Environmental Crimes: Effect of COVID-19 on Non-human Victims

Joglekar, Yashprada

The article aims at finding out the impact of COVID-19 on forest and wildlife crimes, as the novel coronavirus or COVID-19 stalled our daily activities in the most unexpected manner. Studies have shown that the origin of any influenza virus is typically from animals.2 Thus, a direct nexus can be established between wildlife trade (primarily which is illegal) and the spread of coronavirus. United Nations Environmental Programme of 2016 identified issues of upcoming zoonotic diseases while discussing their emergence and re-emergence and its link with the ecosystem. In this article, an attempt is made to understand the framework and stance of International Criminal Court in regard to the environmental crimes. Further this article mentions the role International Criminal Court can play if the office of prosecutor were to try and prosecute the cases of environmental crimes.Further, Sustainable Development Goals 13, 14 and 153 play an important role in this secondary study. Since these goals have presented us with the opportunity to interlink goals with one another and thus discuss the need of protecting and conserving non-human victims of environmental harms along with human victims. Study of reports from international and national organizations, law journals, case laws, news reports, books, commentaries, etc., are used and finally the conclusive remark is based on the interpretation of this primary data. This article solely proposes to analyse and identify the challenges faced by non-human victims mainly forest and wildlife during the course of pandemic outbreak.