By John Rune

“Those rights doesn’t actually mean anything unless we have criminal law to back them up with–Stop Ecocide member Jamie Hunter explains his vision.

A Nelson climate activist calls for more criminal consequences against countries or corporations who damage the environment.

Nelson resident Jamie Hunter, representative for the Canadian branch of the international Stop Ecocide campaign says him and his colleagues in the group got a good reception at the recent COP15 Biodiversity Conference in Montreal.

“Many of those people were from countries that are really being threatened right now by climate change and biodiversity loss,” Hunter said. “So they were particularly interested in solutions like Stop Ecocide.”

The organization is aiming for International Criminal Court, ICC, to add ecocide as a prosecutable offence, along with the courts mandate to investigate and pursue things like genocide or war crimes. The initiative strives to give individual countries prosecuting powers, or in the case they refuse, offer the ICC to prosecute.

Hunter said being at the Montreal conference gave the organization the first opportunity to gather its Canadian branch in-person.

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