Considering the argument for ecocide and the case of Gaza since 2023

Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Orysia Smith

Since October 2023, a dire humanitarian crisis has broken out in the Gaza Strip. The crisis has gained international attention and condemnation, with the International Criminal Court charging top Israeli state figures with war crimes, and the United Nations charging the State of Israel with genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza. Recognition of serious crimes against humanity being committed in the Gaza Strip prompts investigations into other possible crimes in connection with the conflict. Various scholars and organizations have argued that “ecocide” is a factor in the ongoing Gaza crisis, and that it should have the status of a violation in international law. Environmental damages during times of conflict have historically been overlooked as an unfortunate byproduct of damage to human beings and their infrastructure, but some have been arguing that we should view severe environmental destruction during conflict as a crime—the crime of ecocide.

What is ecocide? 

The term ecocide was coined in the 1970s following the United States military’s widespread use of the powerful herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Following the unprecedented harm that Agent Orange caused in Vietnamese ecosystems, conversation about the impact of environmental crimes grew. In a comprehensive review of the literature on environmental destruction in conflict, including the legal discourse arising from it, Yohannes Wirtu and Umer Abdela define ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with the knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment caused by those acts.” The idea is rooted in the recognition that alongside impacts on populations and infrastructure, conflicts also have substantial impacts on the environment. Because the natural environment ultimately sustains human society, its destruction is a non-trivial matter. Yet, the environmental impacts of conflict have gone largely unrecognized, which needs to change. Accountability structures are needed, including legal ones, to make that change happen.

Ecocide is not recognized in international law, but has gone through various stages of legal consideration since the 1990s. The real possibility of codifying environmental crimes in international law first occurred in the 1991 efforts of the International Law Commission’s multi-decade project to draft the Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind, which would be used in the creation of the Rome Statute, the international treaty that founded the International Criminal Court, adopted at the Rome Conference in July 1998, and entering into force in 2002. Unfortunately, legal provisions to deal with environmental destruction during conflict were ultimately left on the cutting room floor. This is the closest ecocide has come to being recognized in the international legal order. 

At the national level, protections for the environment exist in various state’s penal codes. Article 422(1) of The Vietnamese Penal Code outlines ecocide in relation to genocide. 

Anyone who, in peacetime or wartime, commits an act of mass extermination of the population of an area, destroys the source of livelihood, undermines the cultural and spiritual life of a nation or an independent, sovereign territory, upsets the foundation of a society with the aim of destroying that society, or commits another act of genocide or commits an act of genocide or destruction of the natural environment shall be sentenced to imprisonment from 10 to 20 years.

Belgium, which included environmental protections in its Penal Code in 2024, outlined ecocide as follows: 

Deliberately committing, by action or omission, an illegal act causing serious, widespread and long-term damage to the environment, knowing that such act causes such damage, provided that such act constitutes a violation of federal legislation or an international instrument binding on the federal government, or if the act cannot be located in Belgium.

The movement toward the consideration of ecocide as a crime is in its infancy, but rapidly growing global environmental awareness, and increasing media portrayals of the results of conflict, including the evident relationships between the suffering of populations and the destruction of their environments, are likely to fuel the development of the movement. Additional fuel will come from the impetus environmental destruction gives to migration, a serious political concern across the globe.   

Moving away from an anthropocentric lens 

Enshrining ecocide in international law has faced opposition. A major counterargument posits that including ecocide in existing frameworks like the Genocide Convention would undercut the purpose and efficacy of human rights law. Advocates of legal instruments for ecocide challenge this view directly by arguing that the assumption that environmental protections undercut human protections is anthropocentric in nature. Anthropocentrism is a philosophical lens that suggests that humans are superior to nature, and that nature is to be dominated, controlled, and exploited by them. The basis of this human-first view is found throughout the western intellectual tradition, from the book of Genesis to Kantian philosophy. The human-first lens is evident in behaviour that has become normalized in centuries of colonial, and natural exploitation centred in the western world. Most prominently, in the wake of the industrial and technological revolutions it has resulted in the climate crisis. As environmental crises worsen, and warring technologies develop at ever swifter rates, ecocide scholars suggest it is necessary to decentre the anthropocentric lens.  

From a pragmatic perspective, shifting the lens and putting the environment on the same level as humanity would help keep us from destroying the very environment that sustains us.    

Environmental harms of the Gaza crisis  

Centering analysis on the natural environment shifts our attention and concern about conflict to include issues which, though often ignored in the past, have intense negative effects. A 2025 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report details serious environmental harms taking place in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. 

Water: From 2011 onward, significant strides were made toward building water treatment facilities in the Gaza Strip, to desalinate, store, and distribute groundwater to the population and ecosystem, and to treat wastewater. As of 2025, 130 out of 214 wastewater, desalination, and processing plants were rendered non-functional due to the conflict. For example, wastewater treatment was reduced to roughly 15,500 of the 24,400 cubic meters needed per day. Human Rights Watch has called the destruction of the facilities “deliberate.” Without the facilities, untreated wastewater seeps into the groundwater and spreads contamination into the soil and further into the ecological cycle. 

Other damages to the water cycle in Gaza include the use of chemical weaponry. The use of white phosphorus has been reported, which has a long life of negative effects once released into the environment. Out in the waterways, white phosphorus naturally degrades very slowly, if at all, due to the relatively cold temperature and low oxygen of the aquatic environment. Even after the degradation process begins, white phosphorus breaks down into secondary compounds that can be as harmful as the original. Without functioning water sanitation and treatment plants, chemicals persist in the water and are introduced back into the surrounding groundwater and soil.  

Land: Located in the Mediterranean Basin, the Gaza Strip includes fertile soil which supports various plant and animal species. Before October 2023, approximately 23% of the

Gaza Strip was covered by various species of tree crops. Between October 2023 and September 2024, 64-70% of these crops were damaged at a threshold of around 95% destruction. In May of 2025, it was reported that 97.1% of tree crops, 82.4% of annual crops, 95.1% of shrubland, and 89% of grass and fallow land had been damaged. Most of these damages have been the result of bombing campaigns and other military actions by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). 

The Gaza Strip is an area approximately 40 by 9 kilometres, about half the size of the City of Toronto (not the Greater Toronto Area). By November 2024, it was reported that 25,000 bombs had been dropped on the Strip which has a damage threshold equivalent to two nuclear bombs. Campaigns of bombing change both the topography of the land, and soil composition. Once contact is made, heavy metal pollutants from the artillery and bomb materials can modify the chemical composition of local soils. This affects soil structure and fertility and can render soil uninhabitable for native species. Surviving crops can also become bioaccumulated with harmful pollutants, which then enter both the human and nonhuman food chains. Land damage has also occurred as the local population resorts to cutting down trees and crops for firewood, food, and shelter material due to displacement as well as the curtailment of international aid. 

Air Quality: Data collection from the region shows that immediately after the conflict began in late 2023, carbon monoxide levels shot up in the Gaza Strip's airspace because of increased military activity, which is in line with raised levels of air pollution being reported in active war zones historically. The release of hazardous pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide (NO²), sulphur dioxide (SO²), carbon monoxide (CO), and methane (CH⁴), alongside various aerosols has been reported as a result of artillery strikes in the region. When these chemicals are released they not only degrade the air quality but also trigger various chemical reactions that create secondary pollutants and contribute to fires across the region. 

Increased pollution also results from infrastructure damage. The destruction of infrastructure in the Gaza Strip has been shocking, with 60% of residents being displaced due to the razing of homes. When infrastructure is severely damaged, chemical run-off from building materials, as well as fires that may result from the destruction, infuse chemicals into the air, soil, and groundwater. When civilians are displaced for long periods of time and run out of cooking and heating gas, they turn to burning waste plastic and other solids, including trees and plants, which contributes to worsening the status of the local air quality. 

Ecocide and the Gaza crisis 

The damage that has been inflicted on the population, infrastructure, and ecosystem of the Gaza Strip has been severe. Charges of ecocide in Gaza have come from organizations and scholars alike. In a post to X, The Palestinian Mission to the Kingdom of the Netherlands stated, “Israel's genocidal violence in Gaza including ecocide has left less than 5% of agricultural land suitable for the cultivation of crops. This devastation of agricultural lands has long-term societal impacts.” The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom has condemned the ongoing environmental destruction as both a historical colonial process, and a major contributor to the global climate crisis. Professor David Whyte of Queen Mary University presented a legal analysis of ecocide at the Gaza tribunal in Istanbul (2025), proposing that “attacks on environmental infrastructure are undoubtedly a conscious part of the Israeli military strategy in Gaza.” Further press releases, legal analyses, and condemnation statements can be found at Stop Ecocide International. Attacks on the Palestinians in Gaza, these views suggest, include attacks on their ecosystem.    

The growing recognition of the crisis in Gaza as an environmental crisis poses questions about the future. As the climate crisis is worsened by international conflicts, it is time for legal practitioners to begin thinking about ways to establish norms to deal with environmental destruction during conflict. Humans can commit destruction at scales larger than ever before. The use of environmental destruction as a weapon of war warrants recognition. Developing relevant legal provisions to work alongside human rights legislation could be a step in the right direction. 

Orysia Smith is a graduating student at the University of Toronto with majors in both the Ethics, Society, and Law (ES&L), and Peace, Conflict, and Justice (PCJ) programs. During the 2025-26 academic year, as part of her Community Research Partnership in Ethics (CRPE) project in ES&L she supported Science for Peace programming.