapon of war. Laurent Neyret, a legal expert specializing in environmental law, defines ecocide as “any widespread or systematic act included in a list of crimes that causes widespread, permanent and serious damage to the natural environment and is committed intentionally and with full knowledge of it . “the action.”

Vietnam War

The study of ecocide as a weapon of war can be traced back to the Vietnam War, when the Americans conducted large-scale bombing campaigns to make the area hostile and uninhabitable for the population and particularly the National Liberation Front of the South through the use of Agent Orange. Since then, several attempts by members of the international community to recognize ecocide as an international crime have failed. The fight continues to this day.

Since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, the Ukrainian president has complained about the lack of international recognition of ecocide and the fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) does not recognize it as a crime.

International Criminal Court

The four crimes over which the ICC has jurisdiction are genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression. In a video on his Telegram channel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says that Russia is guilty of the war crime of aggression and that the brutal ecocide following the destruction of the Khakovka Dam in June 2023 can be added to the list.

By linking ecocide to other crimes covered by the ICC, Zelensky hopes to draw the international community’s attention to the severity of the damage the war has caused. The World Bank has already estimated the reconstruction costs for the entire Ukraine at almost 500 billion US dollars.

The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam could eventually prompt the International Criminal Court to add ecocide as a fifth crime under its jurisdiction.

Rupture of the Kakhovka Dam

According to a UN report, the deliberate destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine, which was under Russian occupation, on June 6, 2023, caused devastating floods over a length of 620 km².

The dam burst killed at least 40 Ukrainian civilians, flooded about 4,400 homes and displaced over 4,000 people in Kherson and Mykolaivska Oblasts. The report also points to extensive damage to the region’s ecosystem, including the fishing industry. Over 11,388 tons of fish were lost. 11,294 hectares of forest were also destroyed by the floods. At the same time, the destruction of the dam left almost a million people without drinking water.

It should also be noted that Russia has rejected UN aid to support flood-affected Ukrainians.

Not an isolated case

Unfortunately, the Khakovka dam is not an isolated case in this war. Russia has targeted other dams, including Oskil and Pechenihy. There have also been attacks around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, five times larger than the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, whose explosion in 1986 may cause up to 25,000 additional cases of cancer in Europe by 2065.

The Russian army has also converted the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant into a military base, knowing that the Ukrainian army will never target it to avoid incidents even if a counteroffensive were launched in the region.

Numerous other industrial sites damaged or destroyed by Russian attacks resulted in dangerous chemicals being released into rivers, lakes and the Ukrainian ecosystem in general.

Most recently, on August 26, 2024, Russia launched a massive attack against the Kiev hydroelectric power plant. Water and power outages were reported, but Ukrainian authorities said there was no critical damage to the power plant. By targeting energy infrastructure, Russia sought to demoralize Ukrainians by depriving them of water and electricity in the long term.

Non-binding international law

Since ecocide is not currently a criminal offense under international law, Ukraine could prosecute suspected ecocide perpetrators under its own criminal code. Article 441 of this Code defines ecocide as “mass destruction of flora and fauna, poisoning of air or water resources, as well as any other act that could cause an environmental disaster.” The law provides for a prison sentence of between eight and 15 years.

Ukraine is not alone in its campaign to recognize ecocide as an international crime. Vanuatu made the proposal in 2019, which was recently supported by Fiji and Samoa, two Pacific island nations particularly vulnerable to climate change and rising oceans. A formal application was submitted to the ICC on September 9, 2024.

If ecocide were recognized as a new jurisdiction of the ICC, Ukraine would be entitled to bring proceedings against Russia for the intentional damage it inflicted on Ukrainian territory as part of the war.