Faith is an important part of Carlos Vicente’s story.

“Faith is the foundation of my life.”

Carlos’ mother was from the northeast of Brazil.

“Her parents migrated from the northeast to the south. When they arrived, they were drawn into the slavery system, so my grandfather decided to return to the northeast. Even though their situation there was very difficult, they were free, they were not slaves. They took a ship to travel back to the northeast, but it was damaged along the way, and they needed to get off the boat in Cabo Frio, so my mother’s family started a new life in this very small town.”

At the time, Cabo Frio was a fishing town and a major salt producer. 

“It’s about 150 kilometres from Rio de Janeiro, so today it’s a tourist town, very famous, but it’s also a very unequal town with a lot of poverty with many descendants of enslaved people. When slavery was banned in Brazil, Cabo Frio still received many illegally enslaved people from Africa. My father came from a very poor family of fishermen and salt workers. He met my mother at a very young age, she was 18 when she gave birth to me.”

As a child, Carlos appreciated the world with an open mind.

“I loved new ideas, I loved new knowledge, I loved people who did interesting things, different things. As my interest was in knowledge and new approaches, one of the best parts of my life was when I went to school.

“The first school I went to was a Catholic school run by nuns. It only had four year levels, so after four years, I had to transfer to a public school. To get into the public school, I had to take an entrance exam, but when I went to see if I had passed, I didn’t see my name on the list. I remember it was a big wall with lots of sheets of paper full of names, and some of the papers were very high. I was very short and couldn’t read all of the names because I was there alone and had eye problems. So I went home, and in the evening, when my mum came home from work, I told her I hadn’t passed. She was desperate and decided to get help so I wouldn’t miss a year of school: she spoke to the headmistress of one of the public schools attended by the city’s economic elite and asked if I could study there for a year. The headmistress understood the situation and offered me the opportunity to study there paying half the tuition, but we didn’t have that kind of money, so my mum went to talk to the mayor of the town to ask for a grant that he then gave me, which paid for the other half of the tuition.

“So I went to this rich school and saw a new kind of world, totally different from the world I lived in. In this new world people had nice clothes, went on holidays, had birthday parties and had a very open outlook on life, whereas for most people in my world the focus was just on working to make sure we always had food. So I discovered at this new school that our life was very limited, and I developed the desire to live in this other world where you can focus your attention not only on how to have food, but also on enjoying the many other parts of lived experience.”

Carlos lived about six kilometres from the school, and his family couldn’t afford a bus or taxi, so his mother visited one of Cabo Frio’s tourist neighbourhoods “with big houses”. At the back of one of the houses she found what she was looking for, “an old bicycle”.

“My mum offered the owner of the house to exchange the bicycle for her service: my mum did their laundry for six months as payment for the bicycle, and she used that bicycle to take me to school for the whole year.”

The year at the elite school came with its challenges, but it inspired a belief in Carlos that he could aspire to a different life to his parents.

“When I was at the public school, outside of the classroom I felt inferior to my classmates because my school materials and shoes were of poor quality and worn out. I was the only black person in the school and I was very thin, so I was nicknamed mico, which is a type of small monkey. This made me feel very ashamed, and since I didn’t have any money for lunch, I stayed in the classroom during recess so as not to be exposed to bullying. But inside the classroom I felt different, I didn’t feel inferior to anyone because I was able to learn the subjects like the other pupils. It didn’t matter if I didn’t have any material possessions, what counted was my ability to learn and my interest in acquiring knowledge. The classroom was a place where prejudice and poverty didn’t affect me, I could travel in my imagination, discover a new world and learn to dream of a different life. The classroom was one of the few places where I experienced the thrill of feeling free. Outside of school, in the community where I lived, I suffered a lot of bullying too, not because I was poor, but because I was too thin. People made me believe I was abnormal and that I should be ashamed of my body.”

To help buy food for his family, Carlos started working at the age of nine: he sold popsicles on the beach, collected rubbish to sell, and worked at the market as both a vendor and shopper. This work at the market became his main source of income until he was 16.

“At the beginning of my last year of secondary school, I had a conversation with a friend who told me she was leaving our school to go to an elite public school, as she had plans to go to university and then do postgraduate studies abroad. As I was the first person in my family to have studied beyond primary school, I had no guidance on how to develop my academic career, but as I listened to my friend talk about her plans, I saw a window open in front of my eyes, showing me a horizon of possibilities that I had never imagined. I went home and told my mum that I needed to leave public school to go and study at the same elite school I had studied at six years earlier. She went with me to the school and the old headmistress was still working there and she got me a 50 per cent scholarship. I paid for the school myself with the work I did at the markets three days a week.”

Carlos wanted to be a doctor, but when he saw a film focused on medicine and saw the blood of a patient undergoing surgery, he became ill, and thus discovered he was not suited to this profession. Nobody in his family offered alternative recommendations, but on the final day of registration for a university scholarship, he decided on forest engineering. He knew very little about the job, but he felt a strong intuition that working with nature would be the right direction. His love of nature was a reflection of the comfort it had offered him.

“I was a very, very thin guy and I had low self-esteem in relation to my body, so when I went to the beach, I felt very ashamed. I would wait for the moment when I thought people weren’t looking at me, take off my shirt and get into the water and stay there for three or four hours enjoying myself. I discovered in nature I felt at peace, far from the atmosphere of prejudice that suffocated me, far from the stares and judgements. Nature was my space of freedom. So when I decided to go to university, I tried to focus on nature, because nature was my place, and I wanted a career that would help protect it, I wanted to repay the care that nature gave me.”

Carlos studied at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. His days were not easy, trying to make his way without his family’s support.

“For a few months I had nowhere to sleep and nowhere to store my suitcase. I slept on the floor and even on a table in other students’ rooms. I only ate one meal a day, my immune system weakened, but I was convinced that this was the price I had to pay in order to try to have another life. 

“Two years into my degree, a friend recommended me for an internship at a large forestry company. The company was in the centre of Rio de Janeiro, 60 kilometres from the university. I travelled four hours each day (round trip) to get to the internship. This work was paid and it allowed me to stop receiving help from my family, eat three meals a day and buy books. I was working as an intern at Floryl Florestadora Ypê AS, one of Shell’s companies in Brazil. They had a forestry operation dedicated to planting eucalyptus and pine trees for the timber industry. Despite always being very tired, I managed to maintain good grades and my time at university was very rich, full of learning, but somewhat lonely because I didn’t want people to know about the difficulties I was going through, to not risk further prejudice and bullying.”

When Carlos finished his degree, he spent five months in Rio de Janeiro working for a consultancy.

“This company was very problematic and I decided to leave for ethical reasons, so I went back to my hometown. At the time, Brazil was facing a long economic crisis with high unemployment rates and hyperinflation. I couldn’t see any opportunities to work or change my life. I spent my days on the beach depressed because I felt there was no place in the world for me and I would be condemned to live in misery.”

