Europe works to end crimes against environment

(Vatican Radio) Controversy continues to surround the United Nations Climate Change Conference currently taking place in Warsaw, with environmental groups strongly criticising the Polish government for choosing to host a coal industry meeting at the same time.

Meanwhile, volunteers all over Europe are working to create a legal framework for the prosecution of environmental crimes, including those which affect climate change. End Ecocide in Europe is a project aiming to collect the one million signatures required to take the issue to the EU parliament through the European Citizens’ Initiative.

Giulia Cirillo spoke to Lucia Beltrame, volunteer coordinator for End Ecocide in Europe, to find out more about the project and its origins.

Listen to the full interview:

“Ecocide, the term, was brought about in 1948, after the Second World War, but it was only talked about in high-level UN conferences, so many people had no idea actually that this term had been, let's say, invented. It had been brought about together with the idea of genocide – so the idea that killing a whole race of people, but also destroying huge amounts of ecosystems and the environment, should be equally a crime. But since then it’s remained in high-level UN conferences, until the 1990s, when it was suggested that it should be included as the fifth crime against peace together with the other four, including genocide. And in 2010 Polly Higgins, a Scottish lawyer, worked to corroborate a definition and bring it to the public.

The European Commission allows for the possibility, through participative democracy, for European citizens to propose new European laws. And so we’re using the process, this possibility, to propose this law. We have to collect a million signatures of European citizens, in a time-frame of a year, and then the European Commission is actually forced to consider our proposal and start the process of introducing this law.

It’s possible to sign both on the website – – and with signature forms that you can download from the website. We are looking to work with groups and organisations that work in this field as well, to form partnerships, and for volunteers to go out and organise activities in the streets – signature collections, flash-mobs – and just get creative!”