In 2016, Professor Philippe Sands QC published East West
Street, which recounts the development of the concepts of
genocide and crimes against humanity and their application in the
Nuremberg Trials. In November 2020, 75 years after those trials,
the Stop Ecocide Foundation (SEF) convened a panel of lawyers,
co-chaired by former International Criminal Court (ICC) judge
Florence Mumba and Professor Sands, to draft a legal definition of
'ecocide' that could form the basis for a new international
crime.1 The definition is due to be published early this
year.
The concept of ecocide first gained significant worldwide
attention in 1972, when Swedish prime minister, Olof Palme,
addressing the UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment,
called for an international crime of ecocide, primarily in response
to US use of chemical weapons in the Vietnam War. However, when the
Rome Statute was ratified in 1998, creating the ICC, environmental
crimes were not included. In