Then life intervened.

“A friend of mine was sitting on a bus and overheard a conversation between the two men sitting in front of him who were talking about a job opportunity in the state of Acre. There was a man looking for a forestry engineer, and my friend overheard this and asked if they could write down the number of this man. My friend then called me, gave me the number and I spent four hours trying to call the man on a public phone. As I didn’t have the money to pay for an interstate call, I had to call collect. When the man answered, I explained my situation and said I was interested in the job. We chatted for a few minutes and he hired me.

“My friend who gave me the number bought the plane ticket from Rio de Janeiro to Acre and another friend lent me money for the first month’s expenses. So I went to Acre without knowing anyone apart from this man I’d met over the phone, but I knew it might be my only opportunity to escape the reality of my hometown, so I put all of my efforts into earning the respect and credibility of my boss in order to remain in that job.”

Carlos was working at the Technology Foundation of the State of Acre.

“The purpose of this Foundation was to develop technical studies and research for the sustainable development of Acre based on forest conservation and to promote better conditions for small farmers, rubber tappers and Indigenous Peoples. We were trying to create alternative technological responses to curb deforestation and improve the population’s quality of life.”

Carlos’ focus connected with the growing social and environmental movements in Acre.

“When I arrived, Chico Mendes was still alive, and together with Marina Silva they were fighting in defence of the rights of rubber tappers, Indigenous Peoples and small farmers, and for the preservation of the forest. I was very attracted to them and the social movement they were part of. My dream was to be part of this group of people fighting against social injustice.”

In the early 1980s, Chico Mendes and Marina Silva formed a labour union while also leading empates, peaceful demonstrations against deforestation and the expulsion of forest communities from their traditional territories.

“Six months after arriving there, I became friends with them and became part of this group. I took part in meetings and demonstrations. In Acre I found my place in the world and the people I wanted to share dreams and struggles with.”

Through the process of becoming closer to Chico Mendes and Marina Silva, Carlos made another important connection.

“Eight weeks after arriving in Acre, I met Raimundo de Barros, another leader of the rubber tappers and a cousin of Chico Mendes. He invited me to spend a few days in the Xapuri forest with him. It was one of the most important moments for me in Acre because we stayed together for a week, sleeping and walking in the forest. He told me lots of stories about the forest, showed me many different trees, and illuminated the relationship between animals, plants and the climate. It was like taking a new university course because my university studies were about plantations, not natural rain forests, and Raimundo de Barros gave me a very intensive course. This deep contact with the forest and its people opened another huge window in my mind and was fundamental in guiding my priorities and the development of my professional career.”

In 1988, Chico Mendes was assassinated in his home in Xapuri.

“The group that killed Chico Mendes wanted to elect a governor who would approve building lots of roads in the forest and favour the expansion of the agricultural frontier in Acre. This would increase social conflicts and deforestation. A friend of mine, Jorge Viana, who was director of the Foundation, together with Marina and the other people in our group, decided to run for governor, and I was part of his campaign team, responsible for the election polls. We didn’t win the election, but he got a lot of votes and two years later he became Mayor of Rio Branco, the capital of the state of Acre. So I decided to leave the Foundation to work as Jorge’s technical advisor.” 

After almost two years in this role, an incredible opportunity arose for Carlos to study abroad.

“After the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development took place in Brazil in 1992, the Costa Rican Institute of Business Administration (INCAE) created an MBA in Natural Resources Management. A friend from our group, who fought for forest peoples, had been selected to take part in the third class of the course in Costa Rica but he couldn’t go as he had been elected to the state legislature. He told me about the course and recommended me for his place. I took the tests and passed the selection. I was very impressed with INCAE because it was the second best business school in Latin America and I knew that business knowledge would help us in the challenge of creating projects, strategies and public policies to sustainably develop the Amazon.”

Carlos decided to enrol, but the cost of the opportunity was a barrier.

“The course lasted 18 months and cost $50,000 (USD). I raised these funds by selling my house and car, borrowing from friends, and through two scholarships — one with the Ford Foundation and the other with the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO).

“I wanted to acquire the technical knowledge and develop the cognitive, behavioural and managerial skills to create viable sustainable economic ventures in the context of the Amazon and its traditional communities. My initial university education didn’t give me these competencies and I knew they were important for structuring solutions so the forest bioeconomy could become a reality in the region.  Since arriving in the Amazon, I had participated in and learned of various projects that sought sustainable economic alternatives but failed. One of the causes, in my opinion, was our lack of knowledge about how to structure viable businesses in remote regions and how to deal with competitive markets.”

After completing the course in Costa Rica, Carlos returned to Acre with a clearer vision of how to connect natural resources and traditional cultures with the market. He then worked for two years as a consultant for various organisations. 

Marina Silva had been elected senator for Acre in 1994. She was the first rubber tapper elected to the Federal Senate and the youngest senator in the history of the Republic of Brazil. Four years later, when Jorge Viana was elected governor of Acre and adopted the slogan “Government of the Forest”, Marina suggested he create the Executive Secretariat for Forests and Extractivism, to structure public policies to support the development of the state, based on the sustainable use of biodiversity; and to support Indigenous Peoples, rubber tappers, river dwellers, small farmers and the traditional forestry sector. Marina also suggested that Carlos lead this work.

Carlos was faced with a challenge that seemed too great for him: despite the good reputation he had built up in Acre as a competent technician, he didn’t feel he was capable of fulfilling the vision of this new role. Carlos saw himself as a survivor of an unjust and unequal social system, but he also carried deep wounds in his heart, struggling with insecurity and low self-esteem. He didn’t see himself as capable of taking on a role full of historical and symbolic importance, as it would be the secretariat responsible for developing public policies inspired by the legacy of Chico Mendes and all the other martyrs who fought for the forest and its peoples for decades, facing the violence imposed by powerful economic and political interest groups. So Carlos decided not to accept the invitation, and he told Jorge and Marina. Then, on the day Jorge was about to announce the government team, Carlos had a profound and transformative spiritual experience with Jesus Christ, and he suddenly felt safe to accept the invitation and lead Acre’s forestry policy.

“Our work at the State Secretariat was both visionary and paradigmatic, because we created the first payment for environmental services in the Amazon, structured the production chains for various socio-biodiversity products and created Acre’s forestry legislation. The results came quickly to the point where we saw growth in the economic indicators for forest products and a reduction in the rural exodus by rubber tappers. This work began to attract national and international attention.” 

The New York Times published an article about their work. 

“We also supported the creation of COOPERACRE, which is currently the largest co-operative of extractivists and small farmers in Acre, and brings to market a large part of the state’s fruit pulp, rubber, nuts and other products, benefiting thousands of small producers. It is an excellent example of the viability of local solutions to protect the forest and improve the quality of life of the rural population.”

In 2002, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected the President of Brazil, and Marina became the Minister for the Environment when he assumed office in 2003.

