World-renowned barrister Polly Higgins proposed to the United Nations that Ecocide be made a crime. This Earth Day, two years on from her death in April 2019, there’s still time to realise the future she imagined for the Earth.
In her inspiring book Dare To Be Great in partnership with Stop Ecocide, Polly doesn’t set out to condemn or frighten, but invites her readers to join the movement from self-care to Earth-care. She strongly believed that ‘the greatness lies in each of us to take up the mantle and become voices for the Earth.’
“Ecocide is both a personal and a collective harm. Yet, the greatness lies in each of us to take up the mantle and become voices for the Earth.“
Polly reasons that, while we are disempowered by old laws that don’t work for the Earth, how we govern ourselves can influence how society runs.
“Like nature, it takes a diverse habitat to take the little seed of greatness within us to flourish, and so too like plant do we require to be nourished.”
As part of our Earth Day celebrations you can read anthropologist and primatologist Dame Jane Goodall’s Afterword from Dare to Be Great here, where she reflects on Polly’s legacy and the power and potential of a law of ecocide.
