A new study from the Sydney Law School traces the evolution of ecocide from the Vietnam War to today, finding that while legal recognition is expanding, wartime environmental damage remains largely beyond the reach of international justice. The research warns that further reform is needed to close the legal gap between growing advocacy for ecocide and its limited power in prosecuting wartime destruction.
Dr Rachel Killean from the Sydney Law School 's recent paper, Ecocide's evolving relationship with war, finds that while ecocide is gaining traction as an international crime, legal barriers limit its ability to prosecute environmental destruction during war.
"While the idea of ecocide was born out of the Vietnam War, contemporary ecocide debates generally focus on crimes committed in times of peace. Yet, environmental destruction during conflict continues to be perpetrated with impunity."
Dr Rachel Killean
Sydney Law School
Conflicts around the world continue to devastate ecosystems. In Ukraine, bombardments of industrial sites, attacks on water networks, and the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam have polluted rivers and farmland; in Gaza, the targeting of infrastructure has contaminated soils and waterways; in Sudan, armed clashes are accelerating deforestation and biodiversity loss. These impacts endure long after the fighting ends, leaving a toxic legacy for people and the planet alike.
The study highlights that despite growing advocacy for ecocide to be prosecuted as an international crime, existing legal frameworks, including that used by the International Criminal Court, remain ill-equipped to hold perpetrators accountable for these wartime environmental harms.
In theory, both military commanders and political leaders responsible for decisions causing widespread and long-term environmental damage could be prosecuted. In practice, however, accountability is limited: international humanitarian law shields lawful combatants if their conduct is deemed proportionate, and the International Criminal Court's environmental war crime definition sets a threshold so high it has never been successfully prosecuted.
"With wars in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere causing immense ecological damage, closing the gap between advocacy and enforceable law has never been more urgent."
Dr Rachel Killean
"This research shows that even if ecocide were to be recognised as a new international or domestic crime, existing international frameworks may still shield wartime perpetrators from accountability."
The research calls for ongoing attention to the adaptability of existing frameworks and praises the International Criminal Court's recent endeavour to strengthen its capacity to respond to environmental destruction.
Future initiatives might explore how existing international crimes -such as attacks on civilian objects (protected places like schools, homes, hospitals, places of worship, and cultural sites that serve no military purpose), pillage, or starvation tactics - could be interpreted to cover ecological destruction, while also supporting domestic, regional, and international efforts to criminalise ecocide. Without such reforms, wartime perpetrators will continue exploiting loopholes that leave the environment unprotected.
The concept of ecocide first emerged in response to herbicidal warfare in Vietnam, where scientists like Arthur Galston and lawyers such as Richard Falk compared environmental destruction to genocide. Over time, advocacy broadened ecocide's meaning to encompass peacetime harms like oil spills and climate change.
The campaign to introduce a new international crime of ecocide has gained significant traction in recent years. Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa have submitted a formal amendment to the International Criminal Court's statute, while the European Union's 2024 Directive requires EU states to introduce offences "comparable to ecocide." Belgium has passed a domestic ecocide crime, and France introduced a qualified ecocide offence in 2021.
Yet in international law, ecocide remains weakest in its application to war: Additional Protocol I (the 1977 amendment to the Geneva Conventions), the ENMOD Convention (on the prohibition of hostile use of environmental modification techniques), and the ICC Statute (the International Criminal Court's founding treaty) all prohibit environmental destruction in conflict, but their thresholds are so restrictive that they are virtually unenforceable.
The UN has repeatedly warned that armed conflict accelerates environmental collapse. For example, UNEP estimates that over 40 percent of all intrastate conflicts in the past 60 years have been linked to natural resources, and post-conflict recovery is severely hindered by environmental damage. These statistics underscore the urgency of reform: environmental harm is not collateral, but central to the dynamics of modern warfare.
Ecocide is welcome recognition of the impact of environmental destruction on people and the planet. Yet, war-related ecological destruction still falls through the cracks.
