Polly Higgins
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 in 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.
Her legacy continues
Since then, the public campaign has grown to become an international NGO working in an advisory and supportive capacity at diplomatic level with respect to progress on ecocide law.
With a presence in more than 45 countries and a global network of allies, Stop Ecocide International has been instrumental in the rapidly gathering momentum around ecocide law.
Polly’s vision of sovereign states stepping forward to propose ecocide as an international crime became a reality in September 2024, when Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa submitted an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Democratic Republic of Congo declared its support a few weeks later. The diplomatic discussion continues.
The team has grown rapidly since Polly’s departure and is now co-ordinated by her close colleague Jojo Mehta. We are fully committed to carrying this work forward — with your help and that of many thousands of allies and supporters 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.
A tribute to Polly Higgins
Why do we wait until someone has passed away before we honour them? I believe we should overcome our embarrassment, and say it while they are with us. In this spirit, I want to tell you about the world-changing work of Polly Higgins.
George Monbiot, 28 March 2019 — read the full article in The Guardian.
Dare To Be Great
To celebrate the life and work of our late co-founder, Polly’s third book, Dare To Be Great, has been republished by Flint Books, with a foreword by Marianne Williamson and afterwords by Michael Mansfield QC and Dr Jane Goodall DBE.
