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ST"#ecocide requires urgent international attention…" - Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, Stockholm Conference, 1972.
The first intergovernmental conference dedicated to the environment. The first time ecocide was spoken aloud by a political leader.
Palme used the occasion of the Stockholm Conference to condemn the US's "indiscriminate bombing" and widespread use of the herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam, calling it "an outrage" and urging action on what he described as ecocide.
His speech reflected a growing global recognition of the term, first recorded just two years earlier by scientist Arthur Galston in reference to Agent Orange.
This period also saw the beginning of UN discussions on criminalising ecocide, a process that stalled in the 1990s, until it was revived by the late pioneering barrister Polly Higgins.
Today, the movement for #ecocidelaw has made rapid progress and reached all corners of the globe. At the @internationalcriminalcourt, there is now a formal proposal to make ecocide the fifth international crime and the Office of the Prosecutor recently announced that it would place environmental damage at the heart of its investigations.
Meanwhile, Belgium and France have criminalised ecocide and legislative proposals are progressing in over a dozen domestic jurisdictions around the world. There has also been concrete legislative progress in Europe with with a revised #EU Environmental Crime Directive and a Council of Europe treaty criminalising cases akin to ecocide. Plus, the conversation is growing rapidly in various African fora under the leadership of the #DRC.
Watch the full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dGIsMEQYgI&t=497s
Learn more about #EcocideLaw progress: https://www.stopecocide.earth/breaking-news
#StopEcocide #ClimateAction #stopecocideeverywhere #climatecrisis #stopecocidecanada #internationallaw #ecocidelaw #law #greennews #lawcommunity #econews #climatechange #climateaction #canpoli #climatejustice #ClimateJusticeNow
@stopecocidecanada
