Looking for materials about Ecocide? Check out the downloads page here
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You can also download it as a PDF
The campaign to make Earth law can only happen with your help.
Below are some things you can do. Have other ideas? Please contact us and share your suggestions.
If you have 10 seconds…
- Join our mailing list (the signup form is on the right)
- Like our Facebook page
- Follow us on Twitter
If you have 1 minute…
- Donate to the campaign – it will help us take the campaign to a new level in 2012 and reach thousands more people around the world
- Email a friend — send them a link to this website and tell them why they might be interested
- Post a link on Facebook — tell your friends why the Ecocide campaign is important
If you have 10 minutes…
- Write to your President/Prime Minister or local politician – download a letter about Ecocide here, make a few changes to personalise it and then post/email
- Suggest to someone already putting on an event that Polly come and speak about Ecocide
- Contact Avaaz and suggest they support us
If you have 1 hour…
- Become an Ecocide expert – watch this series of short films all about Ecocide and read the questions and answers here. Then you can…
- Give a talk or host a debate about Ecocide – can you speak at a local group, your school/college or your church/mosque/temple? somewhere else? Check out ideas for how to engage youth groups, business and the media here. Spread the word in person and get more people involved.
- Organise a film screening – prefer to show a film? You could show one of these.
- Take part in this WebQuest challenge for students
If you have more time…
- Run your own Ecocide mock trial! Download all the guidance and documents here [zip file] and find out more about the mock trial at the UK Supreme Court. You could do it in your school/college, a debating society or a real courtroom — show the Ecocide law in practice!
- Host an event, hold a meeting, rally support locally
Remember to keep it positive, make it fair and remind everyone involved that the aim of making Ecocide a crime is ultimately to prevent environmental destruction happening in the first place.
After years of slowly growing despair that we, humans, would ever sort ourselves out my hopes are revived by this new idea of the crime of ecocide. I came on the site (after reading about Polly Higgins in Permaculture magazine and hearing her speak at the Schumacher conference) to contribute some money to the campaign.
Hello Polly
There is a LinkedIn Group for United Nations Sustainable Development (link above) – 3500 members – might be worth posting some info on here to try to raise awareness/a campaign ahead of Rio+20?
Best regards
Catherine
I have been and will continue to host events in South West Wales talking about and discussing the implications of the ecocide campaign. I have shown some films – notably “Gasland” (about fracking) – afterwards suggesting that people talk first about how they feel, having watched the film. I think it is important to encourage people to voice their feelings – some people may feel positive and powerful enough to get up and fight for justice for the planet – others may not and may need to feel supported before rhey can move on to a more positive state – I do agree though that anyone facilitating an event will need a good deal of positive energy. I am hoping to be with you in Islington on Saturday.
How about creating a HM Government e-petition on ecocide?
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/
I would do it myself, but I thought it makes more sense for someone to do it who is better placed to get it publicised and increase signatures.
Good luck
I’ve sent this email to Avaaz. Hope it’s OK.
Dear Avaaz
I’m a long-term supporter and donor of yours. This is the first time I’ve contacted you to suggest a campaign. I believe it is the most important idea to have emerged so far for the preservation of future life on earth, and that’s quite a grand claim! You may know of it; it is Polly Higgins’ effort to define ecocide in law and make it a crime.
Every time I think about the intractable problems of climate warming, destruction of species and habitat, environmental degradation, poverty and famine, genetic modification, fracking, tar sands and all the rest of the horror, it all comes down to one thing: profit.
All these things are being carried out in the name of the profit motive because it is legal to do so, indeed it is the board’s duty to its shareholders under current financial regulations to do whatever it can to make profits. Business law is based on property rights, permitting the owner of a property to do whatever he likes with it, even if it involves destroying ecosystems, as long as he does not affect the legal rights of other people.
Though, as we know, big business has the financial muscle to override these rights, as happened for example with the Ogoni protesters in the Niger Delta and the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa by the Nigerian government at the instigation of Shell Oil.
Polly Higgins’ idea is to make business responsible for its actions not under property law but under trust law. This would make business responsible not only to their shareholders but also to future inhabitants of the Earth.
If it can be proved that a business activity is detrimental to the future inhabitants of the Earth, under trust law the business could be prosecuted. This is a stronger law than property law, against which environmental protection legislation has proved weak.
To make ecocide a crime under international law would be a very powerful regulation on business. It would act against the heedless rush towards environmental collapse which business is currently engaged in, not only because property law allows it to do so but because current financial regulations require it.
I believe that most people engaged in these destructive activities feel guilty, but justify themselves on the grounds of the profit imperative. ‘We’ve got to make a profit otherwise we’re out of business.’ As George Osborne the British Chancellor has famously, and stupidly, said: ‘We won’t save the planet by putting Britain out of business.’ No, but as a small child will easily understand, if you haven’t got a planet you haven’t got a business.
Polly Higgins’ initiative makes the planet more important than business, and that means – if it becomes law – that there will at least be a planet for us to do business on. If not, there won’t be. The super-rich will have built themselves survival bubbles but for the rest of us it will be curtains.
Dirk Campbell
United Kingdom
dc@dirkcampbell.co.uk
Sent via webform at avaaz.org/en/contact