For Sonic Acts Academy 2020, INTERRT’s Nabil Ahmed’s lecture ‘Ecocide Forensics’ explored how spatial analysis and environmental forensics are put to work by INTERPRT to not only document underreported environmental offenses and human rights violations, but also in an effort to recognise ecocide as an international crime. First invoked during the Vietnam War, ecocide has the potential to be an effective tool for climate frontline governments and civil society in the fight against ecological impunity at the international criminal court and beyond.

He presented that international criminal justice offers considerably limited protection to the environment and to the livelihoods and dignity of peoples. In West Papua, where the Papuans are fighting the longest self-determination struggle in the Pacific, the Indonesian state and minerals, natural gas and palm oil corporations are getting away with ecocide and crimes against humanity. Yet today, civil society groups, NGOs and journalists have expanded access to geospatial information, audiovisual media and open-source data to expose state violence and corporate crimes. Forensic truths acquired by non-state actors are increasingly admitted in legal contexts and for advocacy purposes. 

Nabil also joined the panel ‘Ecocide – The Missing Crime’ with geographer and sound artist AM Kanngieser, moderated by Emma van Meyeren. Together they shared their expertise and artistic practices of observing and listening to those struggling societies at the frontline of the environmental crisis in the Pacific.