More than a decade ago, British lawyer Polly Higgins quit her high-flying job and sold her house. She wanted the time and money to throw herself into campaigning for a law she, and many others, believed could change the world and give us a vital tool to tackle climate change.
Higgins was fighting for “ecocide” to be recognized as an international crime against peace. Defined as the mass damage or destruction of natural living systems, the crime would impose a duty of care on individuals not to destroy the environment and would hold government ministers and corporate CEOs criminally responsible for the environmental damage they caused.
The aim: to close a gap in the law, which allows the perpetrators of large-scale environmental crimes to avoid accountability. The method: to add ecocide to the list of crimes prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (the ICC) in The Hague.
Earlier this year Higgins died from cancer at the age of 50, but not before she got to see a new generation of activists pick up her torch, with the climate protest group Extinction Rebellion demanding that ecocide be recognized as a crime.
Her global crusade, Stop Ecocide: Change the Law, continues to fight on under the leadership of its co-founder, Jojo Mehta. And now, one of Higgins’ final efforts is starting to become a reality. | 
