This workshop reimagines ecocide through a multispecies lens, challenging current legal definitions that centre human harm while overlooking the widespread violence inflicted on animals. Although ecocide is increasingly discussed as an international crime, its dominant formulations remain anthropocentric, failing to recognize animals as beings whose lives, habitats, and communities are systematically destroyed.
A key focus of the workshop is industrialized animal agriculture – one of the largest drivers of greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and everyday animal suffering. Addressing ecocide requires confronting this system and its role in accelerating climate breakdown.
Drawing on the concept of animal ecocide, the workshop explores how recognizing large-scale harm to animals could transform climate justice approaches, strengthen advocacy, and expand environmental protections. We will also consider how many "green" solutions continue to exploit animals, and why genuinely transformative responses must challenge speciesism and support plant-based, multispecies ethics.
Participants will examine:
Through discussion and practical activities, this workshop offers tools for integrating multispecies justice into activism and imagining climate action that truly includes the more-than-human world.