Making Ecocide a crime has support from many different spheres of influence, including: environmentalists, peace organisations, the legal profession and politicians. Read on to find about more about what people say about Eradicating Ecocide.

Peace:

Vijay Mehta, chair of Uniting for Peace: ”The catastrophic degradation of environment, destruction, damage or loss of ecosystems is happening on a mass scale everyday as more and more carbon emissions are emitted by the ever increasing industrial output in our world. The best way to overcome it is to adopt Poly Higgins proposed Law of Ecocide for the safety of future generations.”

 

Dick Hazlehurst, Rotary Peace Fellows co-ordinator: “On behalf of the Rotary Peace Fellows who have studied, and who will in future study, at the Rotary Peace Centre at the University of Bradford, England, I write to offer our collective voice in support of the message you are to give when you speak at the World Peace Conference in Berlin on 26th August 2011. We wish you every success in your campaign for the Law of Ecocide to be recognized as a crime against peace. We share your concern and fear for the future of humanity and for all life on our planet, and we hope that the United Nations and, taking a lead from them, all nations will take action to slow and, eventually, reverse the horrifying damage which we are all, collectively, wreaking on the world.”

 

World Peace Prayer Society European Division: ”The World Peace Prayer Society welcomes the campaign of Mrs Polly Higgins for the Law of Ecocide to be recognised as a crime against peace. One of our activitites is to pray for the peace of nature and we therefore support her efforts to stop the severe damage to our environment and wonderful planet. May Peace Prevail with Nature – May Peace Prevail on Earth”

 

Jill Gough, National Secretary CND Cymru: ”A Law of Ecocide could be a genuine way towards the rebalancing of our values and bringing to human consciousness the fact that the most important things in the planet cannot be bought or sold. All life and earth are connected. If humans continue to damage the planet, whether for multinational profit or by conventional or nuclear war cannot continue, conflict will become more likely and will eventually destroy all life. A Law of Ecocide is a brave first step. We must act now.”

 

Legal:

Michael Mansfield QC, leading human rights lawyer said: “The problem in the past is that if you hold a company responsible [for environmental destruction], who sits in the dock? All the court can do is fine the company if it has transgressed. Who pays the fine? We do, because they pass the cost of the fine onto their customers – so it does not have very much effect, at all. But who is responsible? There are real people in the company and the object of  the Ecocide act is not just aimed at companies it is aimed at individuals… individual responsibility is the only way there will be any change.”

 

Andrew Waite, environmental lawyer, former Vice Chair for Western Europe of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Commission on Environmental Law and former President of the European Environmental Law Association, said: “I think it’s a good idea to make Ecocide a crime, it’s a good idea of the very highest level of crimes, the most serious crimes, and also it should be imposed as a crime in cases where people have been negligent or were at fault in some way.”

 

Melanie Strickland from Wild Law UK: “I see the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth and Earth Rights very much going hand in hand with Ecocide, like two sides to one coin. This campaign from what I’ve seen of it so far is very effective and the people involved in it are extremely committed and the best people to take this forward.”

 

David Hart QC, environmental lawyer and barrister, said: “It’s an idea that just has to come, really [criminalising ecocide]. It’s turning something which humans as a whole regard as a crime into something which is internationally recognised.”

 

 

Michael Stewart SC, President of the Australian Bar Association, said: ”That [the injustice of companies recognised as a 'legal person'] seems to be exacerbated in my mind by the fact that what seems to be the major right of the corporation to make profit at a cost to everything else. The major principle, the first principle, the one to which all others bow, is the accepted obligation of the company and it’s directors to profit.”

 

Judge Christopher Weeramantry, former vice-president of the International Court of Justice and WFC councillor, said: “If people of the Stone Age had been able to cause damage to the environment and to our generation, we would have condemned them as savages, brutes and barbarians. Our generation and particularly those who are specially entrusted with the care of the environment will have to answer before the bar of history for our default and abuse of trust.”

 

Political:

Kennedy Graham, New Zealand parliamentarian wrote: “There is a gathering movement to make ‘ecocide’ – the mass destruction of the natural environment – a crime in international law. Friends of the Earth have suggested that, “ecocide law may be the only way to make climate criminals rethink crimes of commission and omission”. A leading campaigner, Polly Higgins, toured New Zealand earlier this year. But ecocide might be more pertinent to corporations or individuals – it’s a stretch to capture national leaders criminally on climate change.”

