Angola: Head of State appoints Ecocide Convention Work Team

The Angolan head of State José Eduardo dos Santos Wednesday in Luanda ordered the setting up of a Work Team to study and draft proposals for incorporation in the country’s legal system of the Ecocide Convention, Angop learned from an official source.

Angolan head of State José Eduardo dos Santos

Ecocide is defined as the destruction or degradation of various ecosystems in a certain territory, through human action or others, putting at stake the full development of the resources by the population.

The United Nations has decided to discuss, approve and promote among the member states an International Convention against the Ecocide, aiming to protect the earth and its living species against the evil and hold legally accountable the institutions, organisms, organisations and their leaders found responsible for the phenomenon.

Internally, the Executive is required to set up national mechanisms of combat against the ecocide, promotion of the enforcement of the law and regulation of the cooperation with the international organisms and organisations involved in the protection of the environment, its technical assistance and exchange of information.

The just appointed Work Team is coordinated by the minister of Environment and includes representatives of the ministries of Energy and Water, Interior, Oil and National Defence.

According to the source, The Work Team is expected to conduct a deep study on the Ecocide Convention draft, by analysing the impact the phenomenon might have on the country’s legal system.

It is also the Work Team’s duty to create a legal framework for the country’s economic development, promote and facilitate international cooperation and provide technical assistance to prevent the ecocide, the source said.

The body is also tasked with arranging and promoting inter-sectoral programmes of information, publicity and social awareness, through environmental education campaigns and identifying and protecting the communities based in threatened areas. More

 

English Green Party Supports Eradicating Ecocide

Polly Higgins, barrister and author of "Eradicating Ecocide" praises Green Party's commitment to future generations

Polly Higgins

9 SEPTEMBER 2012

Ecocide the Missing Fifth Crime Against Peace

At this year's Green Party Conference in Bristol a session led by leading barrister and author Polly Higgins, looked at what Ecocide is and why Ecocide law is critical in achieving a sustainable future and the role the Green party of England and Wales can play in its implementation.

Polly Higgins said "I am absolutely thrilled that the Green Party are giving this motion their wholehearted support. Sitting at the heart of the party is the recognition that the interests of future generations must be central to all political decision making." More

Eradicating Ecocide: The Missing Fifth Crime Against Peace

 

We Need Your Help to End the Era of Ecocide

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 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. 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? 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. The Atom Project: how you can help stop nuclear weapons testing. Read about PPND here In the News:'Disarmament policy is a peace policy' says Germany. Polly speaking on Sunday 9th September at the Green Party Autumn Conference 2012 Polly speaking on Friday 14th of September at Friends of the Earth Annual Conference Polly Speaking on Saturday 15th September at theFestival of Wellbeing

The Earth Cannot Be Saved by Hope and Billionaires

Rio 2012: it's a make-or-break summit. Just like they told us at Rio 1992

World leaders at Earth summits seem more interested in protecting the interests of plutocratic elites than our environment


Worn down by hope. That's the predicament of those who have sought to defend the earth's living systems. Every time governments meet to discuss the environmental crisis, we are told that this is the "make or break summit", on which the future of the world depends. The talks might have failed before, but this time the light of reason will descend upon the world.

 

'To see Obama backtracking on the commitments made by Bush the elder 20 years ago is to see the extent to which a tiny group of plutocrats has asserted its grip on policy.' Illustration above by Daniel Pudles

We know it's rubbish, but we allow our hopes to be raised, only to witness 190 nations arguing through the night over the use of the subjunctive in paragraph 286. We know that at the end of this process the UN secretary general, whose job obliges him to talk nonsense in an impressive number of languages, will explain that the unresolved issues (namely all of them) will be settled at next year's summit. Yet still we hope for something better.

This week's earth summit in Rio de Janeiro is a ghost of the glad, confident meeting 20 years ago. By now, the leaders who gathered in the same city in 1992 told us, the world's environmental problems were to have been solved. But all they have generated is more meetings, which will continue until the delegates, surrounded by rising waters, have eaten the last rare dove, exquisitely presented with an olive leaf roulade. The biosphere that world leaders promised to protect is in a far worse state than it was 20 years ago. Is it not time to recognise that they have failed?

