“Ecosystem collapse threatens not only nature, but the foundations of security, prosperity, and human rights. The proportionate response is ecocide law,” writes Jojo Mehta, CEO and co-founder of Stop Ecocide International.
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By Jojo Mehta
Last week, the UK government published a national security assessment that should fundamentally shift how policymakers understand environmental destruction. Produced by the country’s intelligence community, it identifies ecosystem collapse as a direct threat to UK security and prosperity, with cascading risks including geopolitical instability, conflict, mass migration, and economic insecurity.
Ecological collapse does not respect borders. The assessment is unambiguous and the risks it identifies are universal: critical ecosystems including the Amazon rainforest, Congo Basin, boreal forests, the Himalayas, and Southeast Asia’s coral reefs and mangroves are on pathways to collapse. Some could begin collapsing within the next five years.
This is not environmental advocacy from the UK’s foreign intelligence agency, commonly known as MI6. It is threat assessment conducted by analysts trained to identify risks to national interests. Voluntary commitments and aspirational targets are nowhere near adequate in the face of this. The appropriate response is binding legal accountability.
Ecocide law, which criminalizes the most severe, widespread, or long-term destruction of ecosystems, provides exactly that mechanism. It establishes a clear moral and legal threshold: the worst harms are intolerable, and those responsible should face criminal consequences. Criminal law codifies what a society refuses to accept. People do not refrain from murder mainly because they fear jail, but because murder is understood as fundamentally wrong. Law both reflects and reinforces that moral boundary. Like murder, ecocide is defined by the outcome, not the method. It focuses on the scale and severity of environmental destruction, not on prohibiting particular industries or activities.
The threats identified are not hypothetical. A UN report published earlier this month described the world as having entered an era of “global water bankruptcy”, with critical systems already past the point at which they can be restored. The report found that 75% of people live in water-insecure countries, major rivers no longer reach the sea, and cities are sinking as aquifers collapse. The report’s lead author, Professor Kaveh Madani, warned that “no one knows exactly when the whole system would collapse.”
What makes ecocide law effective is that it operates where political commitments and regulatory frameworks fall short. Criminal liability forces decision-makers, whether in boardrooms or government offices, to ask fundamental questions before approving projects: could this cause severe harm, and could I be held personally accountable? What will that do to me? How will it affect my company’s reputation, value, freedom to operate? My party’s credibility? Those calculations shift behaviour in ways that industry self-regulation and environmental impact assessments cannot and never will.
International developments are already moving in this direction. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework represents an important collective commitment to halt and reverse nature loss, and advisory opinions from the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have clarified that states have legal obligations to prevent serious environmental harm. But political commitments alone, without binding consequences, cannot prevent the most severe damage.
Read the full report
UK Intelligence Services Just Made the Case for Criminalizing Ecocide
