Original Post: Oct. 1, 2011 — Updated Feb. 27, 2012
Award-winning author of Eradicating Ecocide, barrister and international environmental lawyer, Polly Higgins proposed to the U.N. in April 2010 that a law of Ecocide be classed as a 5th international crime against Peace alongside Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, Crimes of Aggression and War Crimes.
Ecocide is defined as the mass “damage, destruction to or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.”
Sept. 30, 2011 ~ The bosses of two of the world’s biggest multi-national corporations were convicted by a jury of “ecocide” at the (UK) Supreme Court yesterday for destroying global ecosystems.
They were put on trial under international laws which establish ecocide alongside genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression, as the most serious in existence.
The chief executives may have been actors, the corporations fictional and the trial a mock-up, but the circumstances surrounding the so-called “crimes” – the destruction of ecosystems during both the Gulf oil spill and the mining of crude oil in Alberta – are real. So is the call for a new law protecting the natural world, placing ecocide among the most heinous crimes known.
Canadian Tour: Toronto, Vancouver, Feb. 2012
- Toronto
- Video – Meet ‘Earth’s Lawyer’: Polly Higgins on the Law of Ecocide, shot, edited, produced by Glenn MacIntosh, ecoSanity.org (1 hour 22 minutes)
- Interview – Ecocide should be treated as a war crime, A. Zerbisias, Toronto Star
- Interview – New campaign aims to make ecocide a crime, J. Bonnar, Rabble.ca
- Vancouver
- Audio – The Law of Ecocide: Polly Higgins in Vancouver! , IanMack.com
Articles, Posts, Photos – Mock Trial, Sept. 30, 2011
- Photos – Ecocide trial, Supreme Court, London, Sept. 30, 2011
- Interview – Ecocide should be treated as a war crime, A. Zerbisias, TStar
- Article – Is ecocide a crime? Joe Jackson, TIME
- Article – Mock trial finds tar sands spill ‘bosses’ guilty of ecocide, Independent
- Article – UK Supreme Court explores ecocide in mock trial, Deutsche Welle
- Article – Trial tests if ‘ecocide’ could join genocide as global crime, Guardian
- Article – UK Supreme Court stages mock ecocide trial, D. Blair, Financial Times
- Post – Ecocide in Canada, Andrew Gage, West Coast Environmental Law
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