Experts warn of ecocide impact in Gaza, call for international recognition

The international community should recognize ecocide as an international crime, experts have urged, citing widespread and long-term environmental destruction seen in Gaza Strip.

The experts stressed that genocide and ecocide are intrinsically connected, as such unlawful acts have impacted livelihood and food sources, and it is already happening in other parts of the world. They were speaking at a Nov 1 webinar titled "Zero In: The Crime of Ecocide in Palestine", which was organized by the People's Coalition on Food Sovereignty, a global network of organizations advocating for food sovereignty.

Mohammed Usrof, founder and executive director of the Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy, said that what is happening in Gaza "is a microcosm of the world on fire" and that it is "a stubborn, fragmented world that Palestinians currently live in", fragmented in terms of resistance, but "it remains dignified".

Usrof noted that since October 2023, Israeli airstrikes have produced nearly 42 million tons of rubble, "that is 14 times greater than the previous wars in Gaza since 2008".

"It's not just a local Palestinian issue, but (one) that is affecting climate change worldwide, where the carbon emissions are not going to impact our air but (it) is going to contribute to climate change all across the world," he said.

Usrof also underscored the situation in Gaza as "not an accident but a continued engineer of oppression".

He said to them, in the idea of the current genocide, ecocide is intrinsically connected to the military and media industrial complex, including different corporations and global powers, impacting how Palestinian narratives are shaped.

He added that even if the genocide ends and even if there is a ceasefire, Gaza cannot stand alone. "Because if it happened here, it's going to happen for the neighboring countries, and everybody else could be next. And we were not the first either," said Usrof.

Farah Imad, a legal expert representing the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature, noted that "ecocide" is not a formally recognized charge under international criminal law.

She said there have been several definitions presented on ecocide. During the webinar, she cited what the Pacific nation-states have used in their proposal to expand the Rome Statute.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is the international treaty that founded the Court. Adopted at the Rome Conference on July 17, 1998, it entered into force on 1 July 2002, thereby creating the ICC.

"The definition that these countries presented was the unlawful and wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment," said Imad.

She said that some nations have more recently adopted some definition of ecocide in their domestic laws, including Scotland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Brazil.

Over 20 countries are said to be considering including ecocide as a criminal charge, and the European Union recently expanded its environmental crimes to include damage such as ecocide.

While ecocide "doesn't exist as a formal legal charge as of now, it does build on existing international law and it's based on international humanitarian law, as well as environmental law," said Imad.

She also noted that "this field is evolving from human rights law where you have the right to a healthy environment".

Imad lamented that some "imperialist countries and companies" focused only on their profits and what potentially impacts them, if anything, may also consider human harm in the context of "collateral damage".

She said when one looks at how these countries even examine the environment, she cited Israeli government. "For example, they don't want to protect all trees. They only want to protect fruit-producing trees. It's a very anti-centric way of looking at the world," she said.

Imad noted that this exemplifies the state of the world that these countries and these systems want us to live in.

"So we're happy to see there is a path toward recognizing ecocide, whether in the context of Palestine or otherwise, as part of reclaiming indigenous thought as well as reincorporating humans into nature rather than separate from nature," Imad added.