An International Court to Try Ecological Crimes?
UNITED NATIONS - As the United Nations takes an increasingly dominant role in guiding the climate change debate, there is renewed interest in a longstanding proposal for the creation of an international court to try environmental crimes.
But some diplomats and environmentalists are sceptical whether such a court will have the political support of the overwhelming majority of the U.N.’s 192 member states for it to be a reality.
“It took ages for the creation of an international war crimes tribunal,” says one Third World diplomat, “and a world court for environmental crimes can take generations.”
Satish Kumar, an avowed environmentalist and editor of the London-based environmental magazine Resurgence, is a strong advocate of such a court.
“We have no right to make waste,” he argues. “And if I dump my waste on your house, it’s a crime. You can take me to court.”
“But if we put our waste on nature, nature can’t take us to court? Nature should have a right to take us to court. And the United Nations should establish a nature court,” Kumar told IPS.
He pointed out that environmental crimes — from the dumping of toxic wastes to the military destruction of natural resources — should be deemed “crimes against nature”.
Dr. Franoise Burhenne-Guilmin, senior counsel at the Environmental Law Centre of the Switzerland-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), thinks the proposal may hit legal and logistical snags.
“IUCN has never taken a formal position on this matter, but members of the Commission on Environmental Law (CEL) have discussed the issue in the past,” he told IPS.
He pointed out that the idea of a specific international court for environmental crimes was not supported by the CEL on the basis that they thought it would not be feasible.
“To establish such a court, people would need to agree on what constitutes an environmental crime,” Burhenne-Guilmin said.
Even if such a court were established, the rules which would have to be put in place in order for it to function would be very difficult to agree on, he added.
In recent years, some of the cases involving “environmental damages” have been tried in local courts because of the absence of an international judicial body.
A landmark environmental case involved the spilling of over 11 million gallons of crude oil when the oil tanker Valdez hit a reef. A court in Anchorage, Alaska, awarded a record five billion dollars in damages to some 34,000 fishermen whose livelihoods were affected by the oil spill spread over 1,500 miles of the Alaskan coastline.
The award was later reduced by half by a U.S. appeals court. The damages were against Exxon Mobil Corporation, which appealed the ruling at several judicial levels.
And more recently, a privately owned commodity trader was fined about 200 million dollars for dumping toxic waste off the coast of Cote d’Ivoire. The payment was described as one of the largest for environmental damage in Africa.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told reporters last week that dramatic changes in consumer lifestyles could make a great difference, “though that did not mean that humankind had to go back to the stone age”.
Rather, he said, it was time to start evaluating “the size of the footprint that humans were imposing on ecosystems through carbon dioxide emissions and other impacts.”
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said the fact that over 80 world leaders were meeting Monday at the United Nations at a high-level summit on climate change was “a sign of growing consensus on the need for the international community to act on climate change.”
An equally important meeting, under the auspices of the United Nations, is also scheduled to take place in Bali, Indonesia in December, he added.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who initiated Monday’s summit, says that climate change will be one of the top priorities during his five-year tenure in office.
But Kumar, editor of Resurgence, sounds very sceptical of the U.N. role in global environment.
“The U.N. approach to environment is very limited and rather shallow because the United Nations still thinks that the environment is there for the benefit of human kind and therefore we need to protect the environment,” he told IPS.
This is a very utilitarian approach. Human beings are seen as in charge, as superior and somehow more important than all other species, he pointed out.
“This is a very old and out of date concept. The United Nations needs to see environment and ecology and humanity as one interconnected and inter-dependent web of life,” Kumar said.
And human beings are no more important and no more superior than animals, plants, forests, rivers, oceans — and they have intrinsic value.
“The United Nations does not accept the intrinsic value of the natural world. It says the value of the environment is only in relation to its usefulness to humans. That’s a very anthropocentric, very human-centred, and a very narrow view,” he added.
Therefore, the United Nations needs to do a lot of work to embrace this bigger vision which has a more respect and reverence and recognition of the intrinsic value of all living beings and humanity as part of it, he declared.
