Nabil Ahmed, Proof of Ecocide: Towards a Forensic Practice for the Proposed International Crime Against the Environment, Archaeological and Environmental Forensic Science, Vol. 1(2), pp. 139-147 (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.
