Green Criminology: The Case for the Crime of Ecocide

Governance for more Just Futures

Green criminology is an emerging branch of criminology involving the study of harms and crimes against the environment broadly conceived, including the study of environmental law and policy, the study of corporate crimes against the environment, and environmental justice from a criminological perspective. In this masterclass led by Kate Mackintosh, Executive Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights, UCLA, one of the international criminal lawyers leading the drafting of new provisions criminalizing destruction of the world’s ecosystems at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Jojo Mehta, Chair of the Stop Ecocide Foundation lead participants through the legal and historical context for creating a legally enforceable crime of ecocide.

Benefits of Attending this Interactive Masterclass

• Understand the legal and historical context for criminalizing ecocide at the international level and why this is a significant strategic intervention point for climate justice.
• Understand the types of environmental harm and damage to which the crime of ecocide would apply.
• Build capacity and become a part of a global community of practice for policy entrepreneurship on green criminology and ecocide law at national levels.

Who Should Attend:

This interactive masterclass is designed for civil society representatives, climate justice advocates, policymakers and policy entrepreneurs, lawyers and professionals desirous of building capacity to lobby for environmental regulation at national levels.

*IMPORTANT NOTE: Members of Future Law Collaborative (including those who registered for FLVS2020 as Negotiators and Masters) get FREE access to this series of Masterclasses as one of the membership benefits and do not have to register through Eventbrite to be granted the access.

About Lead Facilitators

Jojo Mehta, Chair of Board Stop Ecocide Foundation

Jojo co-founded the Stop Ecocide campaign in 2017, alongside barrister and legal pioneer the late Polly Higgins, to support the establishment of ecocide as a crime at the International Criminal Court. Jojo co-ordinates between the fast-growing international campaign (teams in 8 countries, websites in 7 languages) and the lawyers, advocates and parliamentarians engaged in the core work of progressing the crime. She is Chair of the Board of the Stop Ecocide Foundation in the Netherlands, which now manages the campaign, and convenor of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide chaired by Philippe Sands QC and Justice Florence Mumba. Jojo is key spokesperson for Stop Ecocide International and has contributed to law conferences, environmental summits, festivals and climate rallies as well as podcasts, interviews and articles for publications and broadcasters ranging from the Ecologist to the New York Times and from Extinction Rebellion to the BBC. She was a keynote speaker at the official side event “Investigating and prosecuting ecocide: the current and future role of the ICC” in December 2019, hosted by the Republic of Vanuatu as part of the 18th Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Jojo is a graduate of Oxford and London universities and has a background in communications, entrepreneurship and on-the-ground environmental campaigning.

Kate Mackintosh, Executive Director, Promise Institute for Human Rights, UCLA

Kate Mackintosh is the inaugural Executive Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law. The Promise Institute was founded in 2017 with a $20 million gift to create a center on the West Coast for international human rights scholarship, training, and advocacy. Mackintosh has worked in the fields of human rights, international criminal justice, and the protection of civilians for over two decades. She was involved in the development of international criminal law in its fledgling years and contributed to defining many elements of this new area of law, such as the elements of rape as an international crime, the definition of protected persons, and the scope of complicity for international crimes. She has held multiple roles at international criminal tribunals, working as a lawyer with the judges; prosecution appeals counsel; co-counsel for the defense and finally as an administrator, responsible as Deputy Registrar for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia’s court operations, witness protection and support services, legal aid scheme, detention facility, communications and outreach, languages services and archives. For eight years, Mackintosh worked with Doctors without Borders, providing legal and policy advice to operations in over 30 countries around the world, and leading advocacy in support of some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. During, and building on, this experience, she developed a body of work around the practical application of IHL and humanitarian principles to contemporary challenges, ranging from critiques of the impact of counter-terrorism law and policy on humanitarian action to the scope of humanitarian actors’ legal obligation to testify and the legitimacy of humanitarian protection.Mackintosh was part of post-conflict human rights field operations in Rwanda – working to rebuild the justice system after the genocide – and Bosnia, where she collaborated with Bosnian lawyers on strategies to use the courts to support economic and social rights. She has lectured and authored numerous articles and reports on the principles of humanitarian action, international criminal justice and the protection of civilians, and is currently thinking about the application of the Rome Statute to cyber warfare, and how international criminal law can protect the environment.