If world governments do not have the vision, the foresight and the compassion to do the right thing, then it is up to us, the People, to bring about change, and if change means a change of government, so be it. This is about a planetary emergency, about a decent life for our children, about our childrens survival. Editor

 

News on the Eradicating Ecocide Campaign

 

Web version | Update preferences | Unsubscribe Like Tweet Forward A groundbreaking discovery Dear friend “Exciting” and “law” are two words I rarely associate with each other. However, when Polly came to me last week and told me about a major discovery I was thrilled and truly excited! Polly recently discovered that there are ten countries which have already made Ecocide a crime during peacetime. These countries are Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Republic of Moldova, Russia and Vietnam. These laws were all put in place around the same time that the Rome Statute (which established the four Crimes Against Peace) was being negotiated. In all these countries’ penal codes, the crime of Ecocide sits alongside the other Crimes Against Peace. We've also discovered that attempts to draw up Ecocide as an extension of Genocide date back to 1978. Moreover, I have been researching the details of the crimes and have discovered, for instance, that the Georgian penal code advocates that the aim of punishment is “the restoration of justice” and that offenders for the less serious crimes may be “released from criminal liability if he/she reconciled with the victim”. However I also found out that the Georgian Green Party is calling on other European greens to join in the fight against laws which are encroaching on this strict protection. Read more about this here. This discovery is hugely significant and timely for us. There is now less than a month to go until the Rio+20 Earth Summit, where our world leaders can commit to making Ecocide an international crime. The fact that several countries already have Ecocide law in place highlights that an international law of Ecocide is realistic and achievable. If you are a lawyer or know a lawyer from any of the countries with Ecocide law in place, and can help with research please get in touch. Youth matter! There are two forthcoming significant events for youth being held in Rio. The World Youth Congress (4th – 13th June) brings together thousands of youth from all over the world to establish 20 solutions for a sustainable future. We think making Ecocide a crime should be one of them. If you are a youth please vote for my proposal that Ecocide is a solution to reach a sustainable future, or alternatively submit your own. Youth Blast (7th -12th June) is the official event of the Major Group for Children and Youth and will allow young people to develop lobbying points to take forward into the Earth Summit. If you are or know any youths (under 30) who would be interested in taking Ecocide law forward at Youth Blast please register here and email me for more information. With hope and faith Louise The Avaaz petition to end ecocide at the Earth Summit now has over 2000 signatures! But we need more. Please sign the petition and share it via facebook with your friends and networks. Help us in our search for a business leader to call on our world leaders to end this era of Ecocide. Read more about Ecocide and business in this report. Aiko Stevenson recently wrote about the law of Ecocide in the Huffington Post. Read more about how Rio+20 represents an opportunity to be wise and take responsibility of Our Future here We need your help In the run up to Rio we are in desperate need of volunteers! If you can gift some time to come into the office and help us we would be incredibly grateful and could provide you with some interesting and exciting tasks. Please get in touch here. Coming up: Women speaking for the Earth Come and join us this evening from 6-9pm at the Islington Hub, London and hear five inspiring women including Polly speaking about changing the world for the better. For more information click here. Thank you.... We have a huge thanks to all those who have helped us, we couldn't do our work without you amazing people. Apologies if we have missed you out - our list would span pages if we named you all, so here's a few special thanks: Julika Werner, Eleonora Gatti, Clancy, Doug Grant, Jay from Australia, Francesca de Gasparis from the Green Belt Movement, The Gaia Foundation team, Tim Morton, Gordon Chamberlain, Nick Robson, Dave Hampton, Sjoerd Aardema, Mexican Ecocide team, Ashley Cooper, Raven Courtney, Zhehan Fan, Chris le Breton, Rosie Much, Coral Vinsen, Ela Gandhi, Marion Weber, Bill Twist, Paul Hawken, Tracy Gary, Mark and Celia Kitchell, A Fierce Green Fire, Verona Fonte, Iris Arts and Education Group, Nick Hart Williams, Brad Nye, 333, Patricia and Dan Ellsberg, Claire Greensfelder, Osprey Orielle Lake, Linda Sheehan, Shannon Biggs, Robin Milam, James Hanusa, Joe Guth, Bruse Demartini, Thoreau Center, Victor Menotti, International Forum on Globalization, Eliza Pearson, Chad Balester, Kath Delaney, Claire Hedin, Diana Marquand, Melanie Strickland, Liz Rivers You're receiving this because you are a trustee of planet Earth. Edit your subscription | Unsubscribe instantly