Nabil Ahmed, Proof of Ecocide: Towards a Forensic Practice for the Proposed International Crime Against the Environment 1 ARCHAEOLOGICAL & ENVTL. FORENSIC SCI. 139 (2017)

This article argues for the evidentiary use of environmental forensic science, which “can work in an interdisciplinary fashion to help define ecocide [as a] crime,” from an international justice perspective. Ahmed opens with a background on ecocide, its history and definitional journey. He then discusses environmental evidence, focusing on remote sensing as both a human rights investigation tool and an environmental forensics technique. Due to satellite ability to detect landscape change virtually anywhere on Earth over time, remote sensing is “particularly well-suited to collect[ing] spatial evidence on the widespread, long term and severe nature of environmental damage.” He concludes by recommending civil society training on working with such environmental evidence for future prosecution contexts.

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