“Marina invited me to join her team at the Ministry. At first I didn’t accept the invitation because I was very happy in Acre and saw many opportunities to expand the impact of the Secretariat’s work, since Jorge Viana had been re-elected and we had another four years of work ahead of us.”

It was in this moment Carlos had another strong spiritual experience, and he decided to move to Brasilia to work with Marina and Lula. Carlos worked as Marina’s advisor until 2008, when she resigned from her position in Lula’s government and in the Workers’ Party.

“We then decided to create a Marina Silva Institute, an organisation to promote awareness about the Amazon, climate change and protection of nature in Brazil, and I stayed as Executive Secretary of this Institute until 2017.”

During this time, Marina ran for the Brazilian Presidency three times and Carlos remained her advisor for each campaign.

“I had huge learnings about Brazilian society, about the politicians, about the institutions, because I was very close to her in those three campaigns, participating in the whole process. In 2018, when she lost the last election, when Bolsonaro was elected, I moved to the Senate to work as an advisor to five senators, including Joênia Wapichana, from the Sustainability Network’s Party, Marina Silva’s party.”

Carlos worked as an advisor until 2021, when he started his current role as the National Facilitator of the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative (IRI) in Brazil. Created with the United Nations, the IRI is an international, multi-faith alliance that works to bring moral urgency and faith-based leadership to global efforts to end tropical deforestation.

“We are working to help religious leaders have a clearer and deeper understanding of the seriousness of the climate crisis, the urgency of stopping the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, of protecting the rights of the guardians of biodiversity — such as Indigenous Peoples, Quilombolas and traditional communities — and the value of scientific and ancestral knowledge to overcome these problems.

“The absolute majority of the Brazilian population follows some kind of religion. Religiosity has a significant influence on personal values, the economy, politics and the functioning of the state. Caring for nature needs to become a civilising value above ideologies and political and economic interests. Religious leaders can make a fundamental contribution to this leap in civilisation, especially since all religious and spiritual traditions contain principles and teachings about human responsibility in caring for nature. For more than a decade, opinion polls have shown that the majority of the Brazilian population is in favour of environmental preservation, however this position has not yet become a generalised value in the hearts of most people. If it were, it would guide individual habits and choices and influence the quality of elected officials and parliamentarians, as well as the behaviour of companies.”

In an effort to help shape these values more quickly, the IRI invests in educating and training religious and spiritual leaders.

“If caring for the climate, forests and their guardians becomes a spiritual, moral and existential value for these leaders, millions of people could be influenced in the short term. They have the potential to educate and influence around 90 percent of the Brazilian population. This could drastically reduce resistance in political and business circles to strengthen socio-environmental governance in Brazil.”

The Initiative believes in working with all of the diversity present in Brazil’s social fabric. For this reason, it does not discriminate in any way and has managed to establish processes of dialogue and learning with leaders across the religious, ideological and political spectrum, supporting processes of dialogue and interaction with scientists, activists and public officials. 

“Here in Brazil, environmental issues face great resistance from economic and political power. We need to create an environment in which these issues can be understood as something of vital importance, which rise above political disputes, economic interests and ideological conflicts. We need to use the language of the heart, of emotion, of ethics and values so that we can all realise that we have no time to lose, that we cannot continue to repeat old ways that destroy the foundations that sustain life on the planet.

“I hope our work can help people develop a love for nature, for the forest, especially the Amazon rain forest, and for the Indigenous Peoples who have suffered for more than five centuries, who face a lot of prejudice. Most religious leaders, who defend laws and social justice, are not involved in protecting the rights of indigenous groups, so we are trying to create this link.

“I don’t want to do anything in the next few years apart from this work, I think it’s the most important work of my life. In June I turned 60, and I have at least 15 or 20 productive years ahead of me, and I’d like to dedicate those years to this mission.” 

Considering the incredible achievements throughout Carlos’ career, his belief in this initiative emphasises its importance.

“I could have opted for a stable job with the comfort and security it brings. I passed the exam for Embrapa, the agricultural research company when I returned from Costa Rica, but I resigned as a researcher because I felt that life was calling me to other missions. Every job I’ve chosen brings together what is important to me: contributing to reducing social injustice and conserving biodiversity, especially in the Amazon. Of course, not having stability means constantly living with risks, but for those born into the poorest strata of society, dealing with difficulties, threats and adversity are skills that are learned from childhood.”

Carlos’ story highlights the power of belief, in humanity, spirituality and life itself.

“I am the fruit of dreams, persistence, solidarity and faith. My family lacked food, but not examples of love thy neighbour, compassion and solidarity. God gave me some friends who helped me in critical moments. These people helped me in different ways, rarely with money, but by giving me affection, words of encouragement, inspiration, solutions and contacts. That’s why I often feel the heart of people who are suffering from invisibility, indifference and feelings of not belonging. The situations I experienced have given me this ability, and I’m very grateful to God to be able to be a support for someone, just like people have been for me.

“I think that’s why I’m here, life has given me the opportunity to experience suffering so that I can recognise it in other people and other creatures, to help eliminate or minimise pain. To contribute to someone’s happiness is one of the greatest pleasures I have in life. I know this is love, and it is this value that orientates my way of being in the world and the work I do.”

It is the essence of reciprocity, and the ever-present need to support and believe in life itself. 

“We are part of a web of life, and we can only enjoy a meaningful life if we love life in all of its manifestations.”

Anton Rivette is a writer and photographer.

You might also like this story: Environmentalism is Resistance

The post Natural Faith appeared first on eco-nnect.

Depending on how you define it, activism has a long history in so called Australia. 

When Arthur Phillip — a former whaler and longtime servant of the British Navy — attempted to establish a colony on Gadigal land, he was resisted by Bennelong, Pemulwuy and the many Eora people who fought beside them. The Colony was established in the settlement of Sydney Cove, and early settlers invaded the nearby land of the Dharawal, Dharug, Awabakal, Darkinjung, Gandangara and Wiradjuri peoples. The fifth Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, effectively declared war on the “hostile natives”. Communities were massacred and native forests were felled, as settlements spread with the support of British agriculture and grazing methods that were imposed on the land. The Original Peoples of the Sovereign Nations that criss-cross the Australian continent and its surrounding islands, resisted an onslaught of violence and terror for over 100 years through a series of conflicts commonly referred to as the Frontier Wars. Musquito, Yagan, Windradyne, Tarenorerer, Tunnerminnerwait, Maulboyheenner, Truganini, Jandamarra and Dhakiyarr are some of the many figures of resistance who fought alongside their respective communities.

Eventually the colonies of New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, Port Phillip, Swan River, South Australia and Queensland united to form the Commonwealth of Australia. Resistance continued as communities lived in the face of the restrictions imposed on their culture and connection to Country by the newly formed state and federal governments. Foreign settlers also resisted British rule and imposition, reflected in the Rum Rebellion of 1808 and the Eureka Stockade of 1854, as well as the development of labour unions throughout the colonies in the 19th century.

