Eradicating Ecocide

Paperback Price £ 14.95

  • ISBN: 9780856835087
  • Pages: 224pp
  • Size: 214mm x 136mm

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Author Details:

POLLY HIGGINS is a barrister, international environmental lawyer and activist. She has spoken at various conferences including the Indigenous Peoples Global Summit on Climate Change, Anchorage April 2009, The Talberg Forum, Sweden June 2009 and at the People’s Climate Summit during the COP 15 climate negotiations, Copenhagen December 2009. In April 2010 she launched the campaign thisisecocide.com, which has already alerted thousands to the objective of establishing Ecocide as a crime. The Ecologist magazine voted her one of the ‘World’s Top 10 Visionary Thinkers’, and she has recently been nominated as ‘The Lawyer for Planet Earth’ in the 2010 Performance Awards. In 2016 she won the prestigious Swedish prize Utstickarpriset.

Polly Higgins sets out to demonstrate how our planet is fast being destroyed by the activities of corporations and governments, facilitated by ‘compromise’ laws that offer insufficient deterrence. Polly offers a solution that is radical, but absolutely necessary: the recent Mexican Gulf oil spill is a compelling reminder of the consequences of un-checked ecocide.

‘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


From Reviews:

‘The beauty of this proposal is how it uses what is already there – the UN framework, the international criminal law as it has developed since World War II, and the trusteeship concept. Ecocide as a fifth crime against peace would be easily administered by the International Criminal Court without creating new structures or administrative bodies. A simple expedient, yet how revolutionary! A global standard of care would reconfigure the entire edifice of international justice on the foundation of Earth Jurisprudence… Eradicating Ecocide brims with hope and reads like a mystery novel.’ Ana Simeon, Sierra Club, BC

‘Eradicating Ecocide… lays the framework for us to lobby our leaders for real environmental laws and contains tips on taking action… it outlines the steps you can take towards becoming an Erin Brockovich in your own right.’ The Observer Magazine

‘Big shifts in international law can happen… [Higgins] makes a good moral and logical argument that the only way we are going to truly stop ecocide is to make it a serious crime.’ Matt McDermott, treehugger.com

‘Eradicating Ecocide gives you all the answers you need, and it does so in a measured and well argued way… the book isn’t another wild diatribe against business – rather it is an examination of international law and how environmental protection has somehow been left by the wayside… The clock to ensure the Earth remains healthy enough to support humankind is already ticking.  This book asks everyone to re-examine the legal framework within which we are attempting to accomplish this, and provides business leaders with a golden opportunity of making it happen.’ Chris Milton, corporate-eye.com


Higgins advocates the introduction of a new international law, Ecocide: ‘damage, destruction to or loss of ecosystems’, as the 5th Crime Against Peace. This would hold to account heads of corporate bodies that are found guilty of damaging the environment; it would present corporations with a new choice: they could choose to be part of the solution, part of the salvation of the planet’s future, by complying with the new law of Ecocide. The opportunity to implement this law represents a crossroads in the fate of humanity; we can accept the change, or we can continue to allow its destruction, risking future brutal war over disappearing natural resources.

This is the first book to explain that we all have a commanding voice and the power to call upon all our governments to change the existing rules of the game.

Higgins presents examples of laws in other countries which have succeeded in curtailing the power of governments, corporations and banks and made a quick and effective change, demonstrating that her proposal is not impossible. Eradicating Ecocide is a crash course on what laws work, what doesn’t and what else is needed to prevent the imminent disaster of global collapse.

Eradicating Ecocide provides a comprehensive overview of what needs to be done in order to prevent ecocide. It is a book providing a template of a body of laws for all governments to implement, which applies equally to smaller communities and anyone who is involved in decision-making.

The second edition includes amendments and corrections as well as bringing the book up to date.