Asked if he was blaming member states or the U.N. Secretariat, Kumar said: “I think it’s the Secretariat, because member states have no one single view.”
He said each member state has its own particular emphasis and its own particular angle. The Secretariat can bring together a cohesive and more holistic view. “And the Secretariat lacks that holistic view and that’s where I think the United Nations is weak.”
© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service
Even if this were to become reality would the US comply? I doubt it, at this rate…
…what about the effects of current military action - that might bankrupt the country (even more)?
We all have to speak for the voiceless. Why is this going to take years to implement? I know our worlds self view is selfish, totally human based thought. If we could reason we would know better. “Its ok. to kill things, humans are the only thing with feelings.” That thinking is still around and we all need to fight it to the death and put religion on to the next phase of evolution. You know, “fish don’t have feelings” is still a dumb christian view. Religion is the biggest hamper to this “nature court”. That is why we are killing the world with war and violence all based on some dumb religion that controls the masses and those who are unable to think for themselves are lead. What does Bushco say about all this? The eggsucker!
God us humans are dumb!!!
Aptly demonstrated, jungleboy.
LazLong??? Easy to say.
I think this “nature court” seems to be an awesome idea.
Peace,
Ken Hausle
But what would be an appropriate punishment? If you execute the offenders for their crimes against the planet, are they worthy of being composted? Or incinerated?
We have an administration that has waged war on our planet for special intrests. The premier step in reversing the environmental degration is poulation control through family planning and education, which this administratin has opposed, along with all other meaningful conservation and environmental reforms.
Blame falls on theose who helped plant this corporate zealot in office, and the rest of Americans who stand by and watch.
Maybe we should take a page from the Nature Conservancy. They paid hunters to go and kill peaceful wild pigs that had the misfortune of being dumped on a california island by humans.
Apparently they are ecologically destructive to the native species of the island. Excuse me? There are villagers in Brazil who are supposedly reasonable and they are cutting down forests for quick cash. So they should be killed too if they dont change their ways right? Its hypocrisy.
The New Zealand Possum–dumped into NZ by furriers who now–surprise! surprise! try to promote it as an ecological industry.
“Human beings are seen as in charge, as superior and somehow more important than all other species, he pointed out. This is a very old and out of date concept.”
And human beings are no more important and no more superior than animals, plants, forests, rivers, oceans — and they have intrinsic value.
**this is the crux of the matter right there. And both secular humanists and spiritual humanists succumb to this infantile belief in human greatness. If human superiority was an absolute truth we wouldnt be causing destruction. If anything, humans have some sort of mental illness unlike other species that prevents them from functioning inside the ecosystem.
There might be rare examples like some isolated island tribes in the India Ocean but they are few and far between.
Anyway–if a court went after humans for crimes against Nature it would explode from overload. Where do you start? Canada clubbing seals to death? Japanese whalers? The meat and dairy industry? Livestock merchants in China spreading SARS? Monsanto?
Hey jungleboy September 25th, 2007 12:15 pm
“That is why we are killing the world with war and violence all based on some dumb religion that controls the masses and those who are unable to think for themselves….”
If some Alien Species came across Planet Earth accidentally…They would look down with some High Tech Scanner and probably say amongst themselves… [English Translation]…”This must be some sort of WEIRD open air PSYCHIATRIC UNIT”…Hey look their TRASHING their Environment, blowing each other up with some sort of primitive thermo explosive devices, shooting each other in the head with what appears to be little balls of lead…Hey check this out; This Major Leader of this Big Land is talking to all these people over primitive communication systems, sounding real sincere….But our scanner tells us he’s thinking something completely different….The scanner says he’s thinking about this black liquid…The scanner says OIL and little bits of green paper…Shit he’s lying to all these people and some of these nut-jobs actually believe him….No wonder there’s war here…here…here….here and here. Shit!!! it seems there’s wars everywhere on this miserable little planet…
Listen we won’t bother announcing our arrival…my suggestion is we get the Hell-Out-of-Here before they detect our presence….[As the space ship is moving away at Light Speed]…One of them says; “I think they’ve got one of two problems”…Whats that? says the other….They’ve either got very LOW IQ’s or they’re just plain DUMB ASSES….
and we thought our ancestors were lunatics…
I think that all the arguments posted here just confirm that the industrial age was a statistical anomaly in human history. Technology may have given us some neat toys, but in the end, all they did ws hasten the collapse of human empires.
