21st SESSION OF THE ASSEMBLY OF STATES PARTIES
7 December 2022
Name of the Event: Climate change as a crime against humanity: Article 15 submission (co-hosted by Vanuatu, UK Youth Climate Coalition and the New Zealand Students for Climate Solutions)
Report by: Lilian Waldock, Program Manager, and Kelly van Eeten, Senior Research Associate, PILPG
Highlights:
The panel argues that contributing to climate change can qualify as a crime against humanity and that senior executives of British Petroleum plc (BP) committed it.
New Zealand Students for Climate Solutions and UK Youth Climate Coalition filed a submission to the International Criminal Court under Article 15 of the Rome Statute. They have also launched the campaign, Climate Crime, to accompany the submission.
The panelists presented key behavior by BP executives that shows that they willingly contributed to climate change and strategically spread misinformation about climate change.
Speakers:
Phoebe Nikolaou (Guest Lawyer, invited by SFCS)
Rilke Comer (SFCS)
Lauren Craig (SFCS)
George Carew-Jones (UKYCC)
Joshua Bloodworth (UKYCC)
Summary of the Event:
The session focused on contributing to climate change as a crime against humanity. And specifically, an Article 15 submission made today by the New Zealand Students for Climate Solutions and UK Youth Climate Coalition against the senior executives of British Petroleum (BP). BP is a multinational oil and gas company.
The first speaker, Phoebe, explained the legal implications of their submission. She argues that the preconditions towards jurisdiction have been met in their submission. These are set out under Article 12 of the Rome Statute and contain temporal and personal and/or territorial jurisdiction. Climate change is a crime that occurs across multiple countries, some may not be member states. Recent jurisdiction established that this is not problematic for the jurisdiction of the court as long as a component of the crime happened on the territory of a member state. The speaker argues that this broadens the scope of jurisdiction of the ICC regarding the crime of climate change since it has a global impact. In the case of BP senior executives, preconditions to jurisdiction are met since BP is located in the UK, which has been a member state since 2002. The temporal jurisdiction is also met, since the crime of climate change is argued by the panelist as a continuous crime, like forced marriage or displacement. The preconditions of complementarity and gravity are also met according to the panel. This is especially the case for gravity since climate change is causing extreme harm across the globe.
Speaker Rilke presented five key behaviors by BP and their executives showing their knowledge of their negative impact on climate change and their deliberate acting to avoid that they had to change their business behavior.
They established doubt about climate change
They deliberately created dependency on fossil fuels
They fostered as much delay as possible within climate change solutions
They advanced their common purpose through deceit, for example by underreporting their own emissions
They used everything at their disposal and wealth to influence political decision making
The panel underlined their difference from other panels at the ASP side events. The panel consisted of students who felt the urge to act against climate change. They did not have the luxury to have lived in a world without climate change. They noted that acts that have a negative impact on the environment and climate change are long seen as non criminal and not against the law. The panel urges the world to condemn these acts as criminal and unlawful.
In recognising their own lack of diversity, the panel was also keen to amplify the voices of those most impacted by the effects of climate change. Reading out a quote from a young Malawian on the tropical storms that impact a million people and kill several with each year that passes. And reading also a quote from a young Filipino who focused on the impact of frequent typhoons on the Philippines and highlighted that theirs is a “generation at the forefront of change”.
Environmental crimes have been historically overlooked in the debates around international crimes. The panel claimed that the ICC could bring an end to environmental impunity, as the court of last resort. The speakers argued that their case is not political and does not include a widening of the mandate of the ICC. One of the speakers said, “we are not here as revolutionaries, we are here to work within the institution of the ICC”, illustrating that the Court’s apparatus is the appropriate institution to persecute gross criminal behaviour leading to environmental damage through abuse of fossil fuels and end criminal impunity for climate change. The panel recognised that the ICC does not exist in isolation and highlighted the 2021 New Zealand lawsuit brought by the New Zealand Students for Climate Solutions stating that this action has resulted in a contribution to a loss and damage fund to pay compensation for losses inflicted on the world's poorest people by climate change.
Finally, the panel also noted the appropriateness of reparations in the case of this submission to the Court, stating that between 2005 and 2021, BP made 162 billion USD in net profit. Despite this, BP has invested very little in green energy at the same time as capitalizing on rebranding itself as a green energy company.