Polly Higgins - Earth Is Our Business : Changing the Rules of the Game

http://earthisourbusiness.com/

Earth is our Business takes forward the argument of Polly Higgins’ first book, Eradicating Ecocide. This book proposes new Earth law, but it is also about something more than law: it advocates a new form of leadership which places the health and well-being of people and planet first. Polly Higgins shows how law can provide the tools and be a bridge to a new way of doing business. She argues, in fact, that Earth is the business of us all, not the exclusive preserve of the executives of the world’s top corporations.

Expanding on the proposal in her first book to make Ecocide an international crime, this book sets out the institutional framework for sustainable development and international environmental governance. It proposes new rules of the game to transform our economies, energy supplies and political landscape in a radical, but practical, way. The implications of Polly Higgins’ proposal are far-reaching and profound.

Like her award-winning first book, Earth is our Business is written for anyone who is engaging in the new and emerging discourse about the future of our planet. Instead of merely examining the problem, Earth is our Business sets out a solution: new rules of the game. They are, says Polly Higgins, a new set of laws based on the sacredness of all life.

Included as appendices are a draft Ecocide Act, a proposal for revising World Bank investment rules, and the indictment used in the mock Ecocide Trial held in the UK Supreme Court in September 2011.

Eradicating Ecocide won The People’s Book Prize for non-fiction in 2011.

Source : http://www.shepheard-walwyn.co.uk/predator_culture.asp?Bookid=255

Polly Higgins, barrister and international environmental lawyer, proposed to the United Nations in April 2010 that Ecocide be classed as the 5th Crime Against Peace alongside Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, Crimes of Aggression and War Crimes.

Her first book set out the starting point for a law of Ecocide; her second book, Earth is our Business: Changing the Rules of the Game, expands on the first book, setting out how such a law could work.
Read the first chapter here.

Eradicating Ecocide : Laws and Governance to Stop the Destruction of the Planet

http://www.pollyhiggins.com/Polly_Higgins/The_Book.html

The author, a barrister and international environmental lawyer, advocates a new approach to preventing the destruction of our planet. Higgins sets out the evidence to demonstrate how existing laws have bestowed upon corporations silent rights which take precedence over environmental concerns and she argues that nothing less than new international law will ensure that the enjoyment of those rights is subject to reciprocal responsibilities, duties and obligations towards future generations and our habitat. Solving the problem at national level will never work - businesses will simply move elsewhere to continue business as usual.

To change the rules of the game, Higgins advocates a new crime, of Ecocide to prevent the ‘extensive damage, destruction to or loss of ecosystems’. There are already four international Crimes Against Peace; now a 5th Crime Against Peace is ready to be put in place.