This article began in around 2017ce, but although there have been changes since then it remains valid as a preamble to the currenbt position, itself outlined below.
As Druids, we stand in the grey areas between the dark and the light and speak truths, to each other, to the gods, and to ourselves. We are not alone, and I think it was the Quaker religion that coined the phrase “to speak truth to power”. Those who are connected, or seeking connections, between the physical, the spiritual and the gods have many paths to explore. Druidry is ours.
Whether one is polytheist, monotheist, animist or philosopher – or a mix of all those and more – we hear the land around us call out. Our mass of humanity is burdening the planet and creating an increasingly unsustainable impact. Locally, in places around the world, we are killing parts of the planet – wiping out species and even whole ecologies. Ecocide.
Until now perhaps, those fighting against ecocide have been powerless against the pressure of governmental dictatorship and corporate greed. Agreements such as the Paris Climate Accord have proved both futile and easy to withdraw from. Civil actions in the courts have been too costly when fought against wealthy corporations. Perhaps Criminal Law could work, but what law is there?
It is a crime to wipe out a people – Genocide. Laid down in statute and enforceable across much of the world, it is an International Crime to break the Genocide Convention. Now, a lawyer in the West of England has put together a plan which if successful would also make Ecocide criminally sanctionable.
Updated October 2023
Times move on and people too. As trustee signatories to the call for a crime of ecocide, we celebrated the life of that revolutionary lawyer, Polly Higgins, as she slipped into mystery in 2019 and her co-founder Jojo Mehta pressed on with the work undauinted. The Mission Lifeforce initiative became the Stop Ecocide Foundation charitable foundation and countries around the world became engaged with the idea of preventing ecocide through making it a feasibly punishable crime.
Find out more and get involved at