Barrister and international environmental lawyer Polly Higgins has dedicated her life to just one client - the Earth. She has submitted a legal proposal to the United Nations for a Universal Declaration of Planetary Rights and to create a fifth official Crime Against Peace: “Ecocide”.

Voted by the Ecologist as one of the Worlds Top 10 Visionary Thinkers and hailed by The Guardian as one of their Green Heroes, she advocates a new approach to preventing the destruction of our planet. Her book “Eradicating Ecocide” sets out the evidence to demonstrate how existing laws have bestowed upon corporations silent rights which take precedence over environmental concerns. Higgins 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. She also argues that solving the problem at a national level will never work as corporations will simply move elsewhere to continue business as usual. “Eradicating Ecocide” is a winner of the People's Book Prize 2011, and is a finalist for the Book of the Year Award.

Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader, ecofeminist, activist and thinker. She is the author of many books, including „Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization“, „Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge“, „Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace“ and „Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis“.

Time magazine recognized Vandana Shiva as an environmental hero, and Asia Week has called her one of the five most powerful communicators in Asia. Among many other honors, she has received the Alternative Nobel Prize and the Global 500 Award of the United Nations.

The founder of Navdanya (Nine Seeds), a movement promoting biodiversity, farmers rights and use of native seeds, she also set up the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology in her mother’s cowshed in 1997. Its studies have validated the ecological value of traditional farming and been instrumental in fighting destructive development projects in India. Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India’s leading physicists. She holds a master’s degree in the philosophy of science and a PhD in particle physics.

Noam Chomsky is one of the leading North American intellectuals and scholars. A MIT Professor of Linguistics and long-time activist, prolific writer and popular lecturer, Chomsky speaks widely on a range of social and political issues, both national and international. From linguistics to philosophy, from history to contemporary issues, from international affairs to U.S. foreign policy - his clear, straight-forward honesty is legendary.

Chomsky joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor. In 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. He is one of the most important contemporary linguists and had a big influence on the developments of his discipline.

Chomsky is the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards. His over 100 books include A New Generation Draws the Line, New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind; Rogue States; 9-11; Understanding Power; On Nature and Language; Pirates and Emperors, Old and New; The Faculty of Language; Profit over People; Media Control; Hegemony or Survival; and Occupy.

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