Simonhhh: Compared to us, our ancestors were friggin’ geniuses. they knew how to live WITH the land, not OFF it. Modern society is almost completely removed from nature. There was a study not 3 months ago that found 20% of Japanese children have never seen a sunrise. Most North Americans have no idea where their food comes from, or how it is produced. the list could go on…
Hey Galen
The conclusion was referring to the Alien’s Ancestors… and not our ancestors!
I agree with Galen’s assertion that “technology is hastening the collapse of human empires”.
It didn’t have to be that way. The Zero Population Growth and Appropriate Technology movements that existed during the 1970’s sought to plan the future such that humans did not overwelm the planet, and technology served mankind rather than destroying life.
By the 1980’s anybody merely mentioning either of these movements was viewed as a heretic. Wall Street realized that uncontrolled population growth creating an endless supply of cheap labor and the unchecked creation of consumer and military products (for which no need had been established) were the basis of the emerging global economy.
Wall Street wasn’t going to let anybody mess with that.
I agree there are some technologies that we might have been better off not learning yet (nuclear, plastic, etc., etc…..) that were likely only discovered in the midst of or as an outcome of war.
But with that said, now that we have some of this technology we ought to be able to figure out how to use it “ecologically” or decide to let it be for now. Also, over a short period of time there could be growing awareness regarding “ecological reverence” if this was encouraged. Don’t you think? It just makes good common sense at least with respect to healthy communities.
Anyhow, i think the planet could easily support the current poplulation if as much effort was spent on education as is now wasted on war.
Peace,
Ken Hausle
re kelmer 1:54pm
yes. the mental illness you speak of is corporate capitalism.
the precautionary principle should be the non-negotiable starting place for all discussions of halting/healing the wounds to this planet. briefly, it states that any new product or process has the burden of proving itself harmless before it can be marketed and/or released into the environment.
this is exactly the opposite of what we have now: some 60-70 thousand chemicals have been concocted since the end of WWII, which had never before appeared in nature. only an infinitesimal fraction of them have been tested for their long-term effects. if you think one of them has harmed you or your family, the burden of proof is on you in each individual case (and since we don’t consume just one chemical per day in a controlled experiment, good luck separating the effects of asbestos from fine particulates, from oxides of nitrogen, from chromium, etc. etc.)
and then there’s the likes of monsanto, shoving their frankenfoods down our throats and into our heirloom tomato patches and cornfields, and having the collosal gall to charge royalties if their bizarro pollen contaminates some poor peon’s field! europeans are way ahead on this one, if only for the fact that they’ve forced the mad splicers to label their products. (”americans are unconcerned,” says the USFDA, without having bothered to ask).
On my not so good days I can’t wait for the day when we finally reap the full rewards of what we have sown & the whole earth is destroyed. We will have deserved it.
Apparantly for so many it will take THAT in order for people to realise how f-ed we really are & something needs to be done about it.
F*ck it, let’s just destroy the whole planet, who gives a sh!t as long as I got MINE.
We Are The 801,
I share your cynicism about folks thinking “i got mine” so who cares about anyone else….but…..although i agree “something needs to be done about it”, the “whole earth/planet” will be around for a long long long long time. The question is whether humanity will be, and amazingly it is basically up to us to decide.
….as far as life in general, life will always be……don’t you think??
Peace,
Ken Hausle
When computers become smarter than humans, as it’s said will happen in the near future, maybe they will fix the mess we’ve made of the world. Or maybe not.
Ken, certainly I agree.
The nihilism of so many people never fails to amaze me though, and in my more foul moods I feel like maybe these people get what they really want. But I don’t really believe that.
