You are powerful - Joe Hall

Do we let ourselves believe it often enough? Each of us is powerful, YOU are powerful, and we are asking you to use your power to help make Ecocide a crime.

You are warmly invited to the meetings we are holding in person and online in the coming week — to show our new strategy and talk together about what you can do between now and June when world leaders meet at the Earth Summit in Rio, a once-in-a-generation opportunity for change.

​Our online meetings are generously hosted by our friends at Earth Charter International and you’ll have a chance to hear about their exciting work too.

Our strategy for the Earth Summit — and you are at the heart of it

We, the small central campaign team, are working hard to do everything we can — and you are at the heart of this campaign too. Have you heard of 6 degrees of separation? In a modern, networked world in fact you are probably only 1 or 2 people away from someone with reach or influence — someone who can influence government themselves or who can tell many more people about Ecocide.

Our ask to you is think who you know — or who you know who knows someone — and empower yourself to contact them. Email, write a letter, phone, meet or tweet them, whatever is right for you. Tell them why it’s so important to you that world leaders act to make Ecocide a crime, why it will help and what you want them to do. Share your belief that this is such an important issue and it will touch them too.

This is your campaign, please be free and help make it happen — when you have an idea, you don’t need to ask our permission, just go do it (keeping in mind the campaign’s very positive principles and values). In the coming week we’ll also be putting more materials to help you (letters you can adapt, background materials about Ecocide and more) on the What you can do page of the website — I’ll email you again when these are ready.  

We would love to hear what you’re doing and if you have any suggestions for improving our strategy too. Please post in the comments box at the bottom of the What you can do page, that way others can share in your ideas too and be inspired by what you’re doing. 

Whether or not you can join us for one of the meetings in the coming week, we really hope you will join us in taking action to take this campaign to new people and inspiring others to say “Yes! Let’s make Ecocide a crime.”

Joe Hall, Ecocide Campaign Manager

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Imagine 10 million people campaigning to make Ecocide a crime - Joe Hall

We are nearly ready to share the strategy and vision for putting Ecocide on the agenda of world leaders at the Earth Summit in June — I’m excited we’ll be sending this to you next week.

We want to hear your feedback and your ideas about how YOU can be part of this amazing adventure — so we will be holding Ecocide Campaign Action Meetings at the end of next week, open to all:

  • In London — Saturday 21st January 2.00-5.00pmat the Hub in Islington.
  • By phone — Sunday 22nd at 1.00am & 6.00pm GMT(join whichever time is most convenient for you) generously hosted by Earth Charter International. I’ll send details next week.

Please read on: there are some important things you can do right now and we have some exciting successes to share…

Let’s get Avaaz campaigning to make Ecocide a crime!

A big part of our campaign strategy involves reaching out to others who can speak out about Ecocide. Let’s ask Avaaz, the biggest global campaigning organisation, to be one of those voices! Avaaz have a network of more than 10 million people they can mobilise to ask world leaders to say “yes, let’s make Ecocide a crime”. Right now they are running a poll to decide their campaign priorities for 2012 — take part in their poll and suggest Ecocide should be one of their campaigns this year. 

What more can you do? Email Avaaz directly at campaigns@avaaz.org to tell them why you feel it’s important they make Ecocide a priority in the run-up to the Earth Summit in June. Even better, who do you know who may be able to influence Avaaz? Do you know anyone who runs a charity or campaigning organisation? Or someone who’s respected or well known in your city or country? Ask them to contact Avaaz too.  Every one of us has power and influence and if we work together we can use these to achieve amazing things.

Who is Charles Grant? More and more are asking the question

The search for Charles Grant (read it about it here) has begun spreading far and wide. The original article in the UK’s Guardian has now been syndicated around the world, including in Pakistan’s top newspaper DAWN, the Taipei Times  in Taiwan and elsewhere in China, on the African news site All Africa, on business websites, legal networks  and even in the technology community!  

Who can you tell? Do you have someone in mind who you think could be the next Charles Grant? Write and tell them today. This is about finding leaders who want to leave a legacy of caring for the Earth — hear it in Polly’s own words in this new piece in Resurgence magazine.

Thank you!

We also have fantastic news from our End of Year Appeal. Thanks to the generosity of many people around the world and the matching fund of a kind donor, we did even better than our target — raising more than £30,000! Whatever you gave, it all counts. Thank you.

