Ecocide, environmental harm and framework integration at the international criminal court

As the International Criminal Court (ICC) increasingly focuses on environmental harm, and with ecocide formally proposed for adoption into the Rome Statute, the normative adjustments needed to accommodate this ecocentric shift require urgent analysis. Other branches of international law, such as environmental, human rights, and humanitarian law, will be critical in environmental harm proceedings. However, the conceptual basis to incorporate extrinsic law at the ICC under Article 21 of the Rome Statute has not been adequately explored, jurisprudence on it is inconsistent, and its practical implementation remains ad hoc. In seeking to reconcile the Rome Statute with its broader legal context, a well-known doctrine for the incorporation of disparate bodies of law is that of systemic integration, which has been espoused by Martii Koskenniemi and the International Law Commission. Yet, a deeper analysis reveals that this hermeneutically-bound approach is overly restrictive for the ICC’s environmentally-oriented activities. In its place, the article proposes a new approach called ‘framework integration’. The article pre-emptively addresses potential challenges to this novel theory, including the risks of the Court acting ultra vires and perpetuating inconsistent legal standards. This normative examination provides insights for the ICC and for other institutions charged with redressing atrocity crimes, which is particularly apposite for existing offences harming the environment as well as the proposed crime of ecocide.