What is ecocide and what are well-known examples of it?

Obviously echoing the specter of genocide, the concept of Ecocide emerged from the US mass chemical attack on Vietnam's ecology through the use of defoliants such as Agent Orange. Ecocide thus refers to altering an ecosystem in such a manner that it can no longer support all manner of living organisms that previously depended on it. In the late 1960s, incontrovertible evidence (see photo below from 1, Chapter 7, page 134 ) of the unprecedented and entirely man-made ecological catastrophe from Agent Orange's use began piling up. Ironically enough 'ecocide' was coined by the man whose graduate research studies were crucial to the development of Agent Orange in the 1st place. At a 1970 conference titled, 'War Crimes and the American Conscience' (1, Chapter 7, Page 114), describing the fallout of Operation Ranch Hand, the US military's indiscriminate use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, Arthur Galston said (emphasis mine),

'It seems to me that the willful and permanent destruction of environment in which a people can live in a manner of their own choosing ought similarly to be considered as a crime against humanity, to be designated by the term ecocide . . . At the present time, the United States stands alone as possibly having committed ecocide against another country, Vietnam, through its massive use of chemical defoliants and herbicides.'

Apart from Agent Orange, some well-known examples of ecocide are

• Chernobyl disaster
• Draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes, a process that accelerated post-1990 during Saddam Hussein's regime
• The 'anthropogenic desertification' of the Aral Sea (2), called one of the world's worst environmental disasters.

This answer discusses a less well-known example of an incident that's also been classified as having contributed to the near-ecocide of the Rhine (3), the 1986 Sandoz chemical spill.

Sandoz Chemical Spill: Lessons Learned In Its Aftermath Brought Rhine Back From The Brink Of Biological Death

~1,320 kilometers in length, the Rhine river winds through 6 countries and its catchment area of ~185000 square kilometers is home to ~50^6 people. Cities, towns and industries are dispersed along Rhine's banks. A major source of drinking water, supplying directly to ~5.5^6 people, and indirectly through re-treatment, to ~20^6 others, ~50% of Europe's chemical industry is located along the Rhine. This amounts to ~20% of worldwide chemical production capacity being concentrated in the Rhine river basin (4). A place of leisure and recreation, plant and animal habitat, source of drinking and cooling water, hydropower, and discharge of wastewater, such intensive use led to its 'near biological death' (4) so the Sandoz accident and its aftermath offer a cautionary tale of lessons well worth learning.

On 1st November 1986, at 12:19AM, an employee at chemical company Sandoz reported a fire in the Sandoz Warehouse 956 (4). This warehouse was located at the northwest boundary of the Sandoz works area in Schweizerhalle near Basel, Switzerland. It took ~160 firefighters from 10 fire brigades to extinguish the fire by ~5AM on 1st November. By then, the warehouse burned down completely (see a picture of the blaze below left from 4). Its cause has still not been conclusively established though investigations suggested it started from ignition of packets of Prussian blue pigment used during shrink wrapping.

At the time of the fire, Warehouse 956 had 1351 tons of chemicals, including 987 tons of agricultural supplies and 364 tons of other chemicals. The agricultural supplies included insecticides and other toxic chemicals, especially 859 tons of organophosphate insecticides, 11 metric tons of organic mercury compounds such as ethoxyethyl mercury hydroxide and phenyl mercury acetate, 73 metric tons of DNOC, Dinitro-ortho-cresol, a herbicide toxic to humans and fish when undiluted, 26 metric tons of Oxyphenbutazone, a biodegradable fungicide, 12 metric tons of Metoxuran, a biodegradable herbicide, 1974 kilos of Endosulfan, 720 kilos of fungicide Zineb, 2325 kilos of the acaricide Tedion, 158 kilos of fungicide Captafol, 30 kilos of rodenticide Scillirosid and 450 kilos of vole bait containing 13 kilos of zinc phosphide (5).

Stopping the fire consumed ~10000 to 20000 cubic meters of water (4, 5). Contaminated with ~30 tons of pesticide and ~200kg of mercury, this water flowed into the Rhine river. The washed chemicals formed a red toxic trail 70 kilometers long that moved downstream at ~3.7 kilometers per hour. While a Sandoz spokesman initially dismissed the red slick as 'harmless dyestuff', mercury levels in the Rhine at the Dutch-West German border reached 3X normal levels by Nov 8, 1986 (5). The groundwater also became polluted with unknown amounts of persistent organic pollutants while the contamination at the fire site was estimated to be several tons of insecticides and ~100 kilos of mercury that got absorbed into ~40000 cubic meters of earth (5).

• Switzerland notified downstream countries like the Netherlands only >24 hours later while Sandoz only informed drinking water companies along the Rhine river about this toxic influx 3 days later (5).
• By 5 November, 1986, the toxic contamination had spread ~400 kilometers. Water utilities along the Middle and Lower Rhine closed their water intakes.
• On 8th November, 1986, ~10000 people demonstrated in Basel against the 'Arrogance of Power’.
• On 18th November, 1986, Sandoz reported for the 1st time that the burned stockroom had also contained 1.9 tons of the highly toxic insecticide, Endosulfan.
• Special vacuum sludge cleaners were used to remove the toxic sludge to a dumping site (4, 5). Taking ~16000 worker days, Sandoz employees sifted and sorted through the debris, and stored ~2695 metric tons of contaminants in 250 dump trucks, 17 railway cars, >6000 storage drums for later disposal (5).
• On Dec 2, 1986, Switzerland's President and Interior Minister, Alphons Egli declared that the Sandoz accident had 'destroyed in one night' Switzerland's environmental record and reputation (5).

