Polly Higgins

2012

Ecocide: the 5th Crime Against Peace

Homicide against people, genocide against population, we need a new language to describe what is happening against the earth – ecocide. Can we make ecocide into a crime?

Voted by the Ecologist as one of the “Worlds Top 10 Visionary Thinkers,” Polly advanced to the United Nations the proposal for Ecocide to be made a crime, the 5th Crime Against Peace, to sit alongside Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes and Crimes of Aggression.

Polly has received various nominations and has been named “The Planet’s Lawyer” by the 2010 Performance Awards. She was identified as one of the top “unreasonable people” in the world by the cult US online magazine Planet Green for refusing to accept the norm and hailed by The Guardian as one of their Green Heroes working for the right kind of environmental change.

You can read more about the proposal in Eradicating Ecocide: Laws and Governance to Prevent the Destruction of our Planet. Find out more about Polly’s campaign at www.eradicatingecocide.com.

Biography published 2012

Watch our other 2012 speakers