Earth is our Business: Changing The Rules Of The Game

By Polly Higgins

Earth is our Business takes forward the argument of Polly Higgins’ first book, Eradicating Ecocide. This book proposes new Earth law, but it is also about something more than law: it advocates a new form of leadership which places the health and well-being of people and planet first. Polly Higgins shows how law can provide the tools and be a bridge to a new way of doing business. She argues, in fact, that Earth is the business of us all, not the exclusive preserve of the executives of the world’s top corporations.

Expanding on the proposal in her first book to make Ecocide an international crime, this book sets out the institutional framework for sustainable development and international environmental governance. It proposes new rules of the game to transform our economies, energy supplies and political landscape in a radical, but practical, way. The implications of Polly Higgins’ proposal are far-reaching and profound.

Like her award-winning first book, Earth is our Business is written for anyone who is engaging in the new and emerging discourse about the future of our planet and sustainable development. Instead of merely examining the problem, Earth is our Business sets out a solution: new rules of the game. They are, says Polly Higgins, a new set of laws based on the sacredness of all life.

Included as appendices are a draft Ecocide Act, a proposal for revising World Bank investment rules, and the indictment used in the mock Ecocide Trial held in the UK Supreme Court in September 2011.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M-Y Books
• Release date: Aug 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9780856832888

Polly Higgins

World-renowned barrister and author Polly Higgins proposed to the United Nations that ecocide be made a crime - to prohibit mass damage and destruction. She was voted one of the World’s Top 10 Visionary Thinkers, No. 35 in Salt Magazine’s Top 100 Inspiring Women of the World and dubbed The People’s Lawyer. Her story is a journey of facing something enormous and finding the keys and tools to unlock something even greater instead. Calling on leaders to step into their greatness, she realized that greatness begins with the self. A unique story, it is part self-learned, part self-unlearned. To break the cycles of harm playing out in the world, our ecocides, is to break the cycles of harm playing within ourselves. Polly was also the award-winning author of 'Eradicating Ecocide'. She passed away in April 2019 and her legacy is being continued by the Stop Ecocide group who are working at an international level to ratify the ecocide law in 2020 and by the work of Extinction Rebellion.

Reviews for Earth is our Business

[the7ken7petersen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reading parts of this book give one a tremendous boost: it was written in 2010 and, things have moved on. There are, however, other parts which are tremendously disappointing, as they are a reminder of how much we knew then which is STILL not accepted by the governing powers.The act of Ecocide must become a crime with the ICC.