Eco-centricism Sample Clauses

Eco-centricism. In 1949, with the devastation and wounds of the Second World War still fresh, Xxxx Xxxxxxx’x Land Ethic was published, in which he observed that “all ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.”216 This eco-centric view, which has become more prevalent in recent decades, seeks to ascribe the environment an intrinsic value, irrespective of whether human beings suffer as a result of environmental harm.217 Adherents to the eco-centric approach seek not only the application of international criminal law to environmental damage per se, but also the development of new prohibitions criminalising damage to the environment irrespective of a state of armed conflict and irrespective of whether human beings are harmed by the offending actions. Several significant instruments of international law attribute value to the environment per se, rather than only insofar as it directly serves human interests. For example, the 1972 World Heritage Convention defines natural heritage as natural features, geological or physiographical formations, and natural sites of “outstanding universal view” from the “point of view of science” and “conversation”, as well as due to aesthetic value.218 Similarly, the United Nations General Assembly has emphasized the “intrinsic value of biological diversity” 214 See, e.g., Brigadier-General Xxxxxx X. Xxxxxxx XXX, US Army, “The Army and the Environment: Environmental Considerations during Army Operations” (“Xxxxxxx (1996)”) in Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx, Xxxx Xxxx and Xxxxxx XxXxxxx (eds.), Protection of the Environment During Armed Conflict, International Law Studies, Vol.69 (1996), p.46. 215 However, see discussion below of cases from New Zealand and India in which environmental features have been given legal status, infra Chapter IV(D)(1)(a). 216 Xxxx Xxxxxxx, 1886-1948. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949). 217 See, e.g., Xxxxxx (2005), pp.151-152. 218 World Heritage Convention 1972, 1037 UNTS 151, article 2 (defining natural heritage as “natural features consisting of physical and biological formations or groups of such formations, which are of outstanding universal value from the aesthetic or scientific point of view; geological and physiographical formations and precisely delineated a...