‘Ecocide’ law campaign could lead to jail for polluting water firm bosses

Green campaigners are calling on the UK Government to introduce prison sentences for those who commit ecocide, acts which cause serious damage to ecosystems, claiming that current environmental law is not strong enough.

The legal activists told i creating a new ecocide offence could help clean up Britain’s rivers and seas, amid growing public anger over the sewage still being pumped into the nation’s waterways.

Ecocide, as drawn up by lawyers for the Stop Ecocide Foundation, is defined as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment”.

Campaigners fear the UK is falling behind the EU after Brexit, with Brussels having agreed earlier this year to a directive punishing offences “comparable to ecocide”.

The bloc voted to criminalise the most serious forms of damage to the environment – including widespread pollution of air, water and soil – with prison sentences of up to 10 years, and fines reaching up to 5 per cent of annual global turnover.

Member states were told they have two years to enshrine the directive in national law.

The idea of an ecocide law has some momentum in the UK. In Scotland, Labour MSP Monica Lennon has proposed a private member’s bill that would criminalise ecocide north of the border.

She wants to see a minimum jail sentence of 10 years, with a maximum of 20 years.

“My hope is that ecocide law, in Scotland and across the UK, can help corporations clean up their act. It’s about creating a strong deterrent that simply doesn’t exist right now,” she told i.

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Ms Lennon highlights oil spills, destruction of forests and unsustainable fishing practices – such as the illegal scallop dredging in marine protected areas – as the kind of high-level incidents to which an ecocide law could apply.

The politician acknowledges that an ecocide law would set a high bar for “unlawful or wanton acts”. She also accepts that it may not cover the kind of routine sewage overflows which water firms across the UK are allowed to do during heavy rain and storms.

However, Ms Lennon hopes an ecocide law may help “end the culture of complacency” among water company chiefs, who promised in May 2023 to radically reduce the number of sewage spills by the end of the decade.

“If you’re in a boardroom and you’re at all worried you could be anywhere close to committing ecocide, then it’s time to change what you’re doing,” said the MSP.

Jojo Mehta, chief executive of the Stop Ecocide International campaign, said “huge chemical and oil spills” are the most obvious candidates for punishment under ecocide.

She believes ecocide law could cover the worst kind of harm to Britain’s rivers, should sewage or agricultural pollution be shown to have caused “severe and either widespread or long-term damage”.

Asked by i if ecocide law could, in theory, see UK water company bosses go to jail, Ms Mehta said: “The answer is yes.”

“It would have to be pretty bad,” she added. “If you’re looking at a severe degradation – where an entire river system is polluted – you could be knocking on the threshold of ecocide and custodial sentences.

“What we need is a precautionary approach, where water companies and other corporations are wondering, ‘Could this be severe as being the level of ecocide’? You want the threat of criminal punishment to lead to a change in behaviour.”

Gina Miller, the anti-Brexit campaigner who leads the True and Fair Party, is pushing for an ecocide law so the UK can catch up with developments elsewhere in the world.

Map shows the ten single storm overflows that spilled the most amount of sewage in 2023 (Picture: Environment Agency/i)

Belgium passed a law criminalising ecocide in March, building on legislation imposed by France in 2021. Similar draft laws have been proposed in the Netherlands, Italy, Brazil and Mexico.

“We’re falling behind what is happening in the EU,” said Ms Miller. “I can’t think of a single regulator in the UK that’s fit for purpose. We need tougher penalties and sentences. We need the next government to put ecocide into law.”

Could ecocide law halt illegal fishing practices?

Labour MSP Monica Lennon hopes her private member’s bill to bring in an ecocide law in Scotland can help tackle a wide range of issues – including illegal fishing practices.

Her proposed bill highlights the problem of illegal scallop dredging in marine-protected areas.

Environmentalists say the method, which sees rakes dragged across the bottom of the sea, can have a devastating impact on coral-like species such as maerl, sponges, mussel beds and other habitats used by a wide variety of sealife.

While there have been prosecutions in Scotland against those found to have broken regulations, Ms Lennon said the fines “has not reflected the seriousness of the environmental impact”.

The MSP told i: “Even if regulators had more resources to tackle environmental harm, I’m not convinced current laws are adequate. The law hasn’t kept pace with the enormity of climate change or the urgency of nature loss.”

Curled octopus amongst a mussel bed in Shetland, Scotland (Photo: Richard Shucksmith/The Big Picture)

Labour’s shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy has vowed to “work with allies and partners” to make ecocide a crime at the International Criminal Court (ICC). But Sir Keir Starmer’s party has not committed to bringing in an equivalent domestic law.

Conservative MPs haven’t commented on the issue. However, Tory peer Zac Goldsmith, the ex-environment minister, told i that he backs Labour’s push for ecocide law to be prosecutable by the ICC.

“Ecocide means destroying ecological systems that make life itself possible, so it makes no sense that ecocide isn’t yet viewed as a crime, perhaps even the gravest crime against humanity,” said Lord Goldsmith.

Georgia Elliot-Smith, a director of Fighting Dirty, a group of campaigners raising legal cases against England’s Environment Agency over an alleged failure to act on pollution, thinks ecocide can be “the mother of all environmental laws”.

The risk of prison sentences would have a “seismic impact” on the way companies behave, she said. “It would be on the radar on corporations’ risk managers and the corporate insurance industry. They are the people who really run the world.”

A UK government spokesperson said: “We already have strong laws in place to protect the environment and breaking many of these is already a criminal offence.”

A Water UK spokesperson said: “Water companies in England and Wales want to invest £11bn – three times the current rate – to cut sewage spills as quickly as possible. We now need the regulator Ofwat to give us the green light so we can get on with it.”