Polly Higgins

Pauline Hélène "Polly" Higgins (4 July 1968 – 21 April 2019) was a Scottish barrister, author, and environmental lobbyist, described by Jonathan Watts in her obituary in The Guardian as, "one of the most inspiring figures in the green movement".

Advocacy At the end of a three-year case representing a person who had been injured at work, Higgins described looking out the window at the Court of Appeal and thinking "The earth is being injured and harmed as well and nothing is being done about it" and "the earth is in need of a good lawyer". Subsequently, she stopped practising as a barrister to focus on advocating for an international law that would hold business executives and governments to account by rendering them criminally liable for the environmental harm that they cause. George Monbiot describes the impact this might have.

Ecocide had been proposed as one of the international crimes against peace in 1996, but failed to be included in the final Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Higgins started to campaign for its inclusion in around 2009. She was a founder of the Earth Law Alliance. In 2009, Higgins was described by The Ecologist magazine as "one of the world's top ten visionary thinkers". She was ranked number 35 in Salt magazine's 2016 Top 100 Inspiring Women of the world list.

Personal life After leaving Scotland, Higgins lived in London In 2002, she married Ian Lawrie, a judge and QC.

In March 2019, Higgins was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and given about six weeks to live; her diagnosis was publicly disclosed at the time by George Monbiot. Earth Is Our Business: Changing the Rules of the Game (2012) I Dare you to be Great (2014) Dare to be Great (2020) (re-publication with new introduction & appendices)

Papers

Honours and Recognitions

1998 - Call to the Bar 2009 - The Ecologist - One of the world's top ten visionary thinkers who "demonstrated a clear vision for a better world" 2010-11 - The People's Book Prize – Non-fiction – Eradicating Ecocide by Polly Higgins 2012 - Rachel Carson 50th Anniversary Memorial Lecture 2012 (London and the Netherlands) - "Ending the Era of Ecocide" (Ecocide – the Fifth Crime Against Peace) 2013-14 - Arne Naess Professorial Chair (non-academic) in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo, Norway 2016 - Salt Magazine: - Salt and Diageo's Top 100 Inspiring Women of the World, #35 Polly Higgins 2017 - Honor of Ekotopfilm, Slovakia, "Her proposal to extend the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court would define ecocide as an international crime alongside genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression." 2019 - Ekotopfilm, Slovakia - Prize of the International Jury in Memory of Polly Higgins

Scottish decorations Royal Scottish Geographical Society: - Shackleton Medal, 2018

Awards Eradicating Ecocide was voted non-fiction winner of the national People's Book Prize in 2011. Higgins delivered the Rachel Carson Memorial Lecture in 2012. She held an honorary (non-academic) Arne Naess Professorship at the University of Oslo (2013–14) and received an honorary doctorate from the Business School Lausanne, Switzerland (2013). She was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in 2018. Her other awards include Polarbröd's Utstickarpriset for Future Leadership (2016) and a Slovak Ekotopfilm Award (2017).