Unionism also influenced the development of the first politically organised Aboriginal activist group, the Australian Aborigines Progressive Association (AAPA), formed in 1924, campaigning for rights to land ownership, citizenship, control of their own affairs and an end to the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. The AAPA was renamed the Aborigines’ Progressive Association and along with the Australian Aborigines League, they organised the first Day of Mourning on January 26 1938. It was the culmination of years of work, encouraging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activism across Australia, which led to the Yirrkala Bark Petitions, the Freedom Ride, the Wave Hill walk-off, the campaign for the constitutional referendum of 1967, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and the Mabo Case.

The worldview and cultural practices of the Original Sovereign Nations of Australia, particularly their connection to Country, is well documented, and the outcry for civil rights was intrinsically linked to the protection of their territories. As the Australian population increased through waves of migration, the native landscape was destroyed to make way for industries that supported the growing number of settlements, particularly agriculture and grazing, the extraction of natural resources, and the eventual privatisation of land. Despite the ongoing desecration of the environment across the continent, it took time for settlers to develop a connection to the landscape and thus develop an awareness of the need for its protection, as well as the rights of the indigenous peoples who have always called it home.

Although many settlers campaigned for the rights of the Original Sovereign Nations of Australia and advocated for the protection of native plants and wildlife, the history books suggest the Australian conservation movement began with the creation of National Parks in the late 19th century. It was with the near extinction of the thylacine — also known as the Tasmanian Tiger — that environmental awareness spread through the dominant colonial culture, leading to koalas being declared protected species in 1937 and Tasmanian Devils in 1941. 

The thylacine population of Lutruwita (Tasmania) was around 5,000 when the British settled there, but they were known to attack sheep and thus hunted by farmers. As the thylacine population dwindled, sightings became significant news, as standards at the time stated an animal could not be declared extinct until 50 years had passed without a confirmed sighting. In 1968, zoologist Jeremy Griffith and local dairy farmer James Malley conducted what has been described as the the most extensive recorded search for the thylacine in the history of Lutruwita. In 1972, they formed the Thylacine Expeditionary Research Team with Bob Brown, which concluded without discovering evidence of the thylacine’s existence.

“I’d read about the Tasmanian Tiger and its alleged extinction, and then I saw a black and white television program, I think it was Four Corners, on Lake Pedder.”

Nestled amongst the peaks of the Frankland Range in Lutruwita’s southwest, Lake Pedder was a once glacial lake adorned by a pink quartzite beach. It was often referred to as “the mirror of heaven”.

“I wanted to know more about what was going on, so I kept my eye out for a job in Tasmania. I was working on ships in the Pacific as a doctor, and I was reading a medical magazine, and there was an ad for a three month position in Launceston replacing a doctor who was travelling to England. So I came, applied, got the job and within a year, I ran into two guys who were looking for the Tasmanian Tiger.”

The search for the thylacine inspired Bob’s early explorations of Lutruwita’s famed wilderness. He travelled into the Tarkine and the island’s northeast, to places where the thylacine had allegedly been sighted.

“The sightings always led to some other animal which may or may not have looked like a Tasmanian Tiger. But this presumption that if you couldn’t identify something that you saw in the night, it must be a Tiger, needed to be met with a fair degree of clarity of mind, but the Tiger is extinct.”

Bob also became involved in the campaign to protect Lake Pedder. The Lake and its surrounding wilderness was protected by National Park status in 1955 but it was then revoked in 1967, as the Tasmanian government wanted to flood the Gordon, Serpentine and Huon Rivers as part of a hydro-electric generation scheme, which was pushed forward through the avid support of Premier Eric Reece (who was nicknamed “Electric Eric”). The eventual dam obfuscated Lake Pedder’s unique natural beauty, creating a sprawling reservoir that provides extra “storage” to Lake Gordon, where the power station is located.

“I took out a big ad in The Australian, it was over $1,000 at the time, saying Lake Pedder is another disaster for Tasmania… It was sort of a cry in the dark but it also alerted the Lake Pedder campaigners to the fact that this unusual doctor had arrived in Launceston, and I quickly got asked to stand for Parliament. I didn’t want to, but I did.”

The newly formed United Tasmania Group (UTG) is acknowledged as the world’s first environmental political party to contest elections. The party was formed during a meeting of the Lake Pedder Action Committee to field candidates in the April 1972 Tasmanian election. The founder of the UTG, a senior lecturer in botany at the University of Tasmania, Dick Jones, asked Bob to stand, as they needed a candidate in the north of the state. 

“I stood with him on a Senate ticket, I think I got 112 votes statewide. But I quickly learned that environmentalism is off the agenda in politics, even more so back then… This was a period of nascent organic farming, permaculture, a lot of things happening in Tasmania, and it was all viewed with disdain and arrogance by the Hydro-Electric Commission, which had no trouble running ads against the UTG to say our policies would lead to higher power prices and the loss of jobs and so on. So we learned from that for the Franklin campaign, which came a decade later.”

Wild “from source to mouth”, the Franklin River is in Lutruwita’s southwest, and the Hydro-Electric Commission coveted it to create another hydro-electric dam. Bob gathered a group of activists in his home — all of whom were either members of the UTG or had campaigned for Lake Pedder — to discuss the Franklin’s protection, and together they formed the Tasmanian Wilderness Society (TWS). 

“We discussed peaceful direct action. Some of the group had considered it but had decided against it because they didn’t want to lose public support by sitting in front of bulldozers. But we invited some Quaker activists from New Zealand to talk to us about the theory of direct action and communal direct action, and while some individuals amongst us hated it, it nevertheless was enormously important in the blockade that saved the Franklin River.”

The TWS coordinated the massive campaign against the Franklin Dam, which lasted seven years from 1976 through to 1983. The campaign was initiated by a film that screened on Tasmanian television stations, and was followed with blockades on the Gordon and Franklin Rivers, many public rallies, letter writing, widespread door-knocking and significant political actions. In 1980, 10,000 people protested on the streets of Hobart — more than three times the size of any public rally to that moment in Lutruwita — demanding the wild Franklin be saved. Through the strength of the campaign, the Tasmanian government backed down on its initial plans for a new site for the dam, but the Wilderness Society did not back down from its call for “NO DAMS” in the southwest of Lutruwita. Their stance was supported by the uncovering of cultural artefacts at Kutikina Cave, located on the Franklin River, which led to the creation of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area in 1982, strengthening the position of TWS and the protestors. After a deadlock in the Tasmanian Parliament and an eventual referendum, the sitting Labor government was defeated in a state election.

