ERCS advocates for the criminalisation of ecocide at the top of the environmental governance pyramid, with the highest penalties for corporate polluters committing the most serious environmental harms.[1]
During the last parliament, we worked closely with Monica Lennon MSP and supported, in principle, her Ecocide (Scotland) Bill as co-chair of her Expert Advisory Group.[2]
Unfortunately, the Bill fell at Stage 2 with the dissolution of Parliament in April. The Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, responsible for scrutinising the Bill, found “a strong case for changing the law”,[3] but concluded that time had run out to resolve key issues.
We agree with this course of action rather than rushing the Bill through. Although we applaud Monica Lennon’s commitment to criminalising ecocide, the Ecocide Bill had weaker provisions on corporate liability and penalties than we had hoped for. Both the Committee’s Stage 1 report and its Legacy Report reflected many of our concerns.[4]
With a new parliament in place, we revisit outstanding questions from the Bill’s scrutiny and consider the next steps for the effective criminalisation of ecocide.
The purpose and limits of an ecocide law
A key challenge acknowledged by the Committee was how to criminalise ecocide within Scotland’s existing legal framework and whether it requires a separate piece of legislation.
Section 40 of the Regulatory Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 already makes it an offence to cause significant environmental harm. One route is to strengthen this provision; another is to create a standalone offence that builds on it but sets a higher threshold of harm. Both options have merit which need more time to evaluate.
Importantly, the Committee’s scrutiny led to broader questions about Scotland’s environmental governance – including the inadequate enforcement of existing environmental laws – a topic we have consistently raised with them. The Committee specifically recommended that the next Scottish Government examine why section 40 has been used so rarely and what may be limiting its effectiveness.
This is the level of scrutiny we hoped to see in the Review of the Effectiveness of Environmental Governance.[5] Our commissioned report Scoping a Domestic Legal Framework for Ecocide in Scotland similarly underscored the inadequacies of regulatory enforcement which cannot be resolved with an ecocide law alone.
Holding corporate polluters to account for ecocide
We know that the most severe environmental incidents are most likely to occur in the corporate sector, for example the nurdle pollution caused by a tanker collision in the North Sea last year. To make polluters pay, an ecocide law must be capable of holding corporate actors responsible.
In our evidence session to the Committee, we argued that the liability thresholds in the Ecocide Bill were in part too high to convict corporations and responsible officials and in part too low to protect workers from being scapegoated.
While the high mens rea (standard of intent or recklessness) reflected the seriousness of ecocide, it would have been difficult to prove in practice. Complex corporate management structures and subcontracting chains are common in cases of environmental harm. These make it easier for those at the top to evade liability.
The Committee’s Stage 1 report echoed many of our recommendations to strengthen corporate liability – including criminalising both acts and omissions causing ecocide, refining the definition of ‘responsible officials’ and clarifying the defence of necessity.[6]
However, we believe more work is needed to protect workers who carry out the instructions of their superiors.
Next steps?
We thank Monica Lennon for her work to criminalise ecocide and for raising critical questions about environmental governance. Scotland must have a robust ecocide offence to hold the worst polluters to account and keep pace with the EU’s revised Environmental Crime Directive.
With the groundwork now laid, we look forward to working with the new parliament to find robust solutions to these thorny issues.
We urge the new Scottish Government to begin this work as soon as possible with a review of section 40 of the Regulatory Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, to determine what can be learned from existing law and how to deliver effective criminalisation of ecocide in Scotland.
[1] Read our commissioned report ERCS/Killean & Short (March 2024) Scoping a Domestic Legal Framework for Ecocide in Scotland.
[3] Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee (January 2026) Stage 1 report on the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill, p59.
[4] Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee (January 2026) Stage 1 report on the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill; Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee (March 2026) Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee Session 6 Legacy Report.
[5] Find out more in ERCS’s consultation response to Review of the Effectiveness of Environmental Governance (October 2023).
[6] For more information on our proposals, see our letter to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee on the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill (October 2025).
Header image: Oil Spill in Dalian by Peter Ma, licensed under CC BY 2.0.
