Your article brings home the severity and extent of the ecological fallout from the war in Ukraine (The ‘silent victim’: Ukraine counts war’s cost for nature, 20 February). This wholesale demolition of nature is described as ecocide – a term put forward by the Stop Ecocide Foundation as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”. Although no law has yet been passed, we know ecocide when we see it. It is a moral red line that is being crossed.
But how do we view the more insidious, piecemeal devastation of nature on our doorstep – the spraying of bee-killing pesticides, the poisoning of our local rivers, the ravaging of yet another biodiverse habitat for “development”?