“It was then that the strong man of Liberal politics arrived on the scene, Robin Grey, he won the election over Labor in 1982. In every seat of that election we stood ‘Save the Franklin’ candidates, and in every seat they lost. Although Norm Sanders here in Hobart, in Denison, had been an advocate for the Franklin’s protection, he was, to my knowledge, the first environmentalist elected into a parliament anywhere in Australia, he was a trailblazer. But he resigned his seat in Parliament because of the mistreatment of the Franklin Blockaders that got tougher and nastier as time went on, it was a very clear the government was calling for harsher treatment.”

Bob was one of 1500 people who were arrested during the Franklin campaign and was one of 600 jailed, when he spent 19 days in Hobart’s Risdon Prison.

“The day after I came out of jail, I was elected to Tasmania’s House of Assembly on a countback. So I was suddenly in Parliament on the side of the Franklin ticket, while also being director of the Wilderness Society, helping to run the blockade that was happening on the Gordon and Franklin Rivers. But I said at the time when the Franklin is saved, that’ll be my political career.”

Through the support of the newly elected Prime Minister Bob Hawke — who had promised to save the Franklin in the lead up to the election — and intervention from Australia’s High Court, construction of the dam was stopped and the River was saved, yet Bob Brown remained in politics.

“We had parallel campaigns to stop wood chipping and the marauding of Tasmania’s forests, and it was accelerating at a great rate, and there were social justice issues that I wanted to attend to, because nobody else in the Parliament was giving them voice, so I stayed on.”

He stayed for ten years. During his tenure, Bob proposed legislative initiatives on gay rights, nuclear regulation and euthanasia (amongst others).

“In the 1989 election, we ended up with five Greens seats that allowed us to double the size of the World Heritage area and to get new National Parks. You could say I became a relentless driver for the environment, but to me it was just about relentless common sense, it was a priority that looked to the future. And in retrospect, I would have regretted greatly backing off when that opportunity arose. But after ten years, I’d had enough, so I resigned from the Greens and took three years out.”

Bob went on holiday, travelling the world until he was pulled back to land he loved. He was drawn back to politics, initially to campaign for the newly created Australian Greens, and eventually standing for election in the Federal Senate in 1996 with the provision that he could continue to be an activist. 

“It included, if necessary, breaking the law, even though under the Constitution that loses you a seat in Parliament, and the Greens were happy to accept that condition.”

He was the first Greens’ candidate to be elected to the Australian Senate.

“When I arrived in Tasmania and found this nascent Greens Party, I felt at home with their politics that was based on a humility for nature and a concern for all human beings, and that includes all human cultures. So taking that on and helping to develop it was important. Labor will always grab kudos for social justice, Liberals will always grab kudos for economic innovation, but what they don’t have is any kudos on the environment, except when it’s manufactured here and there, and so the Greens Party grew.”

Bob Brown was a sensible voice in the Senate, often opposing the conservative Liberal government of John Howard. He introduced bills to block radioactive waste dumping and to ban mandatory sentencing of Aboriginal children, he was vocal of Australia’s involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and he famously told John Howard to “relax and accept gay marriages as part of the future’s social fabric“. When four Greens senators were elected in 2004, Bob was formally named the first Federal Parliamentary Leader of the party. In 2007, he stated that coal was the energy industry’s “heroin habit” and suggested the ban of coal exports. He said it was an “appalling and disgusting failure” when Kevin Rudd failed to commit to strong carbon reduction targets in 2008. He also suggested tax revenues from the excess profits of the coal industry should be set aside for future environmental catastrophes in Australia.

In the 2010 election, the Greens achieved a historic result attracting 1.6 million votes, with the election of nine senators and one member of the House of Representatives. It meant that the Green held the balance of power in the Senate and Bob used this position to negotiate.

“We brought in probably the most advanced climate change legislation, of regulation and offsetting. We got it through with Julia Gillard as Prime Minister because we drove a very hard bargain. You might remember she’d said four days before the election, there’ll be no carbon tax under a government that she runs. Well 18 months later, they not only had a carbon trading scheme, but one of the best in the world.”

In April 2012 Bob stepped down as leader of the Australian Greens and then he retired from the Senate in June 2012. This time he stepped away from politics for good. 

“I endlessly quote Abraham Lincoln in 1857 saying that the corporations are coming to steal the throne of democracy from the people, and it happened. I watched our democracy become usurped by the wealthy and the corporate sector. That influence spreads right across the spectrum and there’s no greater example of that than the Murdoch ownership of the media here in Australia, which is corrupt and perverting of democracy. But one thing they all have great difficulty with is peaceful activism, and history shows that to be the case.

“I had seen that through the Pedder and Franklin campaigns, and our forestry campaigns — which I continued to be involved with while I was in politics — but a large component of the environment movement, which I love dearly, was trying to influence politicians by going to see them. I was very well aware they are no match for the corporate lobbyists who infested our parliaments, banging on people’s doors every day, particularly ministers doors, leading to this absurd situation we have now where 80% of Australians want native forest logging stopped and 80% of politicians want to subsidise it with even more public money. So getting out and focusing on activism was important, because politics doesn’t know how to deal with it. It cuts through.”

Along with Steven Chaffer, Bob decided to form an organisation with activism as its focus.

“I was in my late 60s and I recognised that it was a big thing to take on, but I had people like Steven. We started with nothing except a good idea, but we knew we had a lot of public sympathy out there.”

Their first employee was Jenny Weber. Jenny had grown up on Dharawal Country in Wollongong and experienced a lot of her childhood at the beach.

“I had this sense of awe about the ocean being bigger than I am, and the need to be careful in the ocean, it’s not something I took for granted, I had to learn to swim with the waves pummelling in. I was totally immersed in nature as a child.”

Jenny also grew up with the political leanings of her father, who was a member of the Australian Labor Party. He was also a teacher and part of a union.

“He was an organiser. I have memories faintly of my Dad organising or the teachers going on strike or always handing out how to vote cards on voting day. So really early on I was aware there was something going on with politics, to the extent there were politicians that for some reason were on the bad list. There was always a conversation about politics in my life, which was really influential in my childhood.” 

She liked punk music and helped organise concerts of visiting international bands at the local youth centre. 

“I think we were like 14, 15. It was a fabulous life, and it introduced me to a DIY style of working and giving back to your community, and it set the groundwork for the belief that if you want to get stuff done, you just need to get a few people to get together and do it.” 

At 17 she met her current partner, Adam, who was involved with the Wilderness Society and opened Jenny’s eyes to activism and the possibility of dedicating her life to the environment. Adam was living on Bundjalung Country near Byron Bay and took Jenny to a logging area in the Whian Whian State Forest when she was 18.

“I just could not believe it. And then I met the North East Forest Alliance, who were a bunch of activists pulling off blockades. It was a whole new thing, I was like who is this community of people who are getting together to resist the destruction of the environment? So I just immersed myself into that space entirely.”

Jenny was about to complete her university studies when Adam said to her, “I’m going to Tasmania, do you want to come? I was like, ‘not really, there’s no live music, I can’t swim in the sea. I thought that it would be freezing cold all the time. And then he was like, ‘I’m going to go anyway.’ So I had to choose between doing whatever I might have ended up doing in New South Wales and coming here to Tasmania, so I asked, ‘can we do a deal that it’s just for six months?’”