This will allow us to kickstart the campaign in the early part of this year, reaching out to many more young people, environment groups, faith groups and business leaders, and building a new website to bring together people worldwide to make Ecocide a crime.

We still need ongoing support and if you would like to, you can easily set up a regular monthly donation (follow this link then click the “Monthly donation” tab).
Are you running a marathon, holding an event or would like to encourage friends and family to give? 

You can set up your own fundraising page really quickly too.

If you prefer not to donate online, you can also now find our bank details and our postal address for cheques on our donations page. (We like online donations because we can claim extra money from the government using Gift Aid and it frees more of our time to spend campaigning.)

Meet the team - and be the team

Lastly, I also wanted to let you know you can now find out who we are in the small central campaign team working to help make Ecocide a crime — read a little about us and see our pictures here.  We would love to meet you at one of the upcoming conference calls or the meeting in London.

But we (the small central team) are not the campaign — it’s the collective WE of many people around the world. You can be an amazing force to spread the message. Speak about Ecocide to others, reach out your networks, help create an unstoppable chorus of voices who will persuade our leaders. Gandhi said, “The golden rule is to act fearlessly upon what one believes to be right.” This quote inspires me, as does every time I hear of one more person empowering themselves, becoming a voice for the great change we need. Thank you for all your support.

Joe Hall, Ecocide Campaign Manager

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Charles Grant was the chairman of the East India Trading company, and against all odds he became a leading voice in the abolition of slavery. The thing that strikes me most about Charles Grant is that it must be very brave to publicly support something most other people in your industry must fear. To be courageous and take a stand takes heart: the clue is in the word “courage”, which has it’s roots in the French word “coeur” (heart). Deciding to act out of love rather than fear is a choice (Recommended: Listen to Morcheeba’s Fear & Love). The case of Charles Grant suggests that we can find the strength to make the right decision in our our moral convictions. Now, we at the Eradicating Ecocide campaign are searching for a prominent industry leader to be courageous and publicly support an Ecocide law - as revealed by Juliette Jowit in her comment piece in the Guardian in the UK. Jowit has a few ideas about potential candidates to be the next Charles Grant – who might be held up as a role model in times to come. She writes: It can be argued there are already promising candidates among the titans of our corporate world. The Microsoft founder, Bill Gates – the world’s second richest man, according to Forbes magazine – and his wife, Melinda, have become almost as well known for their philanthropy as his software. Since 1994 they have spent more than $26bn. Their foundation concentrates on development and health, but in so doing directly deals with environmental problems from poor soils to polluted water; its website states: “Climate change is a major issue facing all of us.” Next on the Forbes list, the legendary investor Warren Buffett promised to give away 99% of his billions to good causes. Buffett has consistently pre-empted economic and social changes, responding to public pressure by rejecting new coal-fired power stations. But as important is his apparent appetite for clean solutions to politically awkward problems; he recently told CNBC news: “I could end the [budget] deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.” Perhaps more surprisingly, another contender could be Nestlé’s chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, who has been one of the most high-profile campaigners for introducing higher water charges – recognising that though this will add cost to his food and drink behemoth, for both moral and economic reasons the company will suffer far more if ordinary people are left in drought by its activities. And a former Nestlé man, Paul Polman – now chief executive of its rival Unilever – famously stopped quarterly financial reporting in protest at the short-term investment culture, and recently told the Guardian that too many companies have prospered at the expense of society and nature, adding: “We do not have to win at the expense of others to be successful.” Richard Branson too has a long history of supporting good causes, despite the sometimes startling gap between his business interests (Virgin Atlantic) and professed interests (climate change). Whichever business figure steps into Charles Grant’s shoes and changes the course of capitalism, they will be guaranteed a place in history far greater than the annals of Forbes magazine. It is really great to see that Jowit’s article has been syndicated around the world, including in Pakistan’s top newspaper DAWN, the Taipei Times in Taiwan, and on the African news site All Africa. We will be launching our global campaign to find this industry leader ready to turn their back on environmental destruction - or several of them – soon, and we look forward to hearing your recommendations. To hear all the latest news about our hunt for the next Charles Grant, please sign up to our mailing list (to the right) or follow us on Facebook or Twitter. Christine Ottery, Creative & Communications for the Eradicate Ecocide campaign

Charles Grant was the chairman of the East India Trading company, and against all odds he became a leading voice in the abolition of slavery. The thing that strikes me most about Charles Grant is that it must be very brave to publicly support something most other people in your industry must fear.

To be courageous and take a stand takes heart: the clue is in the word “courage”, which has it’s roots in the French word “coeur” (heart). Deciding to act out of love rather than fear is a choice (Recommended: Listen to Morcheeba’s Fear & Love). The case of Charles Grant suggests that we can find the strength to make the right decision in our our moral convictions.

Now, we at the Eradicating Ecocide campaign are searching for a prominent industry leader to be courageous and publicly support an Ecocide law - as revealed by Juliette Jowit in her comment piece in the Guardian in the UK. Jowit has a few ideas about potential candidates to be the next Charles Grant – who might be held up as a role model in times to come. She writes:

It can be argued there are already promising candidates among the titans of our corporate world. The Microsoft founder, Bill Gates – the world’s second richest man, according to Forbes magazine – and his wife, Melinda, have become almost as well known for their philanthropy as his software. Since 1994 they have spent more than $26bn. Their foundation concentrates on development and health, but in so doing directly deals with environmental problems from poor soils to polluted water; its website states: “Climate change is a major issue facing all of us.” Next on the Forbes list, the legendary investor Warren Buffett promised to give away 99% of his billions to good causes. Buffett has consistently pre-empted economic and social changes, responding to public pressure by rejecting new coal-fired power stations. But as important is his apparent appetite for clean solutions to politically awkward problems; he recently told CNBC news: “I could end the [budget] deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.” Perhaps more surprisingly, another contender could be Nestlé’s chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, who has been one of the most high-profile campaigners for introducing higher water charges – recognising that though this will add cost to his food and drink behemoth, for both moral and economic reasons the company will suffer far more if ordinary people are left in drought by its activities. And a former Nestlé man, Paul Polman – now chief executive of its rival Unilever – famously stopped quarterly financial reporting in protest at the short-term investment culture, and recently told the Guardian that too many companies have prospered at the expense of society and nature, adding: “We do not have to win at the expense of others to be successful.” Richard Branson too has a long history of supporting good causes, despite the sometimes startling gap between his business interests (Virgin Atlantic) and professed interests (climate change). Whichever business figure steps into Charles Grant’s shoes and changes the course of capitalism, they will be guaranteed a place in history far greater than the annals of Forbes magazine.

It is really great to see that Jowit’s article has been syndicated around the world, including in Pakistan’s top newspaper DAWN, the Taipei Times in Taiwan, and on the African news site All Africa.

We will be launching our global campaign to find this industry leader ready to turn their back on environmental destruction - or several of them – soon, and we look forward to hearing your recommendations. To hear all the latest news about our hunt for the next Charles Grant, please sign up to our mailing list (to the right) or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Christine Ottery, Creative & Communications for the Eradicate Ecocide campaign

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My hope and aspiration for 2012 is a commitment by Heads of State to make Earth Law at the Earth Summit - Polly Higgins

As we begin this new year together, I want to share my vision for the Eradicating Ecocide campaign with you. This campaign needs you to succeed and I want you all to be a part of it.

Let’s end the era of Ecocide in 2012

This is a pivotal moment in the history of humanity when we can say, “Now is the time for new ways of thinking, being and doing. Now is the time to change the rules of the game and create new Earth Law.” We have the landmark Earth Summit in Rio in June, 20 years on from the original Earth Summit where the Dalai Lama spoke out against destruction of the Earth. His words ring equally true today: “Sometimes we just take everything for granted and don’t care, and this kind of negligence is also a danger.”

More recently, The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu along with seven other Nobel Peace Prize winners spoke up against the world’s largest ecocide and called on Canadian Prime Minister Harper “to use your power to halt the expansion of the tar sands. Further exploitation of the tar sands will … make turning the clock back on climate change impossible.” Curbing pollution is, they said, a “profoundly moral decision, one that deserves to be placed alongside any other major struggle in human history.”

Moral leadership

We are gearing up to create a major campaign to ensure the crime of Ecocide becomes law. We shall be calling on world leaders to demonstrate bold, courageous and moral leadership – leadership that puts people and planet first, over and above the rights of our polluters.

My hope and aspiration for 2012 is a commitment by Heads of State to make Earth Law at the Earth Summit.  This is our number one priority: to have our leaders commit to Earth Law – Ecocide and Earth Rights. We shall be seeking business leaders who are willing to take responsibility and support Earth Law, faith leaders to stand up for the Earth, and the people. We believe that the Earth has rights too. Our journey will be epic, and most importantly it will be a challenge, but I believe we can do it together as one. This can be our legacy for future generations. Together we can eradicate Ecocide.

