By Judith Gunn

“It was about fifteen years ago when she had a kind of epiphany,” Jojo Mehta, co-founder of Stop Ecocide, reflects on her friend and fellow campaigner Polly Higgins, whose book Dare To Be Great is published today (Fri 10th April).

So what was the epiphany?

“She had just won a case for a really difficult client on a trial that had been going for a couple of years. She was in the Royal Courts of Justice and she looked over London and thought - ‘it’s not just my client that needs protecting; it’s the earth, the earth is in need of a good lawyer.’” With that Polly Higgins turned her back on her career as a barrister and set her mind to protecting her new client. Her initial research took her to the Rights of Nature movement and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia in 2010. “But” says Jojo “what she realised fairly quickly is that rights are only any use if you have corresponding responsibilities and that is what criminal law provides. It’s all very well to have a right to life but unless murder is a crime your right to life isn't worth an awful lot.”

Ecocide was not a new concept. It was originally intended to be in the Rome Statute, the governing document for the International Criminal Court (ICC) established in 1998. It is the top legal document in the world, it lists ‘crimes of most serious concern for humanity’, sometimes known as ‘crimes against peace’. But ecocide was the missing crime from the Rome Statute, says Jojo. “It literally became the mission of Polly’s life to reinstate that missing crime.”

In 2010 Polly submitted a definition of ecocide to the UN – a definition, says Jojo “that is good enough for the Pope!” (In November last year Pope Francis called for recognition of ecocide crime, using Polly’s wording.) In 2013, Polly came to the first SEED Festival at Hawkwood College and together with her husband Ian Lawrie QC made the move to Stroud.

“Polly wasn’t a kind of ‘on the street demo’ person at all, and in fact the first two years we worked together we worked very much in parallel”. Jojo’s early activism included the anti-fracking movement and opposing the incinerator and her working relationship with Polly was complementary - Jojo helped Polly with communications and Polly offered legal advice to support activism.

In 2017 that working relationship became an organisation and Ecological Defence Integrity was co-founded by the two women. This began a chain of events that has produced the Earth Protectors movement and the rebranding of the public campaign from Mission Life Force to Stop Ecocide. “We realised it needed to do exactly what it said on the tin and the tag line was ‘change the law’.” That decision was made at Polly’s last work meeting in the garden of her home last year. Jojo recalls “It was the most bonkers two weeks of my life – I was looking after Polly, running the campaign because she was ill and supervising a total rebrand all at the same time. Just having the word ‘ecocide’ front and centre made a huge difference. We got our first thousand placards printed just in time for the first rebellion (Extinction Rebellion) and they were everywhere”. The rebellion kicked off with an ‘ecocide’ protest on the South Bank which saw the words ‘For Polly’ spray-painted on the side of the Shell Building.

Polly saw it in the last week of her life. “She was absolutely thrilled,” says Jojo. “She watched the video again and again... It was amazing for Polly because it was her last week and she was in hospital and she was watching it all on Facebook and on the internet and for the first time after a decade of work she was seeing her work on the streets… so there was actually a groundswell of people saying ‘Stop Ecocide’. The whole conversation around ecocide has expanded globally since then – two states have even officially called for it to be recognised as a crime. She would have been so excited to see that.”

Polly and Jojo were also great friends. “She was a real maverick and I miss that,” says Jojo. They both shared a love of fancy dress and ran parties for supporters, and Polly had insisted that an Alice in Wonderland party be held after her death.

Dare to be Great is Polly Higgins’ personal account of her journey and work to stop ecocide. “So many people feel disempowered and Polly was all about empowerment. It’s the closest thing you will get to having a conversation with her, as opposed to reading her legal treatise.” Originally titled ‘I Dare You to be Great’ it is an inspiration and a call to action for those who want to protect the planet.

Dare To Be Great will be published on Good Friday, April 10th (featuring a cover by award winning local filmmaker, artist and illustrator Joe Magee) via Flint Books (flintbooks.co.uk) - the new imprint by Gloucestershire based publisher the History Press (thehistorypress.co.uk).There will be an online launch featuring contributors from the book, including: Marianne Williamson, US ex-Presidential candidate, who wrote the Foreword; Jojo Mehta, who wrote the introduction; Dr Jane Goodall DBE and Michael Mansfield QC, who wrote Afterwords. Other endorsers of the book include: Caroline Lucas, Charles Eisenstein, George Monbiot, Gail Bradbrook, Roz Savage and Simon McBurney. There will also be a live Twitter chat on the day after Earth Day, on April 23rd, to mark Polly’s anniversary and discuss key themes arising from the book.

For further info on Stop Ecocide visit stopecocide.earth and pollyhiggins.com

Judith Gunn is a frustrated screenwriter and the author of Dostoyevsky: A Life of Contradiction. She has two stories in the latest edition of Stroud Short Stories and is the creator of online educational content and books. She does this while tutoring students online and writing the great novel. judithgunn.com

Polly Higgins: Dare To Be Great