They drew a circle on a map between Hobart and the southern forests and they decided to move to Huonville.

“It’s a logging town in the middle of nowhere, we didn’t know anyone, it was a completely bizarre thing to do.” 

They initially volunteered with the Wilderness Society in Hobart, but Adam was inspired by his time with the Byron Environment Centre and the North East Forest Alliance and was keen on creating something similar in the southern forests of Lutruwita. 

“We set up this little place called the Huon Valley Environment Centre, which became our life for about 15 years. Being a forest activist, taking action, doing lots of blockading and forest protests. We had two beautiful children, we were living off-grid on 60 acres of wildlife reserve in a straw bale place we built, and we were there resisting non-violently in a town that hated us, being right there with the logging community.”

Jenny and Adam were living on the frontlines.

“I was shopping once with my little ones in Woolworths, and this woman just screamed at me and was like, ‘I’m going to lock-on to your trolley, that’s what you do to my husband,’ and it was a bit shocking. The same thing happened at the laundromat, people getting angry at me. I think it’s just being calm and trying to state your place or ignoring the situation completely. In the laundromat, the woman was a bit more aggressive and so I just tried to de-escalate and say, ‘look I’m just here for the forests.’ I also had a death threat against me. They said, ‘I saw her on the street, I should have run her down, I’m going to kill that bitch.’ So I went to the police, and the police handled it okay. But I never truly feared for my life. I’ve spent a bit of time in Sarawak, we have a company here in Tasmania that’s from Sarawak, and it opened up my life to the indigenous people there fighting for their forests, and my time with them made me realise I’m a white, privileged, educated woman who lives in a democracy, and I am so far from being threatened in my life because of what I do. So I’ve had a reality check a number of times.”

In 2012, the Tasmanian government struck a supposed peace deal with environmentalists and the logging industry, the Tasmanian Forest Agreement. 

“We didn’t agree with the deal, it compensated this Sarawak logging company to stay in Tasmania. And this was after we had achieved some great gains in the Japanese markets, and Ta Ann was going to leave Tasmania, and these environmentalists went into those markets and said, ‘no, keep buying from Tasmania, don’t leave,’ which was shocking, and so we lost, a lot of activists were disillusioned, they felt they had been sold out. We had a beautiful community of people who were all volunteers and hanging on by a thread. It wasn’t like they had paid employment, they were all dedicating their lives to the forests. And I witnessed when you have a tipping point like that, where you feel sold out or disillusioned, that’s all that needs to happen and it’s over. Why would I give my life up if I’m not going to be, you know, effective?

“So at that time I was really frustrated because not only did we have success and gains in unsettling a major company, we also had environmentalists who were working against us. Anyway, I saw Bob at an art exhibition in town. We used to run these art exhibitions where the activists would tell their stories through art and they were beautiful and confronting and intense. And so we had an exhibition and Bob came along and he asked about the Centre closing and I was like, ‘I’m so angry, I’m going to leave Tasmania, Adam and I are just done, we’ve had enough.’ And he said, ‘if you’re angry and you haven’t been angry until now, imagine what you could do if you keep campaigning, why don’t you come and work for the Bob Brown Foundation?’ And I was blessed in that very moment of my life, I had a blessing that people would love to have across this planet, to have Bob Brown take me under his wing and say, ‘let’s campaign together.’”

Tony Abbott had just become Australia’s Prime Minister, and he wanted to remove Lutruwita’s forests from their World Heritage listing. 

“Insane. So my first task here was to resist that and say, ‘no way.’ Incredibly it meant I went to Doha to the World Heritage meeting and was part of a team of people who were lobbying to not have the forests delisted. I thought I was just here at the Foundation for that little stint to make sure Abbott didn’t get his way. And we were successful, there was no appetite in the World Heritage Committee for that to happen. And when I returned, Bob said to me, ‘okay, now there’s a window of opportunity to have the Tarkine protected, so let’s dedicate you to the Tarkine campaign.’ Bob had been trying to get the place protected for 20 years, but it’s just so powerfully dominated by the mining industry and a little bit by the logging industry. So I was like, ‘yeah I’ll stick around with the Foundation.’”

There are now around 20 employees at the Bob Brown Foundation, supported by a dedicated community of volunteers whose activities include sending out merchandise, gathering petition signatures or, if they’re involved in frontline demonstrations, they might be locking-on to a tripod or in a tree sitting. 

Dr Colette Harmsen has been a consistent presence at the Foundation’s many protests and blockades. Colette was born and raised in Lutruwita to a Tasmanian mother and a Dutch father. They lived in the bush, so Colette lived a “sheltered and isolated” life immersed in the surrounding natural environment.

“As long as I can remember I was into insects and plants. I spent hours watching ants, building nests and doing that kind of stuff. I used to smear honey on the walls in my bedroom so the ants would come in and eat it. It’s funny, I haven’t seen that species of ant since I was a little kid, the insects seem to be diminishing.”

Her parents were part of the activist community of the time, attending protests all over Lutruwita, so it seemed normal to want to protect nature, “like it was normal that you didn’t want people to come out and kill the animals or pollute or destroy.” Colette eventually moved to Yuggera Country, to Brisbane to study veterinary science, but returned to her homeland to join the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program, where she worked for eight years. 

“My job was as a field veterinary officer, so I had a pretty good time of it working with the program, which felt worthwhile up to a point when I realised I needed to step up again, like just going to protests didn’t feel like it was enough. So I started locking-on to stuff. I think the first time I was arrested I didn’t even lock-on to anything, I think I stood with a group of other activists and we stood in front of a primary school and refused to leave. They were having a meeting inside about the pulp mill, politicians and local people and councillors, and we all got arrested.“

Since then Colette has been arrested 23 times. 

“Most of those times I have been chained to things like machinery gates, drill rigs, that kind of thing. I was up a tripod at one stage. When I do that I feel that it doesn’t matter what people say, I’m there and I’m not going anywhere, and they’ve got to physically come and cut me off and remove me, and if that doesn’t make people go, ‘why are people doing this, this doesn’t make sense,’ then I don’t know what will. 

“I guess the reality is that people don’t pay much attention, but the more we do it, I can see it’s making a difference, every step of the way it is making people ask ‘why are they arresting these people for? Like they’re trying to protect the planet,’ and at some point, someone’s going to make a decision and just say we need better environmental laws or we need better protection of forests.”

Having lived in Lutruwita for most of her life, Colette has seen firsthand how the forests are constantly threatened with destruction.

