Eradicating Ecocide 2nd edition: Laws and Governance to Stop the Destruction of the Planet
224
Eradicating Ecocide 2nd edition: Laws and Governance to Stop the Destruction of the Planet
224Paperback(Second Edition, Second edition)
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Overview
In Eradicating Ecocide, international environment lawyer and Ecocide law expert Polly Higgins sets out to demonstrate how our planet is fast being destroyed by the activities of corporations and governments, facilitated by ‘compromise’ laws that offer insufficient deterrence. She offers a solution that is radical yet pragmatic, and, as she explains, necessary. This is the first book to examine the power of law to change everything. Higgins provides context by presenting examples of laws in other countries and in earlier times in history which have succeeded in curtailing the power of governments, corporations and banks, and have triggered change. Eradicating Ecocide is a crash course on what laws work, what doesn’t and what else is required to prevent the ever escalating destruction. Eradicating Ecocide provides a comprehensive overview of what is required in law in order to prevent ecocide. It is a book unlike any other; based on the principle of ‘first do no harm’, it applies equally to global as well as smaller communities and anyone who is involved in decision-making.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780856835087 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers, Limited |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2016 |
| Edition description: | Second Edition, Second edition |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Eradicating Ecocide
Laws and Governance to Prevent the Destruction of our Planet
By Polly Higgins
Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd
Copyright © 2010 Polly HigginsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85683-508-7
CHAPTER 1
TAKING STOCK
Somewhere along the way, like a train that meets a forking of tracks, the decision is made to take one route over another. A simple shift in the direction of the track points and the train will take the left fork resulting in a destination many miles away from the other. One little decision can lead to a completely different route being taken – and a different end-point. The decision may seem insignificant at the time, but the small and almost imperceptible shift brings with it enormous ramifications. One train, two divergent routes. Two different outcomes.
One Planet, Two Divergent Approaches.
View the planet as an inert thing and a monetary value can be imposed. In one fell swoop the planet becomes a commodity. The planet becomes property to trade, an asset upon which a price has been imposed. As a consequence, (wo)man's dominion over land, his/her right to extract and diminish the capital of the planet as he/she wishes, guarantees the asphyxiation of life.
This approach has informed our environmental legislation almost exclusively since the 1970s. Permit allocation, soft industry requirements and inadequate enforcement provisions are the modus operandi. Businesses that damage the planet continue apace, hand-in-hand with ecological devastation – at a price. In real terms the price is far higher than the nominal pecuniary fines levied against those caught exceeding their allocated limits. By reducing the planet to a commodity and ensuring industry is legislatively cushioned, damaging business practice is legally protected. The value of life is of no consequence but value of profit is. In the UK, as in many other countries, the duty to act in the interests of profit above other interests is enshrined in law. Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006 is the legal duty to promote the success of the company. When exercising this duty the director is required to 'have regard' to various non-exhaustive list of 'factors' listed in s.172. To 'have regard' is a far lower legal standard to attain than to 'prioritise.' The difference is determinative: the former can be given the most cursory of considerations, whilst the latter demands a determination according to the importance of the factor. 'Success' is not defined in the Act. The Department of Trade and Industry's guidance to the Bill suggests that a success in relation to a commercial company is considered to be its "long-term increases in value". It is suggested by the DTI that a director will exercise the same level of care, skill and diligence as he carries out any other functions in deciding which 'factors' he will take into consideration when making a decision subject to his overall responsibility to the success of the company. The implication is that if a factor is deemed a conflict of interest, then it can be disregarded.
Current climate negotiations reinforce customary rights for business – the right to emit, the right to be inequitable, the freedom to destroy the planet. These are the cushions upon which industry sits; soft governance ensures profits remain secure. The Kyoto Protocol is a document that actively facilitates trading on these terms (permits to pollute, carbon trading mechanisms). Thus an international business has been created to address one symptom (the escalation of greenhouse gases) rather than the problem (the damage we are wreaking on the planet). Twelve years on from its instigation and we know that both the mechanism applied and the ascribed rights have comprehensively failed to stop damaging practices. Instead, we have enslaved the planet for our own ends.
The Industrial Revolution
Treating the planet as a commodity became firmly established as the norm in the Western World with the advent of the IndustrialRevolution. Rapid expansion of industry spread throughout the UK into Western Europe and North America, then onto much of the rest of the world. Agricultural based manual and animal labour shifted towards large-scale use of steam-powered machines, fuelled by abundant and cheap coal. The steam engine took over from the water wheel thereby enabling the powering of a wide range of manufacturing machinery. Commercial activity was no longer restricted to locations where water wheels or windmills could be used. Coal burning to heat water and create steam opened the door to new opportunities; coal could be transported and crucially could be used for transport. Burning coal created energy to power ships and railway locomotives. Increased mobility increased speed of transaction and trade activity. There was an explosion of activity; textile industries were mechanised and iron-making techniques developed exponentially assisted by the introduction of canals, improved roads and railways. Coal was the common denominator; it liberated the expansion of trade and transport.
