The Model Law on Ecocide proposes 18 articles aimed at guiding Latin American parliaments as they confront the gravest environmental damages and ensure the protection of nature is effective.
The destruction of ecosystems leaves indelible marks on the environment, many of which will have detrimental consequences for several generations. The Model Law on Ecocide for Latin America aims to generate a legal reference that can be incorporated into each country’s legislation.
This is the basis for declaring ecocide as a crime, but for now it is not binding and does not automatically and regionally create the offense as such, rather it serves as guidance for protecting the environment.
First a public consultation was carried out, after which experts gathered on several occasions and conducted a series of consultations that culminated in the drafting of the Model Law on Ecocide, which consists of 18 articles and is the product of the collaborative drafting work of 31 experts from 14 countries.
The problem behind this Model Law on Ecocide is the excessive pressure that resources are facing in this region of the world and the extreme violence inflicted on environmentalists, activists, and defenders of the right to a healthy environment.
The article explains the pressure exerted on territories, indigenous peoples, and activists and what path should be taken for this Model Law on Ecocide to become a real instrument of protection and resilience for Latin American ecosystems.
Model Law on Ecocide: to protect nature and its defenders
The surge in the exploitation of minerals and natural resources for technology, the rise in killings of environmental defenders, and the drafting of ecocide bills in Latin America are the foundations that have brought regional experts together for the approval of the Model Law on Ecocide for Latin America.
The process began in 2021 when a group of international experts gathered to define ecocide, among them the Americas director of Stop Ecocide International, Rodrigo Lledó Vásquez, who explains the “importance” of presenting a regional model law.
The experts defined ecocide as “any illicit or arbitrary act carried out knowingly with a substantial probability of causing grave, extensive, or lasting damage to the environment.”
Lledó notes that “a model law is an academic reference text” and clarifies that “it is not a binding text, but a proposal, a template, a text from which parliaments and lawmakers in each country can copy and paste or extract ideas for drafting an ecocide law in their countries or make changes to that text to adapt it.”
In his view, the Model Law on Ecocide is a document that “solves the challenge of aligning the international definition of ecocide with the legal and social reality of Latin America” because the text drafted in 2021 “is closer to the Anglo-Saxon system, which underpins International Law.” The Model Law, he adds, is an “adaptation exercise” achieved through a “participatory process” conducted in two phases.
The first phase was “a public consultation,” the information from which was systematized. With those data, in the second stage they held meetings with “74 experts, including university professors and lawyers of renowned standing, from 14 countries.”
The results of both processes were structured and, he notes, “they were presented in Mexico to 31 international experts from 14 Latin American countries for the drafting of the Model Law on Ecocide, which consists of 18 articles.”
Ecocide should be an international criminal offense
The Stop Ecocide platform seeks to include ecocide as the fifth crime in the International Criminal Court alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression.
The process began in 2024 thanks to the initiative of the island states of Vanuatu, Fiji, and Samoa, “which are literally under water,” something, he argues, “that seemed a distant dystopian future and is now a sad reality.”
The initiative of the three countries is currently “in the Working Group on amendments to the International Criminal Court”, explains the Chilean expert, and he maintains that the speed of progress will depend on the will of the States Parties to this court and on technical aspects.
Nevertheless, he adds, while that work progresses, ecocide has already been integrated into certain national legislations such as Belgium or France -with a different name-, “although it has the elements of ecocide, and it is included in a 2024 European directive on environmental crimes that is being adopted by the 27 Member States.”
He explains that “there are bills in the Netherlands, Italy, Croatia, and Spain -which is a little behind-”, and they are also working on it in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritius which has already adopted it, as well as French Polynesia and Turkey which has a bill in progress.
In Latin America, he lists, “there is a bill in Mexico, in the Dominican Republic, in Peru, in Brazil, in Argentina, and it is already incorporated into Colombia’s Penal Code, under the name grave environmental harm, which is the same figure or very similar in Chile’s Penal Code.
With the launch of several bills in Latin America, Stop Ecocide International noted the importance of accompanying the process and the need to harmonize it with the Model Law on Ecocide for the region, which heads —with Mexico and Colombia and with Brazil trailing behind— the Global Witness “Silenced Voices” index on killings of environmental, Indigenous, and social defenders around the world.
Lledó is optimistic about the adaptation of the Model Law in Latin America, but he is “aware that these are challenging times at international and regional levels.” He argues that “international or regional policy in Latin America is complex at the moment and not very favorable to environmental issues.”
“But we are working for the moment when humanity regains common sense,” he asserts. Meanwhile, Stop Ecocide will be present at COP17 on Biodiversity in Armenia, from October 19 to 30, and at COP31 in Turkey, from November 9 to 20.
