Fashionista Westwood joins End Ecocide call
Vivienne Westwood calls upon EU citizens to vote for End Ecocide in Europe
London, 15.01.2014:
Vivienne Westwood and Prisca Merz, volunteer director of End Ecocide in Europe, explain at ajoint press conference on board the HMS President on the river Thames that large-scale environmental damage results from an exaggerated focus on profits rather than nature – the basis of all life on the planet and millions of people. A movie promoting the cause is also presented.
Deepwater Horizon, Fukushima, the Niger Delta or Canadian tar sands are just a few examples of disasters which could be prevented through a new law establishing a criminal liability for decision-makers in business and government for such crimes. Only few days remain to sign the initiative – then the January 21st deadline set by the EU to achieve 1 million signatures will pass.
Vivienne Westwood says "Our financial rulers and the politicians who help them are playing a giant game of Monopoly with the world's finite resources - completely abstract from reality - even though they accept the facts of Climate Change. And yet, you can't play Monopoly when everybody's dead. They imagine they'll be the last people. They don't care so long as they win."
The systematic destruction of entire peoples – genocide – is already an international crime against peace. Widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment is already a war crime, but allowed during peace. The large-scale destruction of our planet’s ecosystems threatens life all over the world and therefore must be recognised as a crime. This crime has a name:Ecocide.
Currently, environmental damage often remains unpunished or fines are negligible in comparison to the resulting profits, not a large enough deterrent to dangerous industrial activity. CEOs don’t care about money but they care about their freedom. Companies do not want to be involved in anything illegal. That’s why the group requests a criminal liability for those responsible for ecocide.
The European Union gives its citizens the possibility to propose new laws. For this, one million EU citizens must vote for a certain proposal so that the EU is obliged to consider it and adopt a response. A group of brave volunteers has put the law of ecocide on the table and already gathered almost 100,000 votes. The deadline to achieve the target is January 21st, so only few days are left.
Prisca Merz explains: “With this law, we want to shift the consciousness. By making their destruction a crime, we recognise the intrinsic value of ecosystems for human and non-human life on earth. We cannot survive without a healthy environment. European citizens understand that immediately and there are many people out there who would vote for this law but haven’t heard about it yet. This is the last chance to reach them!"
Notes:
Ecocide Law:
During the 1970s and 1980s ecocide was discussed as a Crime Against Peace to be included in the Rome Statute. It was withdrawn at the eleventh hour, probably due to pressure from the US, UK and Netherlands. In 2010, award-winning author and lawyer Polly Higgins handed in a proposal at the UN Law Commission, defining ecocide as the "extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been or will be severely diminished".
University of London Research Paper “Ecocide is the missing 5th crime against peace”: http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/4830/1/Ecocide_research_report_19_July_13.pdf
Application of the law
A mock Ecocide trial was held at the Supreme Court of England and Wales in 2011 demonstrating that the law can work. It tried two hypothetical cases based on facts: the explosion of an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico and the ecocide caused by the exploitation of Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada.
