Talk:Ecocide

Ecocide was nominated as a Social sciences and society good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (June 18, 2024, reviewed version). There are suggestions on the review page for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

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New potential sources

Hi all

Here are some recent sources which may be useful for this article

Thanks John Cummings (talk) 14:08, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This would be easier to use formatted like this

BBC, Ecocide: Should killing nature be a crime?^[1]
et cetera

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:05, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Yeo, Sophie. "Ecocide: Should killing nature be a crime?". www.bbc.com.

Definition Revisited

I just reverted John's definition change in the lead. Ecocide is not the criminalization of...well, ecocide. That concept exists unto itself. This is why people call for that act to be a crime. But even before criminalization, ecocide happens (in many place, all the time). So we can't say it is the criminalization. We must define the concept, and then supplement that info with info about where its a crime and how those jurisdictions define to fall within their criminal law. We could suggest lead changes in this thread until we get consensus, rather than editing back and forth on the article. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:11, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi NewsAndEventsGuy, thanks for starting a disucssion. Currently the intro doesn't actually define what ecocide is, only says when it happens. This is why I introduced the definition proposed to the ICC. Do you have any suggestions of how to describe it?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 16:24, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We should start by looking for sources that describe it without saying that is criminal. Acceptable RSs might call for it to be criminal, but even those should describe the act of ecocide whether its criminal or not. By way of illustration consider genocide. We all know that history is replete with examples of genocide, but it was only an international crime after signing of the Genocide Convention in 1948, or if we're splitting hairs the conventions effective date in 1951. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:34, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Over the next couple days I'll poke around in the paywalled professional literature to see what I can find. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:38, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Super, thanks, I don't have access to those. John Cummings (talk) 16:44, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

some definitions

Beyond Restoration: The Case of Ecocide 1994 ^[1] NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:58, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Foundations of Human Ecology 1994 ^[2] NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:39, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The Campaign to Make Ecocide an International Crime: Quixotic Quest or Moral Imperative? 2019 ^[3]
Merriam Webster Dictionary (online) (2022) ^[4]

References

^ Teclaff, Ludwik A. (1994). "Beyond Restoration - The Case of Ecocide". Natural Resources Journal. 34: 933. activities that destroy or damage ecosystems on a massive scale.
^ Catton, William R. (March 1994). "Foundations of Human Ecology". Sociological Perspectives. 37 (1): 75–95. doi:10.2307/1389410. ISSN 0731-1214. as in ecological thinking generally, ecocide means damage sufficient to break down the functioning of an ecosystem (p 76)}
^ Greene, Anastacia (1 June 2019). "The Campaign to Make Ecocide an International Crime: Quixotic Quest or Moral Imperative?". Fordham Environmental Law Review. 30 (3). The model law considers ecocide as "serious ecological, climate or cultural loss or damage to or destruction of ecosystem of a given territory(ies), such that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants has been or will be severely diminished.' To establish seriousness, "impact(s) must be widespread, long-term or severe." The wording in this section is adopted from an existing UN treaty that defines the terms of "widespread, long-term or severe." The Understanding Regarding Article I of the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) defines widespread as "encompassing an area on the scale of several hundred kilometers," long-lasting as "lasting for a period of months, or approximately a season," and severe as "involving serious or significant disruption or harm to human life, natural and economic resources or other assets." (p4-5, cites omitted)
^ "Definition of ECOCIDE". www.merriam-webster.com. the destruction of large areas of the natural environment as a consequence of human activity

possibility of Russia veto

In an edit summary,[1] user:Chidgk1 opined and asked "removed 'yet' from 'Ecocide has not yet been accepted as an internationally punishable crime by the United Nations' as surely that is never going to happen as could not Russia veto it?" The notion of a Russian veto applies to the United Nations Security Council. Ecocide could become an international law when enough countries adopt a treaty similar to the Geneva Convention, only for the environment. Russia doesn't have to sign such a treaty if it doesn't want to, but it can't stop other nations from doing so. And anyway, a lot of the enforcement would be done at the International criminal court. Neither Russia nor the USA are signatories to the treaty that created the court and they usually do not subject themselves to the court's jurisdiction, which is voluntary for non-signatories. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 08:43, 29 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ok thanks you obviously know better than me so revert my change if you wish Chidgk1 (talk) 04:32, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I support removing the word "yet" as superfluous with possibly encouraging the reader to interpret it with their own prior bias. But it adds nothing important. Good call.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 06:19, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Cases?

So have there actually been any court cases in the countries listed? Chidgk1 (talk) 07:56, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Chernobyl

Chernobyl was a) not intentional and b) the long term result for nature cannot solely be described as bad. According to some studies - as well as popular press articles like these: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/05/07/chernobyl-why-the-nuclear-disaster-was-an-environmental-success https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-has-become-unexpected-haven-wildlife - Chernobyl's exclusion zone has actually become a sort of "national park" with high biodiversity precisely because of the accident and what humans did afterwards. 2001:A62:1424:B902:145:EC7C:D678:6565 (talk) 13:09, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am inclined to agree. More importantly, the sources already listed are not enough to show significant consideration of the disaster as an “example” of ecocide. They mostly mention it in passing, and sometimes as a possible consideration for the label, not a definitive case for it. — HTGS (talk) 04:14, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

Unsuccessful. 48 JCL 23:52, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This review is transcluded from Talk:Ecocide/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: John Cummings (talk · contribs) 12:58, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: 48 JCL 23:51, 18 June 2024 (UTC) Reviewing this. I am seeing some immediate concerns just looking at the lead.[reply]

Feedback: Address the current maintenance tags and also make the lead summary style. Try not to use excerpts. Paragraphs are pretty short, permanent dead links, blogs as sources?? What??? Anyways gonna QF this. 48 JCL 23:52, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hi 48JCL thanks very much for the review, I really appreciate it, could I ask a few things to help me imporve the article?

