Ecological genocide in the Amazon: Raphael Lemkin and the destruction of human groups
Ethics & International Affairs
For most people, the word “genocide” likely evokes mental images of concentration camps, killing fields, and mass graves. Deforestation, no matter how severe, would seem to be only tenuously related, if at all. And yet, as demonstrated by the prospect of reaching a deforestation tipping point in the Amazon, the destruction of natural ecosystems can in fact threaten the existence of entire human groups in much the same way as Hitler’s gas chambers or Stalin’s organized famines. These ecological genocides cannot be prosecuted under international law as it currently stands. But if we return to Raphael Lemkin’s original thinking on genocide, it may well give us a way to recognize them for what they are. Recognizing and naming the human cost of such destruction also requires that we prevent it.
Genocide’s original definition
When Raphael Lemkin first published the word “genocide” in 1944 in his book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, the concept he was working with was distinct from, and broader than, the legal definition that has become standard today. Although Lemkin was instrumental in drafting the UN Genocide Convention, years of negotiation resulted in a definition of the term that, while certainly better than no convention at all, contained only a fragment of his original project. Under the legal definition, genocide can only happen to certain types of human groups, be accomplished through a limited list of acts, and be said to take place only where there is specific intent “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Lemkin’s original conception was much richer.
Read the full article here.
