Ecological Intervention: Prospects and Limits‪.‬

Violence in civil conflicts in the post-Cold War period has ignited a heated debate about the morality, legality, and legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. Recriminations continue against the failure of the United Nations Security Council to prevent massacres in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur. But should the international community also be concerned about massacres perpetrated against critically endangered species? Must it stand by and allow a deliberate massacre of, say, the last surviving population of mountain gorillas by poachers? In considering this and other scenarios of grave environmental harm, this article seeks to extend the already controversial debate about humanitarian intervention by critically exploring the morality, legality, and legitimacy of ecological intervention and its corollary, ecological defense. By "ecological intervention" I mean the threat or use of force by a state or coalition of states within the territory of another state and without the consent of that state in order to prevent grave environmental damage. (1) By "ecological defense" I mean the preventive use of force in response to the threat of serious and immediate environmental harm flowing into the territory of a "victim" state. If the legacy of the Holocaust was the Nuremberg trials and acceptance of a new category of "crimes against humanity," an emerging norm of humanitarian intervention, and, most recently, the creation of an international criminal court, then might the willful or reckless perpetration of mass extinctions and massive ecosystem destruction be regarded as "crimes against nature" such as to support a new norm of ecological intervention and an international environmental court. (2) If the international community condemns genocide, might it one day be ready to condemn ecocide?