I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for Amendments 287 and 293D on ecocide. I strongly agree with the premise of her argument. The appalling fact is that we are currently destroying life on earth. Each minute we lose around 30 football pitches-worth of tropical forest. We have seen a 70% decline in key species since 1970, which is a mere nanosecond in evolutionary terms. Nowhere is spared: a third of marine mammals are threatened with extinction; an estimated 35% of the world’s marine and coastal wetland areas were lost between 1970 and 2015, at three times the rate of forest loss; and half the world’s seabird species are already affected by ocean plastic. At the same time, we are destabilising the world’s climate. Although there is no computer model in the world sophisticated enough to fully predict the effects, we know that they will be dire.
It is of course a tragedy in and of itself, but it is also a human tragedy. A billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods. As those forests are destroyed, so too are their livelihoods. Around 200 million people depend on fish for their livelihoods. As we exhaust the oceans, those people and their families are often left destitute. When ecosystems fail, so too do the many free and hopelessly undervalued services that nature provides. Because it is the world’s poorest people who are likely to depend most directly on those free services, it is they who will suffer first and worst. I say that in response to comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox.
Ultimately, we all depend on the health of the planet, and its destruction has grave implications for us all. Indeed, as we sit in this Chamber, metres apart, it is worth reflecting that coronavirus itself is likely a symptom of our dysfunctional relationship with the natural world. Even if that is wrong and in this instance it is not, it is certainly the case that most pandemics are.
Objectively, it must be the case that killing ecosystems on which so many people depend has to be among the most serious of crimes. I recognise that not everyone will agree with that, but I ask those people to consider what their response might be to someone pouring poison into another person’s water supply, pumping toxic gas through someone’s window, or setting fire to a person’s farm. No one, I think, would doubt for a second the gravity of such crimes, so it should not be seen as any different when it is done by a multinational corporation in a foreign land, except, of course, at a bigger scale.
We have strong environmental laws in England, which carry fines and potential imprisonment for the most serious offences. There is a whole ecosystem of enforcement authorities: the Environment Agency, Natural England, the Forestry Commission, the Marine Management Organisation, Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, local authorities, the police and Defra itself. In particularly egregious cases, significant sanctions are sought. For example, as has been mentioned, only last week Southern Water was fined £90 million for pumping raw sewage into protected waters around the south-east coast. There were also convictions against several employees of Southern Water, who obstructed Environment Agency investigators. But there is no doubt that our regulatory framework can be improved. That is one of the things we are trying to do with this Bill, not least with the new OEP.
There is no doubt that, around the world, the true cost of serious environmental crime or ecocide is not reflected in our response to it. Sadly, ecocide is not yet a crime recognised under international law and there is currently no consensus on its legal definition. Indeed, before the ICC and the crimes it has jurisdiction over could be established by the Rome statute, which was adopted in 1998, ecocide had to be removed in the drafting stages due to a lack of agreement among the states party to the court. The Rome statute provides for some protections for the natural environment in armed conflict—it designates international attacks that knowingly and excessively cause
“widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment”
as war crimes—but ecocide as a stand-alone crime is not yet recognised.
The UK’s current priority regarding the International Criminal Court is to try to reform it, so that it functions more efficiently and effectively and can deliver successful prosecutions of crimes in its jurisdiction and bring accountability for victims. I know that noble Lords on all sides of the Committee will share that ambition. Reform of the court is a long and complicated process, driven by the states party to the Rome statute. Their involvement is fundamental to success. A significant amendment such as that proposed by the noble Baroness is unlikely to achieve the support of two-thirds of the states party, which is necessary to amend the Rome statute to make ecocide an international crime. The view, therefore, is that pursuing it would require an enormous amount of heavy lifting diplomatically, with little prospect at this stage of succeeding. That would likely also detract from the goal of improving the court’s effectiveness, which, in any case, would be a prerequisite for any meaningful application of ecocide.
I will end there. We are unable to accept the noble Baroness’s proposals. I therefore ask her to withdraw her amendment.