The Law According to Polly Higgins

Advocating for the Earth

Wednesday 29th May, 2019

I am sitting at the bottom of my garden while I write these words, with the sun on my face and my bare feet grounding me to the earth. The clematis is in full bloom, its pale pink flowers cascading over the back fence, the bright colours of calendula, aquilegia and bluebell lighting up the space beneath. The raised bed is full of sage and sapling trees that my children are growing. The sun is dappling through cherry, apple, sycamore and elder, onto a toy strewn lawn that is more dandelion and clover than grass. There is a gentle hum from the birdbox in our homegrown hawthorn hedge, where a colony of Tree Bumblebees are living this spring. Starlings are nesting in the eaves of next doors roof. This evening, we will watch bats overhead, listen for the sounds of frogs in a nearby pond, and peek through the fence to catch a glimpse of the family of foxes that live under an ancient stone boundary wall. I live in the middle of a city, but surrounded by trees, all the sounds of nature, and with a view, if I stand on my tiptoes and crane my head a little to one side, of the hills south of the Tyne. It is easy, sitting here amongst all this LIFE, to step out of the knowledge that we are in the middle of an environmental crisis encompassing the whole planet. I could let the abundance of nature around me convince me that it isn’t true.

But oh, it is.

This time last year, I had never heard of Polly Higgins. Perhaps you haven’t heard of her either. That’s okay. I’m going to tell you her story. It’s a story of hope and determination and I feel in the depths of my very bones that one day her story will connect all the stories of all the women and men who are fighting for the survival of the earth. And it will be day when people and planet will be held in reverence - protected and honoured. A day when big business will no longer have the freedom to destroy at will for the sake of bank balances and profit margins. A day that would have made Polly proud.

I first became aware of Polly Higgins via the miracle of YouTube. Last autumn, as Extinction Rebellion were warming up for mass civil disobedience, I watched a TEDx Talk from 13^th February 2013, where Polly challenged the audience to consider these questions – how to create a world of peace, and how to dare to be great. Barefoot on the stage, standing on a carpet of moss and surrounded by potted fir trees, she talked about her connection with the earth and her journey to protect it. She was every bit the eco goddess, and she immediately had my attention.

Pauline Helene Higgins was born on 4^th July 1968, the daughter of a meteorologist and an artist, and was raised on the hills of the Highlands of Scotland. Her childhood was immersed in nature, tying her life from it’s very beginning to soil and tree, water and sky. She became a barrister, an international lawyer, an award-winning author and a climate change activist. Nine years ago, she took a proposal to the United Nations International Law Commission to have The Rome Statute altered to include the crime of Ecocide, a term that is used to portray environmental harm: that is, damage to, and destruction or loss of ecosystems and the living beings that rely on those ecosystems for life.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was established in July 2002 and currently includes four primary International Crimes Against Peace – those of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression. Polly’s proposal, which you can read about in her book “Eradicating Ecocide: Laws and Governance to Stop the Destruction of the Planet” (2010), brought a fifth international crime to the table, that of any act which destroys or damages the earth or it’s inhabitants. Ecocide.

“I found myself thinking, the earth is in need of a good lawyer…it was a thought that didn’t leave me, because the earth and communities right across the world – their voices aren’t being heard. And I was recognising that actually nobody was representing the interests of the earth, as such, in the courtroom…” PH

“Polly is crouching on her favourite tree (stump), this is where she would go to re-energize, a special and “holy” place for her, key to her spiritual practise and way of working” Words and image, Sylvain Guenot.

Polly’s law for the earth and her lobby to the UN was unsuccessful in 2010, and so she put her energies into a campaign to gather support around the world for it. Her Mission Life Force campaign seeks to bring people together to stand behind the creation of a law that puts the planet and all living beings upon it, first. A pre-emptive “first do no harm” principle is at the core of her law proposal, where those with Superior Responsibility, that is those who are at liberty to make decisions that can impact millions of inhabitants of the earth, as well as the earth itself, will have a duty of care enshrined in law to ensure that decision making comes from a place of protection.

