Scotland is poised to become the first UK nation to criminalise ecocide - severe and reckless harm to nature - under a new Member’s Bill published in Holyrood today. 

The Ecocide (Scotland) Bill, introduced by MSP Monica Lennon, would make it a criminal offence to cause widespread, long-term or irreversible environmental damage, with potential penalties including up to 20 years in prison for individuals and unlimited fines for companies.

The Permanent Mission of the State of Palestine to the Kingdom of the Netherlands has formally described the environmental destruction in Gaza as ecocide, citing that less than 5% of agricultural land remains suitable for cultivation and calling for international legal recognition of the long-term consequences. The statement — the first by a state-level actor to explicitly use the term in relation to Gaza — marks a significant development in the growing international discourse on environmental harm and accountability during conflict.

On 26 May 2025, Assembly Member Teremuura Kohumoetini-Rurua, of the Tavini Huiraatira party, introduced a bill in the Assembly of French Polynesia—with the support of 20 colleagues—that aims to criminalise ecocide. The bill seeks to strengthen the territory’s legal framework by establishing comprehensive protections for nature and imposing stricter criminal penalties for serious environmental harm.

The Justice and Human Rights Commission of the Congress of the Republic of Peru has published a unified bill to criminalise ecocide. Dated 21 May 2025, the legal opinion consolidates three earlier proposals—submitted by Congressmembers Américo Gonza, Isaac Mita Alanoca and Ruth Luque— into a single legislative instrument that proposes adding a new article (305-A) to the Peruvian Penal Code.

The Council of Europe has adopted a landmark treaty - the Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law - which defines and criminalises a wide range of environmental offences and establishes a legal framework for states to prosecute intentional conduct resulting in environmental disasters 'tantamount to ecocide’.

A new legal opinion by Dr Stephan Sina, commissioned by Stop Ecocide Deutschland, sets out how Germany could incorporate the EU’s revised Environmental Crime Directive into national law — focusing on serious environmental harm comparable to ecocide.

The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) — Africa’s largest trade union federation, representing over six million workers — has publicly called for the recognition of ecocide as an international crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

This clear position aligns the NLC with growing global momentum to criminalise the most serious environmental harms — momentum now driven in part by African leadership. In September 2024, Vanuatu, Samoa, and Fiji formally submitted a proposal to amend the Rome Statute to include ecocide; the Democratic Republic of Congo subsequently became the first African nation to support the amendment.

In a historic move, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the deliberative body of Europe’s foremost human rights organisation, has adopted a resolution endorsing the Draft Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law.

If adopted and ratified by member states, the Convention would become the first legally binding international treaty to criminalise severe and large-scale environmental destruction — “conduct that many term ecocide.”

On 11 April 2025, draft legislation aimed at creating a general offence for causing serious environmental damage was tabled in the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region by MP Zakia Khattabi, former Federal Minister of the Environment and member of the French-speaking Ecolo Party.

On April 1st, 2025, MP Margarita Stolbizer presented a comprehensive bill dedicated to environmental crimes, which includes a Chapter on the crime of ecocide, using the definition developed by the Independent Expert Panel convened in 2021 by the Stop Ecocide Foundation.

Turkiye’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), has supported a citizen-led petition to criminalise ecocide nationally. The petition was presented to parliament on 28 November 2023, after accumulating close to 29,000 wet signatures.

The German Green Party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) has included a commitment in its 2025 Election Programme(p.55) to the consistent implementation of the recently revised EU Environmental Crime Directive(ECD) in Germany, as well as to the prevention of the most severe environmental crimes (ecocide) through an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

On Wednesday, February 12, the Ecocide Law Advisory(ELA) was launched, a joint initiative between the UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe and Climate Counsel to provide expert legal advice, training, and support on the drafting and implementation of ecocide laws.

On November 15-16, 2024, the General Assembly of the United Nations Association of Germany (UNA-Germany, DGVN)—the association’s highest decision-making body—adopted a motion supporting the recognition of ecocide as an international crime at the International Criminal Court.