World Economic Forum (WEF) speaker Jojo Mehta, the founder of Stop Ecocide Now, said farming, as a part of ecocide, should be considered a “serious crime.”
Discussing “ecocide,” or the destruction of nature by humans, Mehta urged that the activity should be “recognized as a serious crime.”
“We have this cultural, very ingrained habit of not taking damage to nature as seriously as we take damage to people or property,” she said. “With human rights, at least you know that mass murder and genocide are serious crimes, but there is no equivalent in the environmental space,” she said.
“Unlike an international crime like genocide that involves a specific intent, with ecocide, what we see is that people are trying to do, what businesses are trying to do, is make money, is farm, is fish, is do all these things that are producing energy … and what’s missing is an awareness of the side effects and collateral damage that happens with that.”
In the WEF’s 2023 Global Risks Report, the loss of biodiversity is highlighted as the fourth leading issue for the next decade.
According to the WEF, biodiversity and ecosystem loss would likely be connected to ecocide.
“Without significant policy change or investment, the interplay between climate change impacts, biodiversity loss, food security and natural resource consumption will accelerate ecosystem collapse, threaten food supplies and livelihoods in climate-vulnerable economies, amplify the impacts of natural disasters, and limit further progress on climate mitigation,” the report says.