'Canal mania' had grabbed the imagination of the nation in the mid-18th century. Transport had until now been a costly affair, not to mention dangerous. The upkeep of roads, horses, carriages and men as well as the turnpike toll payments made movement of heavy goods cumbersome and expensive. Proving to be an enormously effective means of transport, an innovative Duke decided to set up his own canal to link his mine to Manchester some 42 miles away. Suddenly every entrepreneur saw the potential for transforming the movement of goods.
It took very little to convince Parliament. Government stepped in and provided the necessary political support. Canal Acts and Navigation Acts were hastily written and implemented as each new canal was conceived. Outside of coal mining, it was the largest job-creation scheme of its time. Thousands of workers were employed, larger and greater canal trade routes were planned across the country, links were made to existing city rivers. Within an incredibly short period the geographical and economical landscape of Britain had changed dramatically. Brewers were no longer confined to selling their ales locally: a horse drawn barge loaded with barrels could be delivered into the heart of London within two days. The fragile porcelains of Joshia Wedgewood, free from the risk of being shattered as wheels clattered over unpaved rough roads, could now be floated serenely and safely downstream to arrive in one piece in the shops of all the major cities.
The public directly benefitted too. The reduction in transport costs resulted in the price of coal dropping dramatically which in turn facilitated the switch from wood as the predominant fuel (the forests of Britain were by now vastly depleted). Coal was the number one cargo for canals. The savings were astounding: one horse could haul up to 400 times as much as a single pack-horse. Coal was now readily accessible, readily available and readily used. Parliament took a pro-active policy of implementing enabling laws for all canals requested. The Canal Enabling Acts provided the necessary legislative leverage required to ensure coal became the new fuel of choice. The first of many enabling Acts was passed in 1759, triggering a decade of enormous activity. It was the trim tab that immediately unlocked the availability of coal at vastly reduced price.
The dramatic upsurge of the use of coal, however, came at a price in other ways; increase in burning brought increase in pollution. Akin to a disease, the spread of coal pollution was detrimental and degenerative, both directly and indirectly affecting humans. This was no benign cancer; this was the beginning of over 200 years of large-scale damage, destruction and loss to the environment, contaminating the air, land and waterways.
The origin of this particular cancer was London. By the late 18th century no other city in the world consumed such enormous quantities of fossil fuel, unwittingly exposing the inhabitants to such high levels of pollution. In the year 1800 one million tons of coal were burned to satisfy the rapacious demands of a million Londoners, throughout the UK the number reached 15 million tons. The burning of coal unleashed a wave of pollution that was to engulf the world, fuelled by Britain's expansion as the most powerful manufacturing, trading and imperial power that the world had ever seen.
By the late 19th century technological development brought the internal combustion engine and electrical power generation. The impact of the use of coal on society was enormous. Within 100 years society's relationship with the planet had been changed irrevocably – certainly for those who were the pioneers of the industrial world. The emergence of factories and consumption of immense quantities of coal and other fossil fuels gave rise to unprecedented air pollution. The masses were mobilized; corralled into factories that were built near to coal mines creating urban centres and pollution hotspots. It was not only the well-todo who could travel with greater speed and in greater numbers, and increased production was facilitated by the greater ease and speed of transporting merchandise. The availability of coal-fuelled heat and gas made from coal for indoor and outdoor lighting irrevocably altered the industrialized man's lifestyle. Profits were to be made directly or indirectly out of coal with little thought or concern for the health and wellbeing of the planet, nor initially for the people who were adversely affected by the damage and destruction wrought in the wake of industrialisation.
Common understanding of pollution in 19th century initially did not make the causal link between fossil fuelled industrial activity and damage. Although smoke from the combustion of coal was visible to the eye, and particulates left their pernicious residue on skin, clothes and in the air, few viewed it as detrimental to either human health or the environment. Pollution was deemed to be something altogether far more sinister; it made you ill and was contagious. Noxious gases given off by decaying plant and animal matter were the danger (miasma, or 'bad air') and smoke from coal burning was viewed as an antidote. According to prevailing thought at the time, shaped by the fear of cholera and the Black Death, acids and carbon in smoke were powerful disinfectants. The pong of putrefaction was evidence enough of pollution. Pollution was airborne and smoke, it was believed, provided a blanket service in soaking up the offending odours.
