Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if he will make it his policy to work with other parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to propose an amendment to make ecocide a crime under that statute.

'Ecocide' is not a crime recognised under the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute. While there are currently no UK plans to propose an amendment to the Rome Statute to include 'ecocide', Article 8 of the Rome Statute does provide protections to the natural environment in armed conflict: it designates intentional attacks that knowingly cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment as a war crime.