From “Do Trees Have Rights?” to Wondering About Ecocide: Some Legal Reflections⁺

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Sharpston, Eleanor^{; *}

Affiliations: Adjunct Professor at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, and an Honorary Professor at Riga Graduate School of Law, Latvia;Member of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee; formerly Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union (2006-2020)

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. E-mail: akulith@pt.lu.

Note: [+] This is an expanded and revised version of the author’s Stockholm Environmental Law Lecture 2020, delivered online on 19 November 2020, at Stockholm Environmental Law and Policy Centre of Stockholm University, Sweden.

Abstract: This article is the revised text of the 2020 Stockholm Environmental Law lecture. Its two parts discuss, respectively, some of the issues surrounding access to justice by NGOs in order to protect the environment and whether the time has come to add a fifth crime of ‘ecocide’ to the crimes against humanity that are criminalised under the Rome Statute.

Keywords: Rule of law, environment protection, access to justice, ecocide, Aarhus convention, Court of Justice of the European Union

DOI: 10.3233/EPL-219024

Journal: Environmental Policy and Law, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 117-131, 2022