Currently the growth model of economics, as measured by GDP, is on a collision course with environmental limits. The idea of endless growth is incompatible with what Nature can provide. So what is the alternative? Reporting on the 1988 Conservative Party conference The Economist, in an article entitled ‘The Greening of Mrs Thatcher’, quoted her

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According to a report in The Times (17/7/20), the campaign to make ‘ecocide’ an international crime at the International Criminal Court begun by Polly Higgins, who died last year, has been picked up by ‘Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel peace prizewinner [who] has joined Greta Thunberg and 150 celebrities and scientists calling on world leaders to

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Fifteen years ago Polly Higgins abandoned her career as a barrister to campaign for an international crime of ecocide. Sadly she died of cancer on Easter Sunday at the early age of 50. Her aim in making ecocide an international crime was to enable people like company chief executives and government ministers to be prosecuted

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In 2010 international environment lawyer and activist Polly Higgins proposed to the United Nations Law Commission that Ecocide be made the fifth Crime Against Peace as a way of halting the degradation of the environment. In Eradicating Ecocide, she argues that our planet is fast being destroyed by the activities of corporations and governments, facilitated by

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In recognition of her work to create a new body of Earth Law, international environmental lawyer and activist, Polly Higgins, has been appointed to the Arne Naess Chair for Global Justice and the Environment at the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM), an international research institution at the University of Oslo, which promotes scholarly

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In an article in the Guardian George Monbiot posed the question: ‘Why do we ignore the most blatant transfer of money from the poor to the rich?’ He explained that on the very same day that the Chancellor announced cuts in benefits for the very poor in Parliament, another minister in Luxemburg thwarted an EU

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In an interview with Marcin Gerwin of the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia Polly Higgins, author of Eradicating Ecocide and Earth is our Business, explained why it is necessary to have an international law making it a criminal offence to damage or destroy the environment. To read the full interview, click here.

In the past many visionaries and leaders have been lawyers – think of Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. So when I arrived at the World Congress on Justice, Law and Governance for Environmental Sustainability (a pre-Rio conference) I was full of hope that just maybe we might be able to come up with some concrete legal solutions (i.e

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