Today, on October 26, the international seminar “Legal qualification of crimes against the environment: joining forces at the national and international levels” began at the Prosecutor’s Training Center of Ukraine involving national and international experts, scientists and practitioners in the field of law.
Opening the event, the Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine, Ruslan Strilets, emphasized that the hostilities and environment destructions during war cause huge damage, which will have to be compensated for by the aggressor. Therefore, documenting the damage and calculating the damages to the environment to be compensated for in future can become a deterrent for future aggressions of this kind.
Borys Indychenko, the head of the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor’s Office (SEPO) emphasized the need to detail the legislation for legal regulation of ecocide. Today, the SEPO is investigating about 25 criminal proceedings for the crime of ecocide, of which 14 criminal proceedings related to the crime of ecocide during the armed aggression of the Russian Federation during 2022-2023. It is also important to reform the criminal law to make committing crimes against the environment unprofitable for the criminals.
Oleh Bondarenko, the head of the Parliamentary Committee on Environmental Policy noted that despite the adoption of European integration laws in the area of environmental protection, changes to the Criminal Code of Ukraine have not been adopted. Moreover, changes to legislation in the area of environmental protection are not a priority for parliamentarians, and the martial law makes the legislative work in this area more complicated.
The panelists discussed international legal regulation of ecocide and prevention of environmental damage during hostilities, current criminal legislation and court jurisprudence regarding ecocide crimes and violations of the laws and customs of war.
Also, international and Ukrainian experts discussed the importance of creation and specifics of functioning of the international register and its connection with the national register of damage.
The last block of discussions at the international seminar was devoted to criminalization of environmental damage at the level of the EU and EU member states, where legal experts from the EU detailed the shortcomings of legislation at the EU level and reasons for revising the relevant directive on environmental crimes.
Organizers of the seminar: the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, the Prosecutor’s Training Center of Ukraine, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine, inter-factional union of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine “For the Environment, Against Ecocide”, International charitable organization “Environment-People-Law”.
This event was held with the support of International Renaissance Foundation. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of International Renaissance Foundation.