Ohmigod! IF this comes to pass the US is doomed: most of our corporate bigwigs, most Republican leaders, many Democrats will be convicted of ecological crimes! Isn’t it wonderful that we have held ourselves apart from the ICC; Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and scores of others would be found guilty of war crimes. These international courts are OK to try the criminals of small, weak countries, but not Imperial America.
if it spells MONEY, it spells ATTENTION to all the greedy minions that inhabit this planet. Anything we can do to make polluters in any form pay is the right idea at this point, anything else you through at these cronies will come right back atcha
I have the feeling that the CEO’s have already been punished enough for ecological damage. They have to go farther away at a greater expense to get away from the pollution for their vacation.
Perhaps we should have a fund raiser for them.
The idea is intriguing and I agree with the arguments in favor. I disagree however with jungleboy blaming religion for the environmental fiasco. Well, it is true that religion has rationalized environmental destruction. I believe it is only through the religious recognition of environmental values could we even consider defending the voiceless or giving intrinsic value to environmental good. Without that sort of ethical religious virtue, you would only be left with reparations by those damaging the environment to other people affected by those damages.
However, I question the political virtue of focusing on this debate at this time in our history. We are moving ever closer to recognizing an International Criminal Court and the United States, ever the unrepentant opponent to international cooperation and environmental protection, remains opposed to the court. I believe the idea that American companies might become answerable to International law might further deter us from war crime investigations, that we are currently in the process of committing.
Some may think the technology has made people better off by extending lifespans and given us fancier toys like Galen said but it has definitely not made us better people.
The majority of American could care less if anyone has to pay a price for ecological damage. They only care if something is dumped in their backyard. Americans may pay a heavy price some day for loosing touch with nature. If a really major disaster struck such as the Yellowstone supervolcano blowing, a significant amount of Americans would perish because they aren’t self reliant and would have no idea how to grow their own vegetables.
Depends on the sort of religion. The three related middle-eastern mythologies (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) put humans in a totally separate class physically and spiritually. This breaks with much of the world’s remaining shamanistic, traditional, and — interestingly — scientific understandings. It’s understood there that humans are an integral subset of the animal kingdom.
I couldn’t agree with you more simonhhh But, Pastor, I’m not sure I see what you are saying. I feel that spirituality would play a big part in speaking for the earth, but, religion is a tool of power in its convention. I don’t see anyone “doing” just talking and praying from their own chair. Now, creating an atmosphere of not looking by saying it’s illegal, doesn’t make sense. Corporations are big enough to know when no one is looking. Its up to their own consciousness yes, but look where that has got us going. With out the churches OK it wouldn’t have ever gone this far. Animal cruelty, slavery, what else was condoned? I will give in to the language of learning that teaches spirituality and that is one from your church, any church or religion. It is the doorway to your own spirituality that you must know for yourself, without backup from the church. When you die you are alone and one must think these convictions through. It won’t matter what anyone told you.
That is where this current court could be a wonderful thing. It could set a standard that all people can respect. The base level of “following” is what put us in this war. US churches condoned the scuttling of Iraq. OOps I have to go!
Here we go again! You sit here and wait for some new court to come into being when this very minute you can pass judgement on every polluter just buy closing your pocketbook.
With boycotts /a change of our own lifestyle every polluter will get in line and obey us their customers.
Stop dreaming of some gallent white knight coming on his steed to save the day.
Each one of us are that knight.Just as the polluters have all join together to achieve their power .We can do the same. Why is this so hard for us to realize? Are we that divided and conquered?
I sit at home with over a hundred C cell batteries and nowhere to take them in my area.
There is an environmental crime in the making for me if I decide just to trash those batteries.Yet the maker and seller just keep on making money and discounting any responsibility about my empty batteriies.
Now how many batteries do you have laying around your home. How many more will you buy before the end of this year?
Proof positive that we the so call environmental bloggers are nothing but paper pussy cats.
ME? Buy rechargables? Why? They cost more and it takes electricity to recharge such batteries.And oh I will contact several local battery seller chains in hopes they will take my empty batteries. but what I also hope to do is put this problem in school children’s hands . Have them make a fuss about recycling enough to get their parents to complain.
