Ecocide

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Ecocide (from Ancient Greek oikos 'home' and Latin caedere 'to kill') is the destruction of the environment by humans. Ecocide threatens all populations. The Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide describes it as 'unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts'. Common causes of ecocide include war, pollution, wanton overexploitation of natural resources and other industrial disasters. The term was popularised by Olof Palme when he accused the United States of ecocide at the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment due to the country's use of Agent Orange and other herbicides/defoliants during the Vietnam War. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (adopted 1998, enforced 2002) makes no provision for the crime of ecocide in peacetime, only in wartime. Ecocide in peacetime was to have been included in the Rome Statute...

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