Online seminar - The ‘Imbroglio’ of Ecocide: A Political Economic Analysis'

Open to all - the Abolition Feminism for Ending Sexual Violence Collective is hosting an online seminar by Eliana Cusato and Emily Jones on 'The ‘Imbroglio’ of Ecocide: A Political Economic Analysis', at 1-2pm, 11th December 2023, chaired by Christine Schwöbel-Patel. After the presentation there will be time for Q&As and a general discussion of abolition feminism and ecocide.

Abstract In this paper we adopt a political economic lens to analyse the revival of the concept of ecocide in present international legal scholarship and practice. The current campaign to codify the crime of ecocide under international criminal law represents the epitome of a problem-solving approach, which conceives of the law as external to society and as a corrective to its evils. Yet, a large body of critical literature has drawn attention to the constitutive role of international law and to the problems with its depoliticized approach when it comes to tackling global injustices. We build upon this diverse scholarship to illuminate how the technical, acontextual, and ahistorical legal debate on the codification of ecocide ends up normalizing the violent structures of extractive capitalism and its hierarchies. Further, we situate the proposed crime within the wider context of how international law regulates and constitutes the natural world. Drawing on critiques of sustainable development and of business and human rights discourse, we argue that the ‘imbroglio’ of ecocide, in its current legal definition, lies in presenting ecological preservation and devastation as simultaneously legitimate aims. We ultimately raise the question of the role of international law in progressive political agendas, a question that could not be more pressing in times of entangled socio-ecological-economic disruptions. 

Cusato, Eliana, & Jones, Emily (2023). The ‘imbroglio’ of ecocide: A political economic analysis. Leiden Journal of International Law, 1-20, available online open access.

Eliana Cusato is an Assistant Professor of International Law at the Amsterdam Law School (UvA). Her research explores the interrelation of political ecology/economy, violence, and conflict in the theory and practice of international law. She is the author of The Ecology of War and Peace: Marginalising Slow and Structural Violence in International Law, published in 2021 with Cambridge University Press. She holds a Ph.D. in Law from the National University of Singapore, where she was a recipient of the NUS Doctoral Research Scholarship. She is a member of the editorial board of the Leiden Journal of International Law and the Asian Journal of International Law. From 2020 to 2022, Eliana was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at UvA, where she worked on the ERC-funded research project 'Resource Wars in an Unequal World'.

Emily Jones is a NUAcT Fellow based in Newcastle Law School, Newcastle University. Emily is a generalist public international lawyer whose interdisciplinary work combines theory and practice. Her work broadly examines modes of resistance, hope and re-worlding, drawing on feminist, queer, posthuman, decolonial and critical disability studies in that aim. Emily’s work spans several fields of international law, including: international environmental law; the law of the sea; international human rights law; science, technology and international law; international disarmament law; and outer space law, among others. Emily's monograph, Feminist Theory and International Law: Posthuman Perspectives, was recently published with Routledge's GlassHouse series (2023). She is also the co-author of The Law of War and Peace: A Gender Analysis, Volume One, (Bloomsbury, 2021) and has co-edited two volumes: the More Posthuman Glossary (Bloomsbury, 2022) and International Law & Posthuman Theory (in press with Routledge - forthcoming 2023).

Christine Schwöbel-Patel is Professor of Law at the University of Warwick and a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH). She is the author of two monographs Marketing Global Justice (CUP 2021) and Global Constitutionalism in International Legal Perspective (Brill 2011). She is co-editor of Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress 2023 forthcoming), and editor of Critical Approaches to International Criminal Law: An Introduction (Routledge 2014). Her work focuses on the intersection between international law and its structural harms, analysing this from a political economy and aesthetics perspective.