“Can you imagine what this would look like if it had already been put in place? How that would have fundamentally shifted how we operate politically, how we operate economically, within business – to operate from a ‘first do no harm’ principle to the earth? Could you imagine what this world would look like? How we would be operating from a system of deep care on every decision-making process? It would be really quite remarkable…” PH

Polly Higgins died on April 21^st 2019. She was 50. Her legacy will be the belief that the earth deserves to be protected in International Law. With all my heart and soul, I hope to see the day that Polly’s Law is brought into being. As I sit in my garden, surrounded by the evidence of my children’s play, by flowers in bloom, trees in full leaf, with my bare feet connecting with the earth that sustains us all, I know for my children’s sake and yours that this law must surely come to pass. It is not enough to hold to account retrospectively those who seek to harm the people and planet for their own gain.

And now that you know who Polly Higgins was, and all she stood for, remember her. Speak her name. Tell her story to your children. Become an Earth Protector and stand beside the memory of her, for the Earth and all life upon it. Be part of the process to reach the world of peace she hoped to see. Dare to be great.

And maybe one day, one day soon, every politician, every CEO, every head of state, every single person responsible for ecocide will know her name too.

Saturday May 31st 2025

Today I have spent much of the day in our garden. With the help of lovely friends, there are gifted perennial cornflowers, comfrey and willow, now settling into containers and borders, and my ancient Belfast sink is full of (reduced to clear) shop bought spring onions, roots in tact, and ready to dress a summer’s worth of cut and come again salads. The clematis has been dropping pink petals all over the garden, and the lilac is almost over already, its gentle scent faint now. There are as yet still green Victoria plums plumping up in a sunny spot over the roof of the chicken run. The sapling trees that were so tiny six years ago are in pots, some almost as high as the house - Rowan, Horse Chestnut, Corkscrew Hazel, Birch. The lawn is a distant memory, demolished by chickens, and the bare feet of my children, though in last month’s garage clear out, I found a huge box of grass seed, so we may yet see grass again this year. We have been given some mini polytunnels, built this afternoon by a young friend with a keen eye for construction, and soon they will be protecting onions, beetroot and turnip seedlings from peckish creatures, cats and hopefully, snails. The teapot in the clematis which once housed, we think, the nest of a family of robins, is now home to bees a whole six years since the tree bees made a home in a bird box in the hedge. A pandemonium of parakeets have taken up residence in the cherry tree next door, and we can almost tell the time by their evening flight over our rooftop to their own roosting place. There are still bats, swooping across the garden as dusk falls, still frogs, chirruping. Much has stayed the same in our tiny haven of green in a city of noise and bustle. I step outside the back door into the resting dark, breathing the night air in, and know that actually, there is much that has changed, not least of all myself.

I have been 51 for a whole week. And not just any week. This has been a week when Scotland has taken courageous steps towards the dream Polly held for Ecocide to become part of a robust legal framework that will protect the earth. The Ecocide (Scotland) Bill. Introduced three days ago, on Thursday 29th May in Holyrood, by MSP Monica Lennon, this Bill, if it is passed into law, would make it a criminal offence to cause “widespread, long-term or irreversible environmental damage” with unlimited fines for companies, prison terms up to 20 years for individuals found guilty and crucially no get out clause around intent - whether damage is intentional, accidental, or due to “recklessness”, it is the resulting damage that will be the deciding factor in prosecution.

The choice to put forward this Bill places Scotland firmly at the forefront of the international effort to use criminal laws as a way to prevent big companies with no moral compass and more money than sense, from destroying this beautiful world that we are all custodians of. I think Polly would be absolutely overjoyed. She dared to be great, and now the land that made her is daring to be great too. To lead the way towards a time, just over the next hill, when every inch of this beautiful earth will be protected.

Thank you Scotland. Thank you Polly. I’d like to think that wherever your energy is now, you’re proud.

Today, as the world turns and the starlings chatter and the sun dips over the rooftops, let’s remember Polly, who dared us to be great, and let's keep supporting all those who will work to write this new chapter of her story, into the very stone of the earth that sustains us all.

Love, Kate.

May PAYF Sale is still on…. take a look and help to support my little family. There are other ways to support me here.