THE LAW OF ECOCIDE

Ecocide is the extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) 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.

At certain points in history the world changes gear. We abolished slavery, apartheid was outlawed and we criminalised genocide. Each time humanity reached a tipping point; no longer could we justify using blacks as slaves, destroy lives and allow others to determine the outcome of a man's life. We get to a stage that we turn and face the truth, even when it is not a sight we wish to see, we give it a name and we say, 'no more'.

We are now at another point of acceleration; we are poised to move the gear stick up to the next level. We have our foot on the pedal and we are ready to go. But wait. To go to the next level we need new rules. Number one rule is set out below, others are contained within this book. Collectively they make for a safe journey into the unknown. Treat this book as your guide to take with you on your journey, to equip you with the language and the route map to the new world.

Ecocide is 'the extensive 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.'

The Law of Ecocide is a law which will change the world. The ramifications for business are huge and the lives of all who live on Earth. It will signal the beginning of business taking full responsibility. Humanity will celebrate the end of a polluting and destructive era. The earth will be given a chance to heal.

Ecocide comes in many forms and is either human-made or caused by catastrophic disaster. Human-made ecocide is corporate-driven activity such as deforestation, pollution dumping, mining. Natural ecocide includes tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, rises in sea-levels – in short any event which causes mass ecosystem collapse.

The Law of Ecocide imposes a superior obligation and a pre-emptive legal duty upon individuals who are in a position of superior responsibility within corporations, banks and governments to prohibit profit, investment and policy which causes or supports ecocide. The crime of ecocide criminalises damage, destruction or loss of ecosystems over a certain size, duration and impact. Make ecocide unlawful and a legal framework of nation-to-nation responsibility can be set up to finance humanitarian and environmental aid for ecocide-affected territories.

Crime Against Peace

There are certain principles of universal validity and application that apply to humanity as a whole. They are the principles that underpin the prohibition of certain behaviour, for example apartheid and genocide. Such abuses arise out of value systems based on a lack of regard for human life and are now universally outlawed. The most serious of all have been declared Crimes Against Peace by the United Nations and they apply across the world, superseding all other laws. A value system based on a lack of regard for all life now needs to be universally outlawed as well. Kill our planet and we kill ourselves. Ecocide is death by a thousand cuts: each day the life-source which feeds and nourishes our human life is damaged and destroyed a little more. Restoration of territories which have been subjected to human ecocide is not being undertaken voluntarily and as a result conflict and resource wars are expected to escalate over time.

Creation of the Law of Ecocide will close the door to investment in high-risk ventures which give rise to ecocide. Decision-making will be determined on a value-driven basis premised on intrinsic values, not permit allocations. Protection of the interests of the wider Earth community will then become the over-riding consideration for business, driving innovation in a new direction.

When the existing system fails to prevent that which it is set up to help, the scales of justice swing out of kilter and the rules of the game are called into question. How do we create a legal duty of care for the earth? That was the big question that has driven my thinking. I looked at existing environmental and corporate laws and I saw they were not fulfilling this particular legal obligation. None of our existing laws set out a proper duty of care for the earth. We have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but the same does not exist for the earth. The earth has rights too, I reasoned, such as the right not to be polluted and the right to life. What if we had a similar Declaration for the earth, a declaration that gave formal recognition to the rights of non-human beings, such as the soil, the seas and the air we breathe. How much easier it would be for me, as a barrister, to represent my client the earth in court. Just as I can represent the unspoken words of a child because we impute human rights to them, so we can do the same for the earth.

Earth Rights

We may not have thought of other beings as having rights: however, they do exist. They may not be written down as formal laws in some jurisdictions, but to many natural law is a given. The right not be polluted is a right that belongs to the earth as much as it belongs to humans. To breach that right can be a result of neglect or an abuse. It can be an act or an omission; either by failing to do something, or by refraining from doing something, or by doing something that can result in damage, destruction or loss of ecosystems. Many of our existing laws are premised on permit allocation and limitations, not prohibition – these are laws that have proven themselves to be unfit for purpose.

Permits to pollute protect the polluter, not the earth. Fines levied after the event, when caught exceeding acceptable levels of destruction, can be sidestepped, litigated or paid-off. No amount of voluntary codes, environmental impact reports or energy efficiency targets will change matters until the concept of the 'environment as property', with ownership and thereby accrual of superior rights by the owner, is overturned. Slaves used to be property. It was argued that to present them with rights would be uneconomic, untenable, bring business to a halt. However, those businesses who profiteered out of slavery and sugar reinvented their wheels and not one went out of business as a direct result of the laws of abolition being put in place. This was in part because their slavery subsidies were replaced with subsidies which were for loss of...