Justifying the Creation of an International Environmental Criminal Court (IECC) to Protect World Biodiversity

Abstract

The lack of, or rather scarcity of international criminal environmental legislations no doubt reflects on the relatively secondary status of environmental crimes in national and international legal systems. Offenses against the environment are in most cases dealt with as regulatory violations, included within national environmental statutes. Even when dealing with specific and serious forms of pollution, criminal provisions always have to emerge from existing shallow environmental statutes, rather than from the broader criminal statutes, Laws addressing environmental crimes have traditionally been extensions of public and administrative environmental laws, rather than from a more comprehensive branch of environmental criminal laws. The increasing number of environmental offenses that have resulted in public outcry and protests are indications on the lack of appropriate legal instruments to prosecute offenders. The gravity of attacks on the environment need to be reassessed, even if there still exists a currently a lack of enthusiasm from both states and international organizations to developments international environmental criminal laws, and institute an International Environmental Criminal Court (IECC). This record was migrated from the OpenDepot repository service in June, 2017 before shutting down.