The widespread view industrialized man and woman held, of nature as harmful, had successfully, if erroneously, long been germinating among city dwellers; putrefaction and decomposition of animal and plant matter had brought infection and disease for centuries. Nature was thus to blame. Cesspools, sewers, marshes and canals – anywhere that decomposition of biomass was to be found was feared. For centuries people had been complaining that London's rivers were smelly and polluted. Tanneries discharged their toxic cocktail of fermented offal, skin scraps and dog faeces into the river, accompanied by rotting animal parts discarded by butchers, human sewage and other industry by-products. Sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) was one of the first industrial applications of a chemical; it was used extensively in tanning and dying processes, also to dissolve metals and later, applied in fertilizers.
In cities, nature as detrimental and something to be controlled had replaced the view of nature as beneficial. What was not understood was that it was humans' own desecration and inconsiderate disposal of nature that created the pollution. In addition to the polluted waterways, the burning of our natural resources created more of that which we feared the most: disease and ill-health.
The Discovery of Germs
On 31st August 1854 a major outbreak of cholera struck in Soho. It was not an isolated case, but it was the worst yet. Within three days 127 people on or near Broad Street died. In the next week, three quarters of the residents had fled the area. By 10th September, 500 people had died and the mortality rate was 12.8 percent in some parts of the city. By the end of the outbreak 616 people were dead.
A recent increase in migration of people into London in search of work triggered a serious problem with the disposal of human waste and a lack of proper sanitary services. Disease spread quickly through large conurbations around workhouses and factories; settlements that were cramped with no organised sanitation. Many basements had cesspools of nightsoil underneath their floorboards. The cesspools had reached capacity and were overrunning resulting in the government decision to dump the waste into the River Thames.
The physician John Snow was a sceptic of the miasma theory that declared 'bad air' as the cause of cholera and the Black Death. He decided to investigate. He identified the source of the outbreak as the public water pump on Broad Street (now Broadwick Street), and subsequent examination of the water and pattern of contamination led him to believe that it was not due to breathing foul air but from drinking the water. It was discovered later that this public well had been dug only three feet from an old cesspit that had begun to leak fecal bacteria. The pump handle was removed. By that time Snow suspected the contamination had already receded. Nevertheless, Snow's study proved to be a major event in the history of public health. His findings resulted in the replacement of the miasma theory with the germ theory.
Smog continued to fill not just the cities but also the lungs. By mid-19th century, and for the first time in world history, more people in Britain lived in cities than in the countryside. Coal burning continued to escalate exponentially both in the home and in the workplace. Soon doctors and physicians found their surgeries filled with patients suffering from respiratory diseases. Scientific breakthroughs and understanding of bacteria began to shape public opinion. Burning of coal released not only toxic ash, smoke and soot but also a whole range of impurities including sulphur dioxide, volatile hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide. Smoke, it would seem, could no longer be justified as beneficial. On the contrary, its detrimental impact was only beginning to be grasped. But the damage had already been done. The pollution train had metaphorically left the station to much fanfare and celebration, and with it the toxic filled plumes of smoke billowed their way down the line of time.
The train is one of the great symbols of progress of the industrial era, and indeed it was. Great railways were built, and stations to match: grand and beautiful edifices celebrating the arrival of a new era in the major metropoli. They were the palpable expression of the success of technology, design and man's dominion over his land. The 1830s were the golden era of travel: George Stephenson (1781–1848) was the genius behind the construction of the Liverpool to Manchester railway, the first to be floated across a vast tract of peat bog and his locomotive, the Rocket. Both the train and the railway track were engineering triumphs that spawned thousands of miles of railway construction across the UK and the world.
Trains fuelled by the very coal they were transporting brought the black gold to the centres of commerce, stoking the fires of industry which in turn discharged their industrial chemicals into the already burdened and polluted waterways, poisoning the nearby lands. Cities and urban centres of industrial activities became increasing malodorous and noxious. Both people, property and land visibly deteriorated. The connection between industrial activity and pollution finally began to dawn, as the smog filled the air and the acid rain poured down. Blocking sunlight and nasal passages of politicians and people alike, from the mid-1840s several attempts were made to introduce laws to require owners of furnaces to reduce smoke emissions. However the recently acquired power and wealth of the new industrialists, who effectively lobbied Parliament, was not to be easily relinquished. The first pollution control Act, the Smoke Nuisance Abatement (Metropolis) Act, was only passed in 1853, but its effect was limited.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Eradicating Ecocide by Polly Higgins. Copyright © 2010 Polly Higgins. Excerpted by permission of Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,Part 1: How Law Caused the Commercial Takeover of the World,
1 Taking Stock,
2 Massacre of the Innocents,
3 Telling the Truth about the Birds and the Bees,
Part 2: Protecting our Oikos,
4 Principles to Protect our Oikos,
Part 3: Eradicating Ecodice,
5 Ecocide: the 5th Crime Against Peace,
6 The Sacred Trust of Civilization,
7 Holding Business to Account,
8 Environmental Sustainability,
9 New Developments,
Part 4: Towards a Living Planet,
10 The Commanding Voice of the People,
Epilogue,
Notes,
Index,