“For me it’s not about whether or not you are an environmentalist, it’s about whether or not you care. If you care you can move mountains.  Any mother knows this.” ~ Polly Higgins


E42 – POLLY HIGGINS ON ECOCIDE LAW, LIVING YOUR PURPOSE AND EARTH PROTECTION

ERADICATING ECOCIDE BY AN EARTH LAWYER


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About this interview:

How do we create a legal duty of care for the Earth?

In this episode, Amisha meets with author, barrister and ecocide law expert Polly Higgins.

Polly describes how she arrived to a critical choice point in her life where she was invited to step out of her ordinary life into the extraordinary. She came to the realisation that the Earth was in need of a good lawyer, and she knew someone for the job… Polly resolved in 2005 to take a year out from her successful career as a barrister, and 13 years later she still hasn’t gone back.

In 2010 she proposed to the United Nations that ecocide become an international crime and since then has been working solidly on bringing this proposal into law.

Polly speaks about her mission to help finance vulnerable island states to come forward into the international criminal court, allowing the ecocide law to be tabled. She explains the process of bringing in a new international law and shares the working culture amongst her team, who operate in the gift economy from their ‘heartquarters’ in Stroud.

Together Polly and Amisha speak about daring ourselves to be great and to step through the tiny windows of opportunity into our fullness of being, the tendency to act out our own internal ecocide and what we can do in our individual lives to turn the narrative around.

“It’s about how we harness our own life energy. Do we decide to remain complicit in a world that is destructive or decide that we will stand up collectively and align with a greater force? It’s a higher force, a higher energy that will protect the lives of millions on the future.” ~ Polly Higgins

Polly began her career as a lawyer in London (called to the Bar 1998) where she was a barrister specialising in corporate and employment law. Her training began firstly in the criminal courts, and subsequently expanding into a civil law practise. Forsaking her successful court work in order to defend one client, the Earth, Polly began the process of examining existing law to determine how to best advance a legal precept to protect the Earth. Her not-for-profit, Ecological Defence Integrity, collaborates with a number of lawyers, experts and judges internationally who all give their expertise and time on a pro-bono basis. Polly is the author of Eradicating Ecocide and Earth is Our Business.

 

To find out more about Polly, visit www.pollyhiggins.com

To connect or work with Amisha, visit www.amisha.co.uk  


******* Polly left her body on April 21st 2019. Please share this episode to inspire others to continue the important work that she started. She had a dream of a million people signing up to become Earth Protectors, please do this in her honour here www.stopecocide.earth *******


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