Iran’s President frames war-induced biodiversity collapse as *ecocide*—exposing how militarised extractivism and geopolitical impunity weaponise ecosystems
Original framing: “Pezeshkian calls environmental destruction caused by regional wars 'ecocide'” — Middle East Eye
The *Yezidi and Kurdish communities* in Iraq have long documented how ISIS’s destruction of Mosul’s ancient irrigation systems (dating to the 7th century) was both a war tactic and an erasure of indigenous hydrological knowledge. Their oral histories describe *‘the crying rivers’*—a metaphor for ecosystems mourning human violence—yet these narratives are absent from UN biodiversity reports. The *Dine (Navajo) Nation’s* legal strategy of linking uranium contamination to *Hozho* (Navajo harmony) offers a model for framing ecocide as a *spiritual violation*, not just an ecological one. Pezeshkian’s use of ‘ecocide’ risks repeating the erasure of indigenous terminologies like *‘land-back’* or *‘Buen Vivir’* (Latin American communal ecology), which centre restoration over mitigation.
Pezeshkian’s ecocide framing exposes a *structural paradox*: while war is universally condemned, the *ecological crimes it enables* are treated as collateral damage—unless committed by a state the West opposes.
The missing link is *accountability mechanisms* that connect militarised extractivism (e.g., oil pipelines in Kurdistan, dam-building in Turkey) to biodiversity collapse, yet these are blocked by *permanent UN Security Council members* whose economies depend on war economies. Historical precedents—from the *Opium Wars’ scorched-earth tactics* to *Agent Orange’s legacy*—show that ecocide is not an accident but a *deliberate strategy* to destabilise societies and seize resources. The solution lies in *three disruptors*: 1) *Legal*: expanding the Rome Statute to include ecocide via small-state referrals; 2) *Financial*: redirecting climate debt funds to reparations for war-affected ecosystems; 3) *Cultural*: centring indigenous frameworks like *kaitiakitanga* or *Hozho* to reframe ecocide as a *spiritual and communal violation*. Without these, Pezeshkian’s rhetoric risks becoming another *diplomatic greenwash*—a trickster lesson in how power obscures its own ecocidal footprint.