“We’re all hiding in these concrete bastions that we call ‘Los Angeles’ and other things,” said Paul Polman, Aurora Prize Selection Committee Member, Business Leader, Climate and Equalities Campaigner, and Former CEO of Unilever, at the ‘Climate Change & Environmental Justice’ session, as panelists discussed the most pressing problems posed by the global warming and other environmental challenges and answered questions from the audience. The discussion was held on May 9, 2024, during the Human Rights and Humanitarian Forum in Los Angeles, California.
Other speakers included William Boyd, Professor of Law at UCLA Law School and Faculty Co-Director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and Kevin Jon Heller, Professor of International Law and Security at the Center for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen and Special Adviser on War Crimes to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The session was moderated by Kate Mackintosh, Executive Director of UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe. She kicked things off by offering the audience a chance to reflect on why environmental crimes are more and more frequently perceived as international ones. “An international crime is essentially something which we, as a global community, have decided is so egregious that we can’t leave it to the discretion of individual states to regulate,” noted Ms. Mackintosh. “We’ve taken it out of the hands of individual states, and we’ve said, “We, all of us, think this is an international crime.” And we’re also saying that these acts, wherever they’re committed, are crimes against all of us.”
Kevin Jon Heller, Professor of International Law and Security at the Center for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen and Special Adviser on War Crimes to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), talked about the gaps in the legal system that prevent or limit the legal consequences of the environment-harming activities on a global level. “There is a need for international prosecutions of environmental crimes. There are plenty of efforts at the national and regional level to deal with environmental crime, but it is not yet – hopefully, it will get better – a particularly strong system,” explained Professor Heller. “Very few states have robust criminal law governing environmental destruction. Some don’t even deem environmental destruction unlawful, much less criminal.”
When asked about his take on the problem, William Boyd, Professor of Law at UCLA Law School and Faculty Co-Director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, highlighted the interconnectedness of environmental crimes with other, more familiar offenses. “Tropical forests and tropical frontiers have long been sites of dispossession, displacement, criminal activity, and violence. This is getting worse, not better, in some places, certain parts of the Amazon,” noted Professor Boyd. “Recent years have seen a major increase in what some are calling ‘convergent environmental crimes – again, particularly in parts of the Amazon where organized criminal groups, narcotraffickers and others, are diversifying into various activities: drugs, illegal coal mining, land speculation, money laundering. All of this is connected in various ways.”
Paul Polman, Aurora Prize Selection Committee Member, Business Leader, Climate and Equalities Campaigner, and Former CEO of Unilever, who notably was directly involved in the development of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, pointed out that many of modern society’s environmental issues are rooted in our severed connection with all things natural. “The average kid has forgotten where a banana comes from or the difference between a cucumber and an aubergine. We have distanced ourselves from nature,” said Mr. Polman. “We distanced ourselves from who we are with each other, and we distanced ourselves from who we are with an integral part of nature. If we don’t get that back, we won’t solve the issues. That awareness is much more important than some of the solutions.”