Charge those responsible for death by global heating with 'Democide'

Last week, members of the Climate Justice Charter movement laid charges of culpable homicide against several top government officials, including President Ramaphosa. They say the charges are warranted because the government has failed to take measures to mitigate the climate crisis, despite multiple warnings of the dangers of global heating.

The charges against the president and the likes of Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe and Environment Minister Barbara Creecy are serious. 

This case should raise an important debate about accountability, culpability and consequence for the violence of inaction – a debate that will only grow more relevant as the climate death toll rises. In this vein, I’ve been searching for the right word to describe and assign the culpability for elite inaction on the climate crisis. 

My search intensified after the Durban floods. Well over 400 deaths and rising, more than 60 of them children. Most of them are poor and black people. Their deaths were predictable and preventable (as explained here: Explainer: Why KZN was flooded and why it’s likely to happen again). 

After the experience of Nazism and World War 2, it took activists and lawyers to develop and usher into international law terms like “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” that could capture the gravity of the crimes commited and frame them as violations of fundamental human rights. They had lived through the Holocaust against Jewish and other peoples, and vowed “never again”. 

Years later, the return of genocide in countries like Rwanda and Bosnia made us familiar with the much older practice of “ethnic cleansing”. We vowed “never again”. 

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-04-21-load-shedding-is-here-to-stay-for-at-least-another-year-while-the-government-dithers-on-policy/

I recently learnt of the word omnicide (meaning “the destruction of all life or all human life (as by nuclear war”) after reading Amitav Ghosh’s profound book, The Nutmeg’s Curse. Ghosh and others argue that omnicide is what human economic activity is now doing to all living things: birthing mass extinctions that may eventually include our own.

After we have committed omnicide, there will be no more opportunities for “never agains”. 

Some may ask whether comparing the loss of life from climate change with that of genocide and ethnic cleansing is exaggerated and distasteful. I don’t think so.

In 2021 reputable researchers estimated that there are already five million climate change related deaths a year. There is also the unquantified pain and suffering accruing daily to tens of millions of climate migrants and refugees. Across the world most of the people suffering are poor, black and brown people. So what word should we use? 

What word can describe politicians who, despite having all the evidence and the means to mitigate a “natural disaster”, still knowingly do too little to avert that catastrophe? What word describes politicians who – while acknowledging that climate change is an existential threat to everyone – also know that it will primarily be borne by the poor? As long as the Rome that is burning is somebody else’s, they fiddle and delay decisive action. 

The best I can come up with is democide (from the Greek “dēmos”, the people, and “-cide”, to kill), meaning: “the killing of members of a country’s civilian population as a result of its government’s policy, including by direct action, indifference and neglect”.

Democide: alternatively, the random preventable loss of life of people who are vulnerable to natural disasters because they are denied basic human rights, like access to housing or income, that would protect them. 

A drone image of the extent of the damage caused by flooding in Prospecton, Durban on 13 April 2022. (Photo: Shiraaz Mohamed)

A boy clearing up mud at Pantas informal settlement on 14 April 2022 in Durban, South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Darren Stewart)

Beyond a reasonable doubt?