“The first time I flew to Melaleuca, which is in the southwest of Tasmania, to do a walking trip, we flew south from Cambridge Airport and we flew over Hartz Mountain and a lot of the southern forests and out towards the southwest wilderness. And when I looked down from the plane in the southern forests area, I could see a patchwork quilt underneath you: it was all the forests that were being logged and then regrowing at different stages. And basically Forestry Tasmania has all the forests available to them that aren’t in the Southwest Conservation Area or the National Parks, and all of that is just a patchwork of logged areas that are regrowing at different ages. And it’s devastating that we go in there to save one little patch, and it’s like the last old growth patch in the whole bloody area, and everything else is a bunch of plantation trees. And it just really hurts me to think that all of that would have been a continuous forest of absolutely pristine mosses and fungi and all the wildlife living in there, but now it has been chopped up into tiny pieces.”

It’s the loss of this natural heritage that pains Bob too.

“People need to recognise that the planet is finite, and that it’s amazingly intricate in the way in which it has evolved and supports life. There is a spiritual dimension to that, which I often shortcut for people by saying if you give a person a bunch of flowers, which is from wild nature, they feel good about it, but if you give them a bunch of plastic flowers, which look exactly the same — because they’re amazingly contrived these days — as they slowly realise they’re not real, it’s often a sign of insult. Why is that? You could write books and books and books on it, but it’s because we are creatures of the forest and the wild planet, and that’s where our soul as well as our body comes from, and we’re still linked to it, but we’re divorcing ourselves artificially, or cutting ourselves from it and destroying it at a great rate. 

“As a boy, there was a book called ‘The Big Snake Hunters’ that came out of England about the Amazon, and while it was the typical beagle stuff of those days, I was nevertheless imbued by this idea, which was then still true, that there were large realms of forest that we from the developing and invading world didn’t know about, and people lived in all of them and were completely encompassed in body and mind by them. That’s almost gone in my lifetime. And when I hear from the World Wildlife Fund that 70% of the mass of wildlife has gone since 1970, or the other statistic that 94% of the mammals left on the planet are human beings and what we eat, and 6% is wildlife, you get a picture of the complete desecration of the planet. 

“The thing about it is, while more and more people are becoming alarmed about it, it’s increasing in rate. And when you talk about a road going through the Amazon or the felling of ancient trees here, it’s all part of this onrush of materialism, capitalism if you like, which is quite absurd. It’s working in a finite system, which is the planet, and yet there’s not a government that I know of that doesn’t adhere to growth as being a central pillar of good management. And growth means increased exploitation of nature in a world in which we’re already using twice the renewable living resources of the planet. So every morning we wake up to fewer forests, fewer fisheries, less arable land, fewer species, more human mouths to feed, and generally more devastation and anxiety.”

These words relate back to pre-colonial days, when Tasmania was always referred to as Lutruwita, and the island was populated by Palawa people and was covered in the world’s tallest flowering plants. But it wasn’t just Lutruwita, it was all over the land called Australia that was covered in its native vegetation and teeming with ancient wildlife coexisting with the diverse and vibrant cultures of the continent’s Original Peoples. Can we ever know how much has been lost now that so much is gone? To paraphrase the Revolutionary Proclamation of the Junta Tuitiva, most of humanity maintains a silence that closely resembles stupidity. But fortunately there are still giants like Colette, Jenny and of course the great Bob Brown, who protect the giants of our ancient past so they will still remain as part of our future.

“We are so fortunate in this country but it is so easy to be complacent. I learned early on that we’re just passing patterns here, all species are a relay of life, and we’re part of a community. Capitalism, of course, makes the individual all important, but as human beings, we’ve always lived as communities, with the spirits of ancestors before us and the hopes of future generations in front of us. And it is incredibly important to honour those past ancestors, but to also be active, to put ourselves on the line for those coming after us, who can’t come back and undo what’s happening now. 

“Although the idea that there is no time, that we can do nothing else but be planet savers, can be self-defeating. It’s important that people find good companionship, have good relationships, have parties, have holidays, complete their studies and assume that there is time. You have to take time. And it’s very, very important for people to look after themselves. The idea that you can have fun in such a desperate and daunting planet seems contra intelligent, but nevertheless we are just human creatures, we do like happiness, and we have to find that in amongst this very fraught life we’re leading, waking the planet up and converting it against all odds into a global community that, above all, respects the planet and life on it and works to ensure that it’s here forever.”

As they say in parliament: hear, hear!

Anton Rivette is a writer and photographer. He leads storytelling at eco-nnect.

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For the past two decades, the legend of David, the young shepherd who defeated the giant Goliath with a stone and a sling, has echoed in Galicia, Spain. The Ensenada de San Simón is a space included in the Natura 2000 Network, a web of protected areas covering Europe’s most valuable and threatened species and habitats, and therefore theoretically protected under the European Union’s Nature Conservancy Act. But these supposed protections are often too lax, as each EU country decides how best to implement these regulations based on the understanding that each site in this network is unique, so it’s on the landowners and site managers to work together to find local solutions for each area.

The Ensenada de San Simón has, on paper, been protected since 2001, when it joined the Natura 2000. But these protections are often ignored in the face of the interests of Goliaths like Pescanova and the Port of Vigo.

“The Vigo fish market is the most important port for the commercialisation of fish for human consumption on the European continent, and it serves as a central point for fish trading at both European and global levels.”

Antonio, a resident of Rande, Redondela, Galicia, is one of the Davids who protect the entire Vigo estuary.

“I am a telecommunications engineer. I am in love with telecommunications and of course with nature. Life brought me to Rande where I met all the wonderful people who live here. We set up everything we set up because corporations and government came here to do terrible things, and something had to be done.”

For Antonio, there are always two fundamental pillars needed in the fight against Goliaths: social mobilisation and legal action.

“The Plataforma en Defensa da Ensenada de San Simón is a group composed of associations of neighbours, the sports-cultural association, associations of local fishermen and shellfish gatherers.”

It was created in 2004 by three neighbours who met while they were individually presenting allegations against a cement factory that was planned for construction in the Ensenada. 

“We found out about this plan through the press, and when we met at the town hall we started chatting, and that’s when we decided to form the Plataforma. Then we submitted the application to legally establish it, and after that, more colleagues started joining until there were 12 or 15 of us.”

When we met at a stone table under a native oak tree in Rande, Antonio and I were joined by Xurxo, another resident of the neighbourhood who is also part of the Plataforma.

“Think globally, act locally, right? Once you move to the rural environment, at least in my case, you realise that you can influence many things that affect you and your life, and you can try to change them effectively.”

The fighting spirit is undoubtedly one the best weapons of these residents to demonstrate that their land is not to be touched, but so is knowledge of the law, which they constantly study.

“As with many things, conservation law, on paper, has nothing to do with the reality we experience in our neighbourhood, as year after year, battle after battle, we have to ensure the laws that conserve this rich natural landscape are upheld,” Antonio shared.

The biggest problem, as in so many other places, is that the law is upheld by a Goliath.