Rhine's fauna was devastated by this spill. Thousands of dead fish and water fowl started washing up along its banks. For e.g., ~150000 eels, almost the entire Upper Rhine population of this specialized benthos feeder, were found dead (see an example in the picture above right from 4).

Walter Herrmann, Chief Inspector of the Rhine River Police in central Basel, reported finding a few live, but moribund, fish and eels among the dead ones, 'their eyes popped out, gills collapsed and skin covered with wounds and sores' (5). A spokesman for the German Ministry of the Environment later reported all species in the contaminated water had died. On Dec 12, 1986, the Swiss Federal Institute for Water Resources and Water Pollution Control (EAWAG) reported that the Rhine's fish population had been almost entirely wiped out. Mussels and insect larvae began to be seen along the polluted stretch only 8 months later. Sheep that drank Rhine water in Strasbourg, France, died (5). Slowly replenished by Rhine tributaries, it took years for Rhine's fauna to return to normal.

All water utilities in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and West Germany processing Rhine water for drinking shut down temporarily. West German towns along the Rhine began to depend on water trucked in from outside. The fire also released oxides of sulphur, phosphorus, nitrogen, carbon and foul-smelling mercaptans into the air (5).

Unrelated to the Sandoz accident, 1986 turned out be a period of cataclysmic man-made disasters for the Rhine as it became polluted by multiple industrial incidents (5), at least 18 incidents between June and Dec 1986 according to 6.

• Mid-October, 1986, the Bayer factory in Leverkusen, West Germany, leaked ~10 metric tons of a benzene compound into the Rhine.
• Oct 31 or Nov 1, 1986, Ciba-Geigy, Switzerland's largest chemical company, illegally discharged ~400 kilos of the herbicide Atrazine into the Rhine. This was only discovered when the Sandoz accident prompted Rhine water testing.
• Nov 7, 1986, a provisional seal in the burned warehouse's drainage system leaked, releasing an additional 30 to 60 metric tons of contaminated water into the Rhine. According to Sandoz, this amounted to ~ 0.025µg per liter of mercury and 3.1mg per liter of phosphoric acid ester.
• On Dec 2, 1986, the Lonza chemical factory in Waldshut, West Germany, accidentally discharged ~2.7 metric tons of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) into the Rhine when an employee mistakenly left a valve open.

The environmental catastrophe from the Sandoz fire left lasting results: improvement of international agreements among countries that shared Rhine water, River Rhine Action Programme, the symbolic 'Salmon 2000' programme to bring salmon back to the Rhine within 10 years, and the ICPR (International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine) which installed the WAP Rhine (International Warning and Alarm Plan 'Rhine', Rhine Alarm Model). ICPR's goals are to avert danger, detect causes, investigate, remove damage as and when it occurs, avoid further damage, and timely public announcements in the case of damages of public interest (see figures below from 4, 7). 

Thus, bringing Rhine to the brink of 'biological death' (4), in retrospect, the man-made catastrophe in the form of the Sandoz chemical spill instead catalyzed binding multi-national co-operation that led to the Rhine's resuscitation in the face of seemingly impossible odds.

After merging with Ciba-Geigy in 1996, today Sandoz-Ciba-Geigy is known as Novartis. Payout for liability to hundreds of municipalities proceeded for years.

Bibliography

1. Zierler, David. "The invention of ecocide." Agent Orange (2011).

2. Kotlyakov, Vladimir M. "The Aral Sea basin: a critical environmental zone." Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 33.1 (1991): 4-38.

3. Teclaff, Ludwik A. "Beyond Restoration-The Case of Ecocide." Nat. Resources J. 34 (1994): 933 - 956. http://lawschool.unm.edu/nrj/vol...

4. Reinhard, Walter. "The SANDOZ Catastrophe and the Consequences for the River Rhine." Risk Assessment as a Basis for the Forecast and Prevention of Catastrophies 35 (2008): 113 - 121.

5. Schwabach, Aaron. "The Sandoz Spill: The Failure of International Law to Protect the Rhine from Pollution' (1989)." Ecology Law Quarterly 16: 443 - 480.

6. Boos-Hersberger, Astrid. "Transboundary Water Pollution and State Responsibility: The Sandoz Spill." Annual Survey of International & Comparative Law 4.1 (2010): 7. http://digitalcommons.law.ggu.ed...

7. Reinhard, Walter. "The Latest Hesse Water and Soil Protection Guidelines.” Risk Assessment as a Basis for the Forecast and Prevention of Catastrophies 35 (2008): 122 - 128.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-ecocide-and-what-are-well-known-examples-of-it/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala