There is no other Earth.
Environmental destruction may occur in a particular place, but the consequences—for communities, ecosystems, climate, security, and our shared future—do not stay neatly within borders.
AWP / NOW: NO OTHER EARTH begins with the work of Art Works Projects Emerging Lens Fellows Oyewole Lawal and Edwin Ndeke, whose documentary photography bears witness to environmental degradation and to the people and communities living through the aftermath.
Their images provide the human and visual starting point for an urgent conversation: When can serious environmental destruction become a matter of international criminal accountability?
International criminal law has long developed mechanisms for prosecuting atrocities against people, but its application to environmental destruction remains comparatively limited. In some circumstances, existing law can already reach severe environmental harm through established international crimes. While significant legal and practical barriers remain, a growing international movement seeks recognition of ecocide as a distinct crime.
Bringing together documentary photographers, climate advocates, international justice practitioners, and legal experts, NO OTHER EARTH will examine what existing international criminal law can—and cannot—do; how emerging legal tools may help investigators and prosecutors recognize and build environmental cases; what the proposed crime of ecocide could add; and how these different approaches can reinforce one another.
This conversation also asks what accountability requires beyond the courtroom. What role can documentary evidence play? How can artists, journalists, lawyers, investigators, advocates, and affected communities contribute to building the record from which future cases may emerge? And how might changing the way we name environmental destruction shift how institutions—and all of us—respond?
The evening precedes the 3 November opening of an exhibition at The Grey Space in the Middle featuring work by Lawal and Ndeke. Together, the exhibition and conversation shift from witnessing environmental harm to responsibility, accountability, and action—when we recognize that there is no distant “other” whose environment can be destroyed without consequences for our shared home.
Featured Artists
The evening begins with photographs by Oyewole Lawal and Edwin Ndeke. Their images ground the legal conversation in environmental degradation and its consequences for the people and communities living with it.
Oyewole Lawal
Photojournalist, sociologist, and AWP Emerging Lens Fellow
Edwin Ndeke
Photojournalist, documentary photographer, and AWP Emerging Lens Fellow
FROM WITNESS TO ACCOUNTABILITY
The program opens with the documentary work of Oyewole Lawal and Edwin Ndeke, then brings their images into conversation with climate action, existing international criminal law, emerging tools for investigators and prosecutors, and the movement to recognize ecocide as a distinct crime. The discussion will not assume that every act of environmental destruction is already an international crime. It will examine where current law can apply, where it remains limited, and what a new legal framework could add.
Documentary witness — environmental destruction and its consequences for affected communities.
The reach of existing law — circumstances in which established international crimes may already apply, as well as the evidentiary and jurisdictional barriers.
Tools for practice — the ICC Prosecutor’s Policy on Addressing Environmental Damage Through the Rome Statute and the Manual on Prosecuting International Environmental Crimes.
The movement for ecocide — what recognition of a distinct crime could add and why the campaign has particular resonance in Africa.
Responsibility beyond the courtroom — how documentation, investigation, litigation, journalism, advocacy, and community knowledge may strengthen the record for future accountability.
PROPOSED SPEAKERS AND MODERATOR
Participant confirmations are in progress. Final names and roles will be updated before publication.
Moderator: Leslie Thomas
Founder, Art Works Projects; Executive Producer, MIRA & MIRA Europe
Reinhold Gallmetzer (invited), Appeals Counsel and the Environmental Crimes Focal Point at the ICC OTP, to discuss the ICC Prosecutor’s Policy on Addressing Environmental Damage Under the Rome Statute, what the Office can and cannot act on, and how information reaches it.
Kate Mackintosh, Executive Director of The Promise Institute for Human Rights (Europe) (co-author of the Manual and member of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide), to talk about the Manual on Prosecuting International Environmental Crimes.
Patricia Willocq, Diplomatic director for Africa and Francophone countries at Stop Ecocide International, to talk about the campaign to criminalise ecocide, where it now stands internationally, and why it matters in Africa in particular, where extraction, deforestation and pollution have long outrun the capacity of domestic law to respond.
World’s Youth for Climate Justice representative — name TBD, to talk about the urgency of (youth-led) climate action and the need to use all strategies and tools to address the climate emergency and advance climate justice.
PROGRAM AT A GLANCE
17:00–17:30 — Doors open, registration and welcome
17:30–17:40 — Opening and introduction
17:40–17:55 — Visual introduction by Emerging Lens Fellows Oyewole Lawal and Edwin Ndeke
17:55–18:30 — Panel conversation: environmental harm, existing legal tools and ecocide
18:45–19:05 — Audience Q&A and discussion
19:05–19:15 — Closing reflections and introduction to the November 3 exhibition
19:15–20:00 — Networking drinks and exhibition viewing
QUESTIONS AT THE CENTER OF THE CONVERSATION
Could the harms shown this evening be treated as crimes under existing law, and what would it take to bring such a case?
What does criminal law reach that environmental and climate litigation does not, and what does environmental and climate litigation reach that criminal law does not?
How does the work of applying existing law relate to the campaign for a crime of ecocide: are the two complementary, or in tension?
How do corporate power, mass extraction, mass consumption, and political corruption enable environmental destruction—and what would meaningful accountability require?
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
NO OTHER EARTH is intended for members of The Hague's legal and diplomatic community; lawyers working on environmental and climate cases; documentary artists, journalists, investigators, and advocates; and people interested in climate and environmental action.
THE EXHIBITION CONTINUES THE STORY
The evening precedes the 3 November opening of an exhibition at The Grey Space in the Middle featuring work by AWP Emerging Lens Fellows.
ORGANIZED BY
Art Works Projects
The Promise Institute for Human Rights
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
In person · Free · Registration required · Capacity 80