Abstract

This paper critically examines the underexplored intersection between ecocide the largescale destruction of the environment and ethnocide the erasure of cultural identity, particularly in the context of Indigenous and land connected communities. It argues that international criminal law (ICL), in its current form, does not capture the cultural dimensions of environmental harm, treating ecological destruction and cultural loss as separate, when in practice they are often deeply intertwined.

Adopting a doctrinal and sociolegal method, the paper analyses international legal instruments such as the Rome Statute, the Genocide Convention, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and relevant regional jurisprudence. It draws on interdisciplinary scholarship, especially from postcolonial legal theory and environmental victimology, to illustrate how the destruction of ecosystems often results in the slow, systemic erasure of cultural heritage what Rob Nixon calls “slow violence.”

The argument is grounded in three case studies: deforestation in the Amazon (Brazil), oil exploitation in the Niger Delta (Nigeria), and mining and land degradation in West Papua (Indonesia). Each case illustrates how ecocidal practices, when inflicted on communities whose identities are bound to land, can function as a mechanism of ethnocide. A personal reflection on the recent deforestation near the University of Hyderabad adds a local dimension, underscoring the urgency and universality of these concerns.

The paper concludes by advocating for the recognition of ethnocide within an expanded definition of ecocide under international criminal law. It recommends specific legal reforms to address this normative gap and contends that acknowledging the cultural stakes of environmental destruction is no longer optional but essential to a just and inclusive legal future.

Introduction

Environmental destruction has appeared as one of the defining crises of the twenty first century. Environmental degradation today is not only an ecological emergency but a cultural crisis. Across the globe, Indigenous communities are seeing the slow unravelling of their ways of lifenot solely because of climate change, but because of decisions made in corporate boardrooms and state parliaments that prioritize extractive development over ancestral continuity.Yet, beyond its ecological consequences, environmental degradation often entails the erasure of entire cultures, particularly those of Indigenous peoples whose identities are inextricably tied to the land. This dual harmecological and cultural is not merely incidental. It is often systemic and legally unaddressed. This research contends that largescale environmental destruction, or ecocide, can run as a mechanism for ethnocide, and that international criminal law (ICL) must evolve to recognize this intersection.

While “ecocide” has gained traction as a term signifying largescale destruction of ecosystems particularly through the work of Polly Higgins[1] and the Stop Ecocide Foundation its legal recognition is still partial and contested. Despite the growing recognition of environmental crimes, international legal frameworks are still inadequate in addressing the cultural consequences of ecocide.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) currently recognizes environmental damage only within the limited context of armed conflict under Article 8(2)(b)(iv),[2] Peacetime acts of ecocide often carried out through industrial extraction, deforestation, and displacement remain outside the jurisdiction of the ICC, despite their devastating cultural impacts. This exclusion is particularly harmful to Indigenous communities whose cultural, spiritual, and legal systems are land dependent. The destruction of ecosystems for resource exploitation does not only cause physical displacementit obliterates linguistic, ritualistic, and ancestral continuities that form Indigenous identity.

Simultaneously, the Genocide Convention (1948)[3]criminalizes the destruction of national, ethnic, racial, or religious groups through killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm. Yet it omits cultural destruction a lacuna that has drawn sharp critique from legal scholars like William A. Schabas[4] and cultural rights advocates. The concept of cultural genocide, or ethnocide, while invoked in instruments like the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)[5] and by the Rapporteur on Cultural Rights, lacks binding legal force. This means that when Indigenous communities are displaced, their sacred sites destroyed, or their languages lost due to environmental degradation, there is no international criminal sanction available.

This paper argues that international criminal law must evolve to address this dual violence: the destruction of ecosystems and the concurrent erasure of cultures. It proposes that ecocide was committed with knowledge of its cultural consequences constitutes a form of ethnocide. Ethnocide, while not yet codified as a standalone international crime, must be understood as a part of ecocide when environmental harm results in the erasure of cultural identity. That is, when environmental harm foreseeably or deliberately results in the loss of cultural identity, language, cosmology, or ancestral connection, such harm crosses the threshold from regulatory failure to international criminal wrong.

This study adopts a critical legal lens to argue that ecocide, when targeted or foreseeably affecting Indigenous cultural systems, should fall within the scope of international criminal law. It proposes that acts of environmental destruction carried out with the knowledge that they will destroy the cultural fabric of a group whether by state actors or corporations should be treated as fulfilling the threshold of international criminal liability.

The paper adopts a doctrinal and sociolegal approach to explore this thesis. It examines key legal texts such as the Rome Statute, the Genocide Convention, UNDRIP, and judgments alongside interdisciplinary contributions from postcolonial legal theory (e.g., Antony Anghie), environmental justice (Rob Nixon’s concept of “slow violence”), and Indigenous epistemologies. These lenses help illuminate how legal invisibility becomes a form of complicity when cultural destruction is treated as an externality of development.

 It concludes that the failure to criminalize such conduct perpetuates colonial legal hierarchies, wherein cultural erasure through environmental means is still invisible and unpunished. International criminal law must respond not only to genocidal violence in its physical form but also to the slow, systematic violence of ecocide as ethnocide.

[1]Polly Higgins, Damien Short & Nigel South, Ecocide: A New Crime Against Peace 76–80 (2013).

[2]Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court art. 8(2)(b)(iv), July 17, 1998, 2187 U.N.T.S. 90.

[3]Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide art. II, Dec. 9, 1948, 78 U.N.T.S. 277.

[4]William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes 199–200 (2d ed. 2009).

[5]United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, G.A. Res. 61/295, U.N. Doc. A/RES/61/295 (Sept. 13, 2007).