Speech: Polly Higgins - Ecocide, the 5th Crime Against Peace

Polly Higgins, lawyer for the Earth, speaks about Ecocide at the TEDx talk in Exeter. Polly outlines her vision for Ecocide to a TED audience on the theme of environmental sustainability.

"The neologism ecocide can be used to refer to any large-scale destruction of the natural environment or over-consumption of critical non-renewable resources. The destruction of the environment includes damage to fauna and flora of an area, depletion of resources such as minerals, misuse of water and land, pollution of the atmosphere and indirect effects of intensive fossil fuel burning resulting in global warming by way of large release of CO2. Ecocide is also a term for a substance that kills enough species in an ecosystem to disrupt its structure and function.

It has also been defined as the extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished."