Polly Higgins - Elevate Festival 2013 - 23-27 October 2013

Polly Higgins

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.