WCC News: WCC comments on International Criminal Court environmental crimes policy

The World Council of Churches (WCC) submitted a comment on 21 February to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the court’s draft policy on environmental crimes.  The Hambach open pit mine is operated by RWE close to Bonn, Germany and extracts lignite, or brown coal, the most polluting form of coal. The mine is the deepest depression on the surface of the planet. This mining area near Cologne is Europe’s greatest source of CO2 emissions. Photo: Sean Hawkey/Life on Earth 25 February 2025 The comment follows a WCC submission on 16 March 2024 building on an earlier WCC request to the ICC’s Assembly of State Parties in December 2023 urging legal reform to address the current impunity of climate disinformation.  After the WCC’s December 2023 request, in February 2024 the ICC announced plans to develop an environmental crimes policy and invited inputs. The December 2023 WCC comment recommends that two types of criminal acts be addressed under the current Rome Statute as environmental crimes: climate disinformation and financing new fossil fuel extraction and exploitation. The WCC has focused on environmental sustainability and the need for action to address climate change and its impacts for more than five decades. In its most recent comment on 21 February, the WCC applauds the Prosecutor’s recognition of the ICC’s role in addressing this matter under international criminal law. “We welcome the fact that humanity’s urgent need to protect the environment is clearly recognized in the draft policy, and the Prosecutor’s explicit commitment to ensuring that this responsibility is reflected in all of his office’s investigations and cases,” said Peter Prove, director of the WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs. “Indeed, in the evident absence of political will to protect life on Earth from the worst impacts of the accelerating climate crisis, all possible instruments of accountability under international law must be engaged.” Prove also welcomed especially the draft policy’s stated objective to, among other things, engage with corporate or other private actors to put them on notice of legal risks related to their activities.  “However, the current draft of the policy does not directly address the – in our view – egregiously criminal actions of individual fossil fuel company executives who deliberately promote ‘greenwashing’ and disinformation regarding their industry’s role as the main driver of climate change and its catastrophic consequences,” he said. “We believe the ICC Prosecutor can do more to create opportunities for new jurisprudence in order to hold individual executives accountable for actions that imperil our global future.” The most promising avenue for prosecution under the current Rome Statute, the WCC commented, would be to argue that the actions of individual executives who promote climate disinformation in full knowledge of the falseness of the positions promoted and the catastrophic impacts of such disinformation could constitute crimes against humanity. “We do not minimize the challenges involved in pursuing any such investigation, not least with regard to establishing intent, that the executives concerned knowingly engaged in disinformation campaigns with the intent to cause harm, and with regard to causation, linking specific corporate executive actions to particular climate impacts, though advances in attribution science may reduce this particular obstacle,” reads the WCC comment.  In its conclusion, the WCC comment acknowledges that, while prosecuting fossil fuel executives for climate disinformation under the current Rome Statute would be challenging, there is a potential legal basis.  “As the threat of climate change grows, there is increasing pressure to use international criminal law to hold accountable those most responsible for environmental destruction. Successful prosecution would likely require both innovative legal arguments and potential amendments to the Rome Statute.” Through its comments and programmes, the WCC has emphasized the physical and mental suffering imposed on the world's children, who are growing up with the perspective that the planet might become inhospitable to life if CO2 emissions continue to rise and are not rapidly reduced to net zero. WCC welcomes International Criminal Court policy establishing accountability for environmental crimes (WCC news release, 26 March 2024) WCC's work on Care for creation and climate justice Churches’ Commitments to Children See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 352 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 580 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay from the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches Chemin du Pommier 42 Kyoto Building Le Grand-Saconnex CH-1218 Switzerland