‘Ecocide’ being used as a weapon of war in Ukr; it should be one of crimes tried in ICC
Quebec: Since February 24, 2022, Russia has been waging simultaneous wars in Ukraine: a conventional one, hybrid or cyber warfare, and one against the environment, or “ecocide.”
Ecocide, used as a weapon of war, takes place alongside 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, its aim is to make the country’s regions uninhabitable for civilian life.
Russia is making sure that it harms Ukraine’s military campaign as much as possible by destroying infrastructure and roads and forcing authorities to invest time and resources in their reconstruction. Every resource invested in saving or rebuilding a region, whether human or material, deprives the military-industrial complex of the same resource. This is a broad-spectrum war tactic aimed at limiting Ukrainian capabilities in several sectors, particularly in the military sector. 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 reaction to the conflict have been the focus of our research since 2014.
A deliberate gesture
The word ecocide comes from the Greek word oïkos (house) and the Latin word caedere (to kill): the action 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 who specialises in environmental law, defines ecocide as, “any widespread or systematic action included in a list of offences which cause widespread, lasting and serious damage to the natural environment, and is committed deliberately and with full knowledge of the action.”
The study of ecocide as a weapon of war can be traced back to the Vietnam War, when the Americans carried out large-scale bombing campaigns to render the territory hostile.
