Ecocide as a System Crime - Individual and Collective Responsibility for the Destruction of the Environment

In line with the jurisdictional regime of the International Criminal Court, the ecocide proposal put forward by the Independent Expert Panel convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation focuses exclusively on individual criminal responsibility, rather than also considering potential collective responsibility for ecocidal practices. However, perhaps even more than the current four core international crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression), severe environmental destruction tends to contain a distinctive collective or organisational element. 

Tracing back the origins of international criminal law to the Nuremberg trials and beyond, this webinar argues that notions of collective responsibility are not as foreign to the field as they might nowadays seem. Following a short introduction to the concept of ‘system criminality’, the talk explores potential bearers of collective responsibility for ecocide - such as states and corporations - before turning to ways of accounting for collective responsibility under the current international criminal justice system. 

About Malte

Malte Lauck graduated with an LL.M. in Public International Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 2022 and holds a BA in International Relations from the TU Dresden. Currently, he pursues a second Master’s degree in European Policy at the University of Amsterdam, where he specialises in EU external relations. 

He has a keen interest in international criminal law and has previously been an intern at the International Criminal Court.

His LL.M. thesis, around which this webinar is built, was titled “Ecocide as a System Crime” and centred around questions of individual and collective (criminal) responsibility for ecocide, tracing back discussions about the individualisation of responsibility and guilt to the origins of international criminal law.