 

Michael Meacher, MP, said: “There are some things we simply should not do; leave quite a lot of oil deep in the ocean or destroy vast quantities of boreal forest or pristine wilderness… in order to extract that increment of oil. There is a red line in politics, it has not yet been applied to the environment. This is what an Ecocide law will do.”

 

Youth:

Casper ter Kuile, campaigner and co-founder of UKYCC: “When we start to understand that crimes against nature are crimes against ourselves, then we will be able to achieve sustainability. I hope Ecocide will help us get there.”

 

 

Jake Leeper, Co-Director of UKYCC: “It is clear that establishing Ecocide as a crime is an important step on path forward to a clean, just future. Responsibility for our actions must be taken today and not just passed onto future generations. It is important to remember that this is not just about numbers and targets but is about people’s lives, communities, and the places we live in.”

 

Divine Ntiokam, youth advocate from Cameroon, and Partnership Co-ordinator for the Youth Task Force at the Earth Charter Initiative: ”The  Ecocide campaign is keeping people aware on how to protect Mother Earth. Youths should be involved simply because they are future leaders for tomorrow and need a place to leave in order to archieve their future goals and dreams.”

 

Environment & human rights:

Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth international and Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action:”I fully believe in this cause. Making ecocide a recognised law will place a cap on the irresponsible actions of fat cats who hide behind corporate shields to destroy lives and harm the planet.”

“Polluting nations and corporations are engaging in acts of aggression against nature and against humanity. These are extreme acts of mass destruction that may affect the planet in cataclysmic ways. These acts must be recognised for what they are and duly punished. This Ecocide law may be the only way to make climate criminals rethink their crimes of commission and omission.”

Jane Goodall, Primatologist, founder Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace: “The concept of Ecocide is long overdue. It could lead to an important change in the way people perceive – and respond to – the current environmental crisis.”

 

 

 

Vandana Shiva, philosopher and environmental activist:“The Ecocide trial is a very important step in waking us up to the violence which is the foundation of the current economy. We need another model that is non-violent, a model which makes peace with the earth. Ecocide must stop. The ideal of limitless growth is leading to limitless violations of the rights of the Earth and of the rights of nature. This is ecocide. We need to stop the destruction of the very basis of life on Earth and of human survival.”

 

Pablo Solón, Bolivia’s former chief climate change negotiator said:  “Think on the people not on business. You are responsible for what can be the biggest genocide and ecocide of the 21st Century.”

 

 

 

Maude Barlow, activist, author and former senior advisor on water to the UN General Assembly: “Unlimited growth assumes unlimited resources, and this is the genesis of  Ecocide. To feed the increasing demands of our consumer-based capitalist system, humans have seen nature as a great resource for our personal pleasure, convenience and profit, and not as a living ecosystem from which all life springs. The move to commodify all of nature is the next step in its destruction. The earth is not ours to plunder. Nature has rights as surely as any that exist.”

 

Jon Love, Programme Director Pachamama Alliance: ”The proposed ecocide legal framework that comes from Polly Higgins can be a critical step toward a just, sustainable and thriving way of life for all. It is clearly a moral crime to destroy Earth’s life-generating capacity and eliminate the diverse life-forms with whom we share this planet. It should be a legally recognised crime as well.”

 

Jonathon Porritt, founder director of sustainability Forum for the Future, former Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission: ”Once upon a time people did grievous harm to the environment without fully understanding the consequences of their actions. That defence is no longer available, and that sure knowledge we now have entails equally sure moral obligations. In this context, the idea of establishing the crime of Ecocide is both timely and compelling.”

 

Religion & spirituality:

Ervin Laszlo, President, Club of Budapest: ”In these days when the human impact on the environment is becoming everyday more evident and proves to be not only damaging to our surroundings but a serious threat to human life and survival, it is imperative that we should declare Ecocide a Crime Against Peace.”

 

 

Deepak Chopra, founder of The Chopra Centre for Well Being : ”I’m supporting Polly Higgins on her big big idea of making Ecocide a Crime Against Peace. It should be a crime because what we call the environment is our universal body; the trees are our lungs, the rivers our circulation. If our trees didn’t breathe we wouldn’t breathe; the air is our breath. It’s our body that we are killing and that’s why we need to make it a crime.”