Ecocide and Ecoside

The Rights of Nature and Indigenous Communities Are Inseparable

Tribal fishing site along the Columbia River at The Dalles Dam. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Ecocide doesn’t mean killing a home here or a home there. It’s a crime of gigantic proportions and much worse than genocide, which is confined to humans, a crime with consequences for all living and non-living beings and their home, the now fragile planet we live in. It’s global in spread and globalising in consequences because everything in nature is connected, so nothing escapes. A group can denounce a crime of ecocide, but this doesn’t capture its immensity. It’s like an amoeba. You poke it somewhere and it bulges out somewhere else. Eventually the amoeba dies too because this is a crime against life itself.

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