Climate change, a story of our times

Climate change is a symptom of Ecocide, be it through human activity that is destructive and causes loss of ecosystems or through the natural cycles of change. Over the next years we are likely to witness even more extreme weather events, such as tsunamis, floods, and hurricanes, that are caused by climate change. Rising sea levels are unavoidable for many small island states. We will hear more about climate refugees throughout the world. Some countries, like Bangladesh, are facing rising sea levels, Himalayan melting ice and floods – all of which have knock on consequences for human access to clean water, which in turn brings escalating human ill-health. The global South has a far more uncertain future than the rest of the world.

Regardless of where we live, we have a moral duty of care to ensure assistance is given before the worst occurs. Now that we have the knowledge, we have the duty to place their health and well-being over and above all other considerations. Lose the Amazon through wilful exploitation and we lose the lungs of the Earth; lose the oceans and rivers to over-fishing and pollution, lose our ecosystems to other human-made ecocides such as destruction by oil extraction, and we lose our ability to function as humans on this planet.

It needn’t be like this. We can each leave a legacy of ecological debt or of ecological credit. We can put back into the system rather than take out – heal and restore rather than destroy, plant rather than extract. We can envision the future we want, and then take the steps to creating it.

A legacy to be proud of

In October I spoke at the Schumacher Centenary Conference and posed the question:“What will your legacy be?” (the speech is published in this month’s Resurgence magazine ) As I write, I imagine a world where all nations have come together to decide what they can do to help the Earth and to help those most adversely affected by Ecocide; all nations working together to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war and to work towards peace. I visualise all nations reaching out to make sure those who need help in every way, be it financially or otherwise, and planning how best to ensure the health and well-being of all peoples. This was the vision that inspired the United Nations in the last century and is embodied in UN Charter, a document which was written by “we the people.” This century, this year, we the people can stand again and call on our leaders to speak on behalf of people and planet.

Commit to end the era of Ecocide

My commitment for 2012 is to end the era of Ecocide. As young people from the US stated at the recent climate negotiations in Durban, “2020 is too late to wait ”. I agree. We can start now to create the future we want. We can do it in small ways and big, each step is equally valued, be it changing our own lives at home or work, writing a letter to a leader you believe in asking him or her to support our campaign, spreading the idea far and wide through your networks, donating or meeting with others you think could help. Each time someone does this, a new connection is made, which in turn can pass on the baton and carry the message further forward.

There are already a number of things you can do right now and I will be in touch again soon with details of more activities, including a letter-writing, email and Twitter campaign in January that I really want you to be involved in.

Change the rules of the game - and protect the Earth

Our campaign is literally about changing the rules of the game. That is what law is: rules of the game of life. We are shifting the paradigm to place life for all as number one, for both people and planet. We will be calling on leaders to commit to making Earth Law our legacy for our future. We shall be building our campaign over the next 6 months in the run-up to the Earth Summit and taking action: and we ask you to help us write and speak with leaders of all walks of life, asking them to join the growing voice that is shaping a future we want.

I ask you all to join me to make 2012 a year where we change our vision into one that leaves a legacy for us to enjoy, a legacy for others who follow – the legacy where we end Ecocide and where peace for people and planet comes first.  

Polly Higgins, Lawyer and founder of the campaign to make Ecocide a crime

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What did they say about Ecocide in 2011? What will they say happened in 2012? I hope you are enjoying a wonderful start to this year. What did we achieve together last year? This short video, above, captures a few of the highlights of 2011.

I’ll be back in touch soon with more on the campaign plans for 2012, including our search for the next Charles Grant featured in the Guardian newspaper in the UK. End of year appeal I wanted to share our good news with you — thanks to many generous people around the world, we have reached our End of Year appeal target of £30,000! We are particularly grateful to Hares Youssef and the 40 Foundation who gave £10,000 towards building the campaign in 2012. In Hares’s words, “Making Ecocide a crime is a chance for the current generation to do something really important for our descendants.”

Many of the people who have contacted us feel the same way. Lucy, who gave £10, said “We all need to add our voice to the creation of this law. Thank you for all your work, we’re right behind you.” If you would like to make a difference to the campaign with the potential to re-write history in 2012, please consider giving a monthly donation to support our work.

Joe Hall, Campaign manager for Eradicating Ecocide

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The team blog from the campaign to make Ecocide an international law