ecocidio

The first hearing of the so-called "Smog trial" took place in Turin on Tuesday 18 June first trial for eco-defendants ever carried out in Italy.Among the accused are the former mayors of the Piedmontese capital Chiara Appendino and Piero Fassino, as well as the former president of the Piedmont Region Sergio Chiamparino.According to the accusations, between 2015 and 2019, they did not put in place adequate measures to guarantee the protection of air quality of the city of Turin, which today appears to be among the Municipalities more at risk for this type of pollution.For this reason, public administrators are charged with the crime of negligent environmental pollution.According to the prosecutor's consultants, the concentrations above the legal limits of the pollutants recorded in the Turin area would have caused over a thousand premature deaths and several hospital admissions.A second line of investigation, referring to a subsequent period, also sees the current president of...

In fact, the European Union has introduced the crime of ecocide into community law.The new directive, agreed in November by the EU bodies, was approved with 499 votes in favour, 100 against and 23 abstentions.Now, those who commit some crimes against nature are at risk up to 10 years in prison.Ecocide, according to one of the existing definitions, means an offense at the expense of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, their flora and fauna and the resulting impact.In this case, crimes such as illegal timber trade, depletion of water resources and serious violations of legislation on chemical substances will be included.And again:the illicit management of hazardous waste and radioactive materials, the illegal trade in wildlife and water contamination.Anyone who is guilty of these and other types of environmental crimes - Brussels has announced - will be punishable with imprisonment, depending the duration, severity and reversibility of the damage.Following publication in the Official Jour...

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. It seemed like a quiet night near the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant in Ukraine.Then suddenly a roar and the sound of flowing water.“We are now used to loud bangs and so I didn't think it was anything serious,” he said an inhabitant of the southern shore town of Nova Kakhovka.Within minutes water began flowing through a breach.And soon the passage crossing the Dnipro River was washed away.The dam built by the USSR in 1956, an important source of water for the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia, for the region's agriculture and for cooling the reactors of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, no longer existed while a massive wave of water began to flow downstream, causing a social, economic and ecological catastrophe. A torrent of water burst through a gaping hole in a dam on the Dnipro River that separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine, fl...

Following long and detailed negotiations, the European institutions have finally sanctioned an agreement which provides for the inclusion of the concept of ecocide - that is, crimes at the expense of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, their flora and fauna and the resulting impact on climate and communities – in community law.Although "ecocide" has not yet been formally classified as an international crime, the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament have united around a text which, through a lexical and legal trick, opens the way to a timely accountability of the perpetrators of environmental crimes.In fact, an infringement defined as "qualified" has been introduced which, as stated in the text, aims to allow the most serious crimes to be prosecuted, i.e. "extensive environmental pollution, industrial accidents or serious fires, which are considered covered by the crime in a form comparable to the crime of ecocide as it is e...