A Reflection on the Feasibility of Applying the International Criminal Court’s Jurisdiction over Environmental Crimes

International Criminal Court based on its statute has a specific subject-matter jurisdiction over the four core international crimes; these are the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole. The environmental crimes are not among those four titles. The main question in this article is whether ICC is able to apply jurisdiction over the environmental crimes. Environmental crimes have common criteria of crimes under ICC’s jurisdiction such as gravity and international nature. So, those crimes may be considered by ICC under the Rome Statute. Although, in the current legal order there is no hope of amendment to the statute and inclusion of new crime of ecocide in subject-matter jurisdiction. Current system of statute has enough capability and capacity to cover environmental crimes under any crime of genocide, war crimes and specially, crimes against humanity.