Remapping the world to understand what is ecocide and who the ecological debtors are demonstrates the enormous extent of the destruction already taking place. Here is a sample selection of 10 examples of ecocidal damage, destruction or loss taking place today. Please feel free to add your own suggestions below.

1. Alberta Tar Sands

Referred to as the most damaging project on the planet, it ranks top of the list. Known as ‘dirty oil’ due to it’s excessively damaging outcomes, if proposed expansion proceeds, tar sand extraction will result in the loss of vast tracts of boreal forest and muskeg peat bogs of a territory the size of England.

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2. The North Pacific Gyre

An island of garbage: A swirling island of 100m tonnes of plastic bits and bottle tops, spins clockwise from Hawaii to Japan. Also known as the Pacific trash vortex, it is estimated to be the size of Texas.

3. The Niger Delta

An area the size of Ireland is scarred by polluted rivers, air and land due to oil extraction.  Nigeria is the world’s sixth largest oil-producing nation, but with some of the worst records for ecosystem destruction and devastation. Between 1976 and 1998, over 2.5 million barrels of oil have been spilt into the Delta environment (Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was only a mere 257,000 barrels). Fifty years of oil extraction in the Niger delta has left its deep scars. Oil companies operated here for decades with very little environmental supervision and the delta, notoriously beset by conflict and poverty, has been steadily pushed towards ecological disaster. Villagers struggle to live off land and water poisoned by years of oil spills, and crops fail under the acid rain caused by gas flares.

4. The Dongria Kondh

The ’sacred’ Niyamgiri mountain (Niyamgiri means ‘The Mountains of Law’) in India is threatened with imminent ecocide if Vedanta Resources, a British company, proceeds with it’s plans to dig an open-pit bauxite mine. The mine will destroy the forests on which the Dongria Kondh depend and and threaten the livelihoods of thousands of other Kondh tribal people living in the area. Vedanta denies allegations that the planned mine would violate the rights of thousands of people.

5. Lusi mud volcano, Indonesia

Lusi started to erupt in East Java, Indonesia, on May 29th 2006. It has displaced around 30,000 people from their homes and swamped 12 villages.  At a recent conference, scientists voted that gas exploration well, Banjar-Panji-1, which was being drilled by oil and gas company called Lapindo Brantas, was the cause. Lusi is still spewing huge volumes of boiling mud over the surrounding area.

6. Bingham Canyon copper mine

This mine has been in production since 1906, so far stretching over an area 0.75 miles (1.2 km) deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, and covering 1,900 acres (7.7 km²). It has the dubious distinction of being named the world’s largest man-made excavation.

7. Toxic dumping by Chevron Texaco in Ecuador

Thousands of residents near the company’s former oil fields, alleges Texaco Chevron, dumped roughly 18.5 billion gallons of oil-laden water into unlined pits, estuaries and rivers during its operations in Ecuador’s Oriente between 1971 and 1992. Now, with Ecuador’s recent Bill of Nature’s Right’s which has changed the legal status of nature from being simply property to being a right-bearing entity, justice may just be seen to be done for people and planet. See: Chevrontoxico

8.  Tianying, Anhui Province, China

Lead smelters and processing plants in the Tianying area and heavy metals from battery recycling factories pollute the atmosphere and environment on a daily basis. 140,000 people in the Tianying area are affected, though the spread of heavy metals is distributed throughout Anhui province. Voted one of the dirty 30 by the Blacksmith Institute. See: worstpolluted.org

9. The Amazon

The one everyone knows about: razing of the Amazonian Rainforest, a key stabiliser of the global climate system, by logging, mining, crop planting and beef production. Currently resulting in destruction, damage and loss of a territory the size of France. Almost 60% of the region’s forests could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030

10. Space Junk

Not one easily seen even through a telescope, but it’s out there. From spent rocket stages and defunct satellite to explosion and collision fragments. Millions of pieces of orbital debris, space junk and space waste are the objects orbiting the Earth that were created by humans and now discarded.  Will it ever degrade?

See full photos of the top 10 ecocide hotspots at The Guardian