We need your help to End the Era of Ecocide  | | | |
Dear friend
I have something I would like to share with you. Today myself and my team have reached zero. The pot is now bare and our funding resources are in urgent need of replenishing. In the past year your donations of over £200,000 funded my and my team's work; we planted some incredible seeds in the run up to the Rio Earth Summit. Out of that we have had some wonderful successes; in the past year alone we have held a mock Ecocide Trial in the UK Supreme Court, the University of London launched their Ecocide Project, I have travelled to countries and spoken on many platforms,I launched my second bookEarth is our Business, I have been awarded Overall Champion by the PEA awards, I have started a training programme for others to learn how to become a Voice for the Earth and I have submitted a concept paper, Closing the door to dangerous industrial activity to all government’s around the world. All this has been done with the help of your money and without it none of this would have been at all possible.
Yesterday we held an emergency meeting; despite the enormous efforts of our fundraiser over the past few months we have been unable to raise more than a few thousand pounds. We are looking squarely at the future and we see enormous opportunity to take forward all that I have already achieved; just think how close we are to making this law a reality.
Everything we do is governed by permaculture ethics; people care, earth care and fair share. Ecocides occur when we take far more than our fair share, which affects both our people and our Earth. To ensure we live within our planetary limits, a law of Ecocide creates a legal framework that can ensure we all live in peaceful enjoyment.
Please help me to continue to build upon all of this good work; now more than ever people care, earth care and fair share matters. Together we can end the era of Ecocide.
With love for the Earth,
Polly
 
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How you can help - Set up a direct debit.
- Give a one off donation.
- Do a direct bank transfer.
- Send a cheque to us at 6 Highbury Corner, Highbury Crescent, London N5 1RD. Please write your cheque out to our charity, The Earth Community Trust.
- In the US you can donate via the Iris Arts and Education Group 1856 San Antonio Ave, Berkeley, California 94707. Please write your cheque out to our charity, The Earth Community Trust.
- Please become one of our funding volunteers. We are seeking a team of people to help us fundraise. This can be done in a number of ways. If you think you can help, please email our intern Nina.
- We are seeking a volunteer for 2 weeks full time to come into our London office: please emailLouise with your CV.
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Ground Zero |  | | |
Speaking about the law of Ecocide for the Earth sometimes brings me in to contact with people and places that have suffered the consequences of some of the worst ecocides. When will our world bring to an end once and for all mass damage and destruction, I find myself wondering. The answer is when civilisation is ready. There are indications that we are moving closer to that point every day.
Last week I joined Parliamentarians, mayors and disarmament experts at an international interparliamentarian conference "From a Nuclear Test Ban to a Nuclear Weapons Free World" in Astana, Kazakhstan. The conference was opened on the UN International Day Against Nuclear Tests 29 August 2012, and the outcome was an appeal to parliaments and governments around the world:
Legislators and governments have a responsibility to protect the security of citizens living within their jurisdictions and to protect their respective localities and the global commons for future generations.
We were taken to visit Semey, a town at the centre of the nuclear testing zone which took place over 60 years ago. In 1949 the first nuclear test took place; what previously flourished came to a halt. You could say this was their ground zero. Hundred of thousands died and today third-generation children are still born malformed and riddled with cancers. 30,000 square kilometers of land is deemed dead land and the impact is still felt very strongly today. We met with young doctors who are trained to deal with the consequences, which part of their every-day life. We saw babies that had died in birth, such were their grotesque and insurmountable malformities. What I saw will remain indelibly etched in my mind forever. How can humanity justify this?
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Nuclear testing and the use of nuclear weapons is not a crime at an international level. The business of making nuclear weapons continues to this day and many countries profit from such proliferation despite there being treaties and conventions in place. The reason for this is that treaties and conventions rarely have the enforcement of criminal law to prohibit, prevent and pre-empt. Nuclear testing and the use of nuclear weapons is one particular type of dangerous activity that a crime of Ecocide will prevent.
Kazakhstan has banned nuclear testing and weapons; they are one of ten countries which have added to their Criminal Penal Code a crime of Ecocide. This is a country that has suffered the consequences and has now opened its doors to the rest of the world to say 'look and learn from us.'
I have now been asked to meet and speak with other Ambassadors, governments and NGO's to discuss how a law of Ecocide can comprehensively close the door to the threat of a nuclear winter. My work as an ambassador for the law of Ecocide seems now, more than ever to be needed. What I see, what I hear and who I meet triggers more and more engagement on the law of Ecocide, especially when it becomes known that Ecocide was going to be included as the fifth Crime Against Peace, and was examined for decades within the UN. Just think what our world could have become by now had a law of Ecocide been included as the 5th Crime Against Peace.
Today the stakes are ever higher; today now more than ever there needs to be a champion for a law of Ecocide; today we need not just one lawyer speaking out - what we need are many many voices for the Earth.
Read the full Parliamentary Appeal for Nuclear Abolition.
Read the sad legacy of nuclear testing by Xanthe Hall, Disarmament expert, IPPNW Germany.
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