“Eradicating Ecocide highlights the need for enforceable, legally binding mechanisms in national and international law to hold to account perpetrators of long term severe damage to the environment. At this critical juncture in history it is vital that we set global standards of accountability for corporations, in order to put an end to the culture of impunity and double standards that pervade the international legal system. Polly Higgins illustrates how this can be achieved in her invaluable new book.”
BIANCA JAGGER, Founder and Chair of Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, advocate for Crimes Against Present and Future Generations
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Humanity is at a crossroads. One route is to carry on as before, treating our planet as something to be bought and sold as private property to the highest bidder; the other is to acknowledge that our lives depend on a delicate ecosystem and that we all have responsibilities to each other, our habitat and future generations.
Exposing the truth behind the compromise laws and inadequate voluntary codes favoured by companies to protect their silent right to extinguish life, Higgins advocates a new crime, Ecocide, to prevent the ‘damage, destruction to or loss of ecosystems’, as a 5th Crime Against Peace.
Governments, businesses and financial institutions have all bought into turning a blind eye to the destruction of the planet when economic interests are at stake. Peace, Higgins argues, is unachievable whilst the rules of the game continue to protect commercial expropriation of the planet for profit – at a price we cannot afford.
Providing a comprehensive legal overview of the past 200 years, Eradicating Ecocide explains the crime of Ecocide, how it will apply and who can stop the ecocide, for present and for future generations. This is essential reading for anyone who is engaged with current issues; it is also for leaders and policy-makers in all countries.
Laws from other countries – which have been successful in curtailing the power of governments, corporations and banks – are included with analysis of the duty of care required, a duty that is owed to the public and the global earth community. The book is a crash course on what laws work, what doesn’t and what is needed.
POLLY HIGGINS is a lawyer and spokeswoman for the laws that will eradicate ecocide. to read more about Polly Higgins visit her website pollyhiggins.com
Eradicating Ecocide: Laws and Governance to Prevent the Destruction of our Planet
Shepheard-Walwyn, September 2010, £17.95
read an excerpt here
One of the most fundamental question that mankind needs to answer with respect to ecocide is what are we going to do once we literally screw up the planet ecologically? It was a wise person who once said, only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river, lake, and ocean have posioned, and after the air has become unbreathable, will man realize that you can’t eat the money has been made in exploiting the natural resources.
@Ernie: the question should be “when are we going to wake up and do something to stop screwing up the planet?”
Those who claim that ‘legislation is not the answer; the free market can resolve all problems’ are (a) blind, (b) stupid, (c) lying, or all three.