Will this help? Probably not but it will recruit a few of those children to become more involved in future environmental situations. Look people stand up for your beliefs. Certainly the powers that be do this all the time.They are the few WE ARE MANY
JUST DO IT!
genaman, you are elected to become your regional recycler guy. You can develop the battery recycling process. The process should be posted in public view on the internet. If not, maybe you can post it.
Policy ideas:
How about full or total costs reflected in the retail prices of things? This puts consumer demand to work maximizing production/allocation efficiencies.
The ecological court may share data that is required to make a total costs system work.
Another idea is to require producers to handle the recycling of their products, so you return things where you got them.
A related idea is completing the food cycle with return of food scraps and human and livestock output to the soil.
Does it take a generation to de-commission a system such as laissez-faire capitalism? Well, it’s in the works.
Crimes against nature is right. But aren’t pollution caused disease and death crimes against humanity and murder? Maybe we should fry a few CEO’s as an example.
I am thrilled about these forums. Please respond to what I write, not to agree with me, but to , perhaps, get me to think in ways that I wouldn’t be thinking in otherwise. Thanks, Tom Over tover001@columbus.rr.com
I don’t relate to a legal or ethical basis for ‘crimes against nature’. My guess is that morality, ultimately, is tied into the issue of suffering and well-being–that is, speaking for myself, my awareness of how my actions affect the well-being of other people (and also non-human sentient beings).
Having said this, I suggest that ‘nature’, in and of itself—referring to all the non-sentient aspects of our planet, has no intrinsic value. Earth, in my opinion, has value, speaking for myself, to the extent that it is a life-support system for human and other forms of sentient life.
Theorectically, if there were avialable one or more other planets as readily capable of supporting human and other sentient life; and if making the move from this planet to those or that other planet(s) were doable without any harm coming to any being, well…, then, saving Earth, in my opinion, would not be a priority (beyond perhaps some sort of sentimental and/or aesthetic attachment one may have to this planet.
But, and this is a big but, this is all theorectical, and made to make a point. The reality is that, as of yet, humankind, and the other sentient beings that inhabit Earth, have no viable options for finding some other home for our respective species.
So, in my opinion, our actions-whether done individually or as members of groups such as a government or business entity—that affect the environment, which in turn, can affect people’s (and other sentient beings’) physical and/or psychological well-being, obviously, should be subjected to legal attention and legal consequences.
Thinking in terms of crimes against people or other senient beings makes more sense, in my opinion, than thinking in terms of ‘crimes against nature.’
Though senient life would not be possible without the various phenomena on this planet (or some other ‘life support setting’) referred to as ‘nature’, nature itself, ( I suggest ), is not sentient, and cannot be the victim of any sort of crime.
re tomover 1:09pm
“the earth does not belong to us. we belong to the earth.”
—chief seattle
Tomover:
To bring the message home we can think in terms of crimes against people and start by quantifying the environmental damage in terms of average number of deaths and disease known to be caused by the particular pollutant released by an industry and assign criminal punishment accordingly.
I think that assigning direct responsibility to the perps would be the way to address the problem. We wouldn’t give civil penalties to a murderer (except to OJ maybe) so why give a token civil penalty to a company whose director is responsible for thousands of deaths by the purposeful pollution of the environment?
I agree with Genaman, we do not need to wait for some world court to try to save the planet, esp. since we know our government would probably not agree to be a part of it.
There are lots of little things we can all do from recycling to using less energy in our homes and cars, to growing a garden or planting a tree.
However, another thing we can do is support environmental groups who are fighting the big polluters and are looking for ways for people to make a living without a lot of destructive influences on the environment.
The biggest tactic that all the corporate polluters use to get away with their destruction is to threaten people’s jobs. The second is to bribe politicians and judges through campaign money. So, consider joining an environmental group on either the grass roots or National level. Together, we can fight this type of manipulation and lies on the part of the Corporations.
Religion can play a positive role in protecting the environment.For example, recently a group of Evangelicals got together to protest Mountain Top Removal. Many religions teach that the earth, the plants and the animals all have a spiritual nature.
No one species should be allowed to destroy an environment and that includes humanity. So if an introduced species is wiping out the rest of the flora and fauna in a given area, they do need to be removed or relocated.