EARTH LAWYER

The campaign to make ecocide a crime was the life’s work of UK barrister and visionary the late Polly Higgins. She spent her last decade making the word “ecocide” globally understood by giving talks, making documentaries and advising governments. Along the way she inspired thousands, from parliamentarians to ecologists and from lawyers to artists. She devoted all her time and unquenchable spirit to one client - the Earth.

Polly presented a definition of ecocide to the UN Law Commission in 2010 reading as follows: Ecocide is extensive loss, damage or destruction of ecosystems of a given territory(ies)… such that the peaceful enjoyment of the inhabitants has been or will be severely diminished. It was to this definition that Pope Francis referred in his call for ecocide to become a crime (November 2019).

Polly was diagnosed with late stage lung cancer in March 2019. She passed away peacefully just a month later on Easter Sunday 21st April. Her warmth, determination and positivity remained undimmed to the end, and she lived to see her call to Stop Ecocide taken to the streets by Extinction Rebellion.

HER LEGACY CONTINUES

The team has grown rapidly since Polly’s departure and is now co-ordinated by her close colleague Jojo Mehta (speaking in the video). We are fully committed to carrying this work forward - with your help and that of many thousands of Earth Protectors across the world.

A LAW THAT CAN CHANGE HISTORY

Polly’s spirit lives in everyone who knows that serious harm to the Earth must be named - and prevented.
It is our job to ensure that destroying nature becomes a crime. It won’t just be the law that changes then, but the whole course of history…