The Ecocide trial

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On the 30th Sept 2011 her Ecocide trial, backed by the Hamilton Group finally occured..see what the Guardian had to say about it….

It might have been a thoroughly entertaining spectacle but the implications of the mock ecocide trial could have grave implications for business and political decision makers.

The artificial court case, supported by the Hamilton Group, was held last week and played out as though the crime of ecocide had already been adopted by the United Nations.

To the cheers of a crammed supreme court, packed full of lawyers, businessmen and eco-activists, two chief executives were convicted of global felonies comparable to genocide and war crimes.

However, the actions of the accused had not led to a single loss of human life. Rather, the defendants faced the prospect of years behind bars due to the extensive environmental damage caused by their companies in extracting oil from Tar Sands in Canada. The principal victims of their crimes were migrating birds.

Although many observers would pass off this legal stunt as whimsical fantasy, it is not as absurd as it may seem. The organiser of the trial, barrister Polly Higgins, has proposed to the UN that ecocide – the mass destruction of ecosystems — should become the 5th international crime against peace.

For ecocide to become international law it would need the support of 86 nations to amend the International Criminal Court’s Statute of Rome.Higgins hinted that there are signs of growing diplomatic support for her proposals behind closed doors.

The trial itself could not have been more genuine and would have sent shudders through corporate bosses watching the live Sky News stream. The chief executives in the dock might have been actors but the judge, lawyers and jury were real. So too were incidents on which the crimes were based – an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the mining of Tar Sands in Alberta.

The jury took just 50 minutes to return a not guilty verdict in the former event and two unanimous guilty convictions in the latter. At the hearing’s dramatic climax, the two performing executives shook their heads in dismay as the judge passed the rulings.

Now the mock court has adjourned, can we expect a real ecocide trial in the near future? And would this be the most effective way of protecting the natural world?

See the full story on the guardian’s website here..