I don't see any maintainance tags on the article and can't find any in the version history in the past weeks, can you tell me which ones you are refering to?
I've just been through the refs but I don't see any that I'd recognise as a blog, can you tell me which ones you mean?
I'm assuming you have a tool for checking dead links you used? Can you tell me which ones are dead and I'll go and fix them
Can you tell me what QF means?
If you have any other suggestions for me to get it up to standard I'd really appreciate it, I can work on the article, would it be ok to come back to you once I've done that to ask you to reassess it?

Thanks again

John Cummings (talk) 10:45, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@John Cummings: Should’ve phrased that better, there were a lot of blank-needed tags.

Blogs: [23] [62]. [155] is dead, [175] is SPS. QF means quickfail, [44] is permanently dead, and ecocide is a pretty big topic, so I am unsure why old sources have to be used. Also, for the examples some stuff is too long or too short. I’m also sure that the In Popular Culture section needs no sources, because pretty sure on most FA films like Saving Private Ryan, citations are not needed for the plot of the story. Cheers, 48 JCL 12:34, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to disagree with you on whether "In popular culture" sections should be sourced. My experience is that they are a magnet for people to put in examples that are tenuously connected to the topic, or only connected in one viewer's opinion. So it's reasonable to require that films have been mentioned in a source as depicting ecocide, to make sure we don't end up including all war films. MartinPoulter (talk) 12:46, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Alright thanks, still learning here. Appreciate your feedback. 48 JCL 12:47, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ref 23 is an opinion piece by "James McBride, Ph.D., J.D., Clinical Professor of Liberal Studies and Chair of Law, Ethics, History, and Religion in Global Liberal Studies at New York University" in a journal with an editorial process, published by Wiley. I wouldn't call this a "blog". As an opinion piece by a recognised expert, its conclusions shouldn't be presented in wikivoice, but the factual background that it sets out can be used to source facts in the Wikipedia article. Ref 62 is also an opinion piece on a site that publishes research reports. Again I would say that these are reliable if used for factual background. These are sources that have to be used carefully, but it's not outrageous to use them, and the case hasn't been made that they are used inappropriately. Apologies if I've misunderstood the numbering. As I've said myself, there are some problems with sourcing of this article, but in my opinion they are limited and fixable. Two dead links out of nearly 200 doesn't seem a deep problem. MartinPoulter (talk) 15:19, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@48JCL Oops, the above appears as a reply to myself instead of to you. I'm wondering if I've misunderstood something, but also if you might accept that a quickfail was hasty. I've fixed the two broken links: just Googled the titles and they were on the correct domain but with different URLs. Attn @John Cummings. MartinPoulter (talk) 18:25, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi John, this was an edit conflict so I'm probably duplicating 48JCL's points, but having glanced at the article:

I see minor maintenance tags on two paragraphs "In May 2017 the grassroots citizen's movement..." and "In order to enforce implementation and increase citizens' trust in EU rules,..." It seems these can be addressed easily and it would not be normal to quick-fail a review just because of those problems.
Examples of dubious sources, in the current version, refs 103, 112, but also there are a lot of activist sites used as sources: not that they should be totally excluded, but the article shouldn't rely on them greatly for factual content. Usually the actions of activists should only be mentioned if they are covered in third-party sources. In general, the citations need to make clear who is publishing the source: is it an official body, a recognised publication, a campaigning group, or just someone with a Wordpress installation? For example, ref 132 is credited to OHCHR. It could be made clear to the reader that this is the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. That helps the reader to recognise that it should be taken seriously. Where there's a named author like with ref 58 that should be clear too.
refs 155 and 44 are marked as permanent dead links.

Please don't be discouraged! MartinPoulter (talk) 12:42, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi MartinPoulter and 48JCL thanks so much for the help and detailed explanation, I really appreciate it :) John Cummings (talk) 19:05, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Yeo, Sophie. "Ecocide: Should killing nature be a crime?". www.bbc.com.

[2] Teclaff, Ludwik A. (1994). "Beyond Restoration - The Case of Ecocide". Natural Resources Journal. 34: 933. activities that destroy or damage ecosystems on a massive scale.

[3] Catton, William R. (March 1994). "Foundations of Human Ecology". Sociological Perspectives. 37 (1): 75–95. doi:10.2307/1389410. ISSN 0731-1214. as in ecological thinking generally, ecocide means damage sufficient to break down the functioning of an ecosystem (p 76)}

[4] Greene, Anastacia (1 June 2019). "The Campaign to Make Ecocide an International Crime: Quixotic Quest or Moral Imperative?". Fordham Environmental Law Review. 30 (3). The model law considers ecocide as "serious ecological, climate or cultural loss or damage to or destruction of ecosystem of a given territory(ies), such that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants has been or will be severely diminished.' To establish seriousness, "impact(s) must be widespread, long-term or severe." The wording in this section is adopted from an existing UN treaty that defines the terms of "widespread, long-term or severe." The Understanding Regarding Article I of the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) defines widespread as "encompassing an area on the scale of several hundred kilometers," long-lasting as "lasting for a period of months, or approximately a season," and severe as "involving serious or significant disruption or harm to human life, natural and economic resources or other assets." (p4-5, cites omitted)

[5] "Definition of ECOCIDE". www.merriam-webster.com. the destruction of large areas of the natural environment as a consequence of human activity

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