The Ecocide Bill was introduced in the Parliament by Monica Lennon MSP last May. Her proposal for tougher criminal sanctions for the most severe environmental harm received overwhelming support from thousands of people in a public consultation. With the bill, offenders could face penalties including unlimited fines and prison sentences up to 20 years.

Legal experts at the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS) described the vote as “a critical win” for holding the worst polluters to account, and an opportunity to diligently consider the remaining questions to drive through a robust ecocide law – the first in the UK.

MSPs on the Scottish Parliament’s Net Zero, Environment and Transport Committee have spent months scrutinising the proposals, hearing from public bodies, legal experts and industry organisations.

The EU criminalised “conduct comparable to ‘ecocide’” as part of its revised Environmental Crime Directive in 2024. Some member states, including France and Belgium, already have ecocide laws in place and the rest have a deadline to implement the directive in May. With the vote on the Ecocide Bill, Scotland has taken a step towards joining them.

Kate Smith, solicitor at ERCS, said: “We congratulate and thank Monica Lennon for her unrelenting work to criminalise ecocide in Scotland. It is imperative that Scotland has an ecocide offence at the top of the regulatory pyramid with appropriate penalties, protections for workers and the mechanisms to establish liability for corporations.

“Without an ecocide law, we risk letting the worst offenders off the hook. We have been pleased to see the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill thoroughly scrutinised by MSPs, and thanks to today’s vote we can now implement what has been learnt in stage two.

“It was also good to see the scrutiny of the bill raise important questions about Scotland’s current environmental governance regime and what may be limiting the effectiveness of the laws we already have in place. ERCS has called for this to be properly investigated for years.”