PhD thesis defence by Daniel Bertram
Over the past decade, demands for environmental justice have increasingly been articulated in the grammar of criminal law. Central to this shift is the concept of ecocide, commonly understood as the wrongful infliction of severe environmental harm. Once a militant slogan, the idea of criminalising ecocide has gained rapid institutional traction in recent years. A transnational coalition of grassroots activists and legal experts is calling for ecocide to be recognised as the ‘fifth international crime’ under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, while various countries have pioneered ecocide-inspired offenses in domestic criminal laws. In a remarkably short period, ecocide has evolved from an activist rallying cry into an emerging legal norm embedded in multiple legislative and policy instruments.
This thesis traces the struggles, practices, and alliances that have shaped the emergence of ecocide as an international crime. Drawing on documentary analysis, participant observation, and more than fifty interviews with activists, politicians, and legal experts, it examines how ecocide has been mobilised, contested, and reshaped by actors pursuing divergent political and legal projects. Empirically, the thesis maps the strategies and mechanisms through which this idea has travelled across social fields and legal regimes. Conceptually, it situates the ecocide campaign within socio-legal debates on the political, cultural, and symbolic work of (criminal) law in struggles for justice and repair. I argue that the quest to criminalise ecocide is best understood as an exercise in legal imagination – a creative practice that generates new legal sensibilities of and opens political possibilities for intervening in the Anthropocene. These imaginaries are already reshaping how law, crime, and punishment are conceived in an era of planetary crisis.
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