“What they wanted was the same old story, comer mar, comer mar, comer mar” — or to eat the sea, which is a very common saying in Galician to describe when the shoreline is altered with sand or cement, affecting the natural flow of the water — “to make their facilities bigger.”

A cement factory was not built thanks to the pressure from the Plataforma’s efforts, rallying the entire neighbourhood through demonstrations and marches. These protests were organised in the living rooms and kitchens of the community, a group of neighbours tired of seeing their heritage destroyed and who did not stop until they reached, in some battles, the European Parliament, asking for “urgent action”. The Plataforma continued to win one battle after another for the past 20 years. With perseverance and determination, they halted seafood companies from building refrigeration plants; they won lawsuits; they protected historical buildings from being demolished; they forced the closure of an AUCOSA factory, which processed thousands of tonnes of fish to feed farms. They did all of this while creating the Museo Meirande and its surrounding parkland on an abandoned piece of land once owned by the family of Francisco Franco, which demonstrated alternatives to the typical commercial endeavours constructed at the expense of the environment.

2024 is the Plataforma’s 20th year of operating, and they are fighting to ensure the protection of an area of land, which is considered rustic land for coastal and environmental protection under the Natura 2000 Network. Rustic or rural land is a basic legal status for land in Spain. It refers to land that cannot be altered for construction, and thus cannot be used for residential or commercial purposes. Officially considered a Site of Community Importance (SCI), the Plataforma is seeking greater protection of this land, not only by the local government, but also by the Port of Vigo. Commercial interests threaten the land and the sea of the Ensenada de San Simón. The massive seafood company Pescanova (among others) are trying to take over as much of this land as possible. The Plataforma is also waiting to see what the World Fishing Company (WOFCO) has planned, another multimillion-dollar seafood company, who have recently displayed interest in the Ensenada de San Simón.

Walking along the coast with Antonio and Xurxo is a journey through their memories and the areas they have protected, an opportunity to appreciate what was stopped, how these natural spaces may have become seafood factories or concrete ports if not for the passion of a group of humans who feel lucky to have found one another. When recounting the history of the community activism in the Ensenada de San Simón, Antonio speaks of the almost divine presence of his friend and colleague Enrique Romasanta, who is recognised and beloved by all of the activists for his effective and unusual methods. Enrique appeared in the offices of the Port of Vigo with a written appeal on a paper napkin, which eventually made its way to the Supreme Court of Spain. The management plan for the Puerto de Vigo, one of the largest ports in the world, had not undergone an environmental impact study, which was uncovered by Enrique’s research. The Supreme Court of Spain annulled the Port’s land use plan and thus halted the construction of another refrigeration area.

“That’s one person alone,” Xurxo explained. “Imagine all the capacity that one person can have in their environment and the things they can change.”

Our walk continued toward a concrete platform, originally planned to be part of a bigger project, which the Plataforma halted. Unfortunately the building of the platform affected the flow of the sea, which Antonio explained.

“Little by little it’s emptying out. It was another atrocity that was done, a tremendous land reclamation project that changed the ocean currents, and that is noticeable on the beach, which is running out of sand. It is clear that all land reclamation has an impact on ocean currents.”

This community of around 1000 residents is perpetually struggling in a tug of war with the interests of the many Goliaths facing them. Sometimes a Goliath gets his way, sometimes a Goliath destroys an entire area that was inhabited by millions of clams. Regardless of who the next Goliath is, they will encounter the Plataforma en Defensa da Ensenada de San Simón. Although, according to Xurxo, the constant battle can be tiring.

“Fighting against Goliath is very, very exhausting. You have to have brutal patience and willpower.”

But the Plataforma overcomes this fatigue and continues on. The community’s strength wins as David will always defeat Goliath.

Helena Constela is a photographer, videographer, producer and activist. She works in the media team on Sea Shepherd’s ships, while also managing social media for both eco-nnect and Seaspiracy.

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Established in 1959, the Galapagos Islands is Ecuador’s oldest National Park. Renowned for each island’s unique flora and fauna, which inspired Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, most tourists are attracted by the underwater life that surrounds the Islands. This is thanks to the Galapagos Marine Protected Area (MPA) that was established in 1998, and turned the islands into an important refuge for marine wildlife, which is sharply declining throughout the world.

In January, I travelled to the Galapagos and boarded a small sailboat that promised a low-impact tour of the isles. In Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz, I was greeted by our naturalist guide, Johnny Alvarez, who took care of us on our ten day journey visiting the wonders of the Galapagos National Park.

“Life has been so beautiful and so peaceful here.”

Johnny is a family man, born and raised in Santa Cruz in the third generation of a family of Galapagos residents and fishers. When he was a teenager he was told to kill a sea lion that was caught in a net, an experience that inspired him to train to become a guide instead. After fifteen years guiding tourists among the wonders of the Galapagos, Johnny has gathered a wealth of knowledge. I ask him if anything has changed with the increase in tourism?

“Galapagos is becoming something different, a place that everyone uses to make a lot of money. There are many companies from many parts of the world that have come to the Galapagos. And we, the people who live here, who were born and raised in this beautiful place, feel that many are taking advantage of the Galapagos, including NGOs. There are several NGOs that use the name of the Galapagos to ask for a lot of donations.”

Every year around 270,000 tourists visit the Galapagos, almost 10 times the resident population of 33,000, and every year the number of tourists is increasing. Before travelling to the Islands, each tourist must contribute $200USD to the Galapagos National Park

“Who decides where the tourism licenses are allocated? Who ensures that the big foreign companies Royal Caribbean, Golden Galapagos Cruises, National Geographic, to name a few, pay their fair share here? Recently, the entrance fee to the National Park doubled from $100 to $200… Where is all that money going? Let me tell you, it’s not staying with the local community.”

Despite the Islands’ fame, the increase in attention and tourism, and the institution that the Galapagos National Park has become, the local community has been left behind the tourism boom that has swept the Galapagos in the last decade. In December 2023, the municipality of Santa Cruz declared that it was in too much debt to begin building a proper sewage system or even to provide the city with potable water. The largest city in the Galapagos, Puerto Ayora in Santa Cruz, doesn’t have proper wastewater management: over 90 percent ends up directly in the ocean, the Marine Protected Area.

“It is a truth that no one knows, that here everyone pays attention to the animals, but no one pays any attention to the people. A basic hospital, drinking water, a sewage system, good internet for schools, apparently all of that is too expensive, yet the tourists keep increasing…”

“So it’s painful because as tourism increases, living here becomes more complicated. The inhabited islands could have the conditions to grow their own fruits and vegetables, yet over 90 percent is still imported from mainland Ecuador.”

Many of the Galapagos Islands are volcanic, making their soil lush and fertile. However, the municipality claims it doesn’t have the means to provide any support for local farmers. Listening to Johnny made me wonder where all of the tourists’ money is going? As a tourist, along every street and at every corner, a fee is charged to do almost anything. Disembarking on the dock? $5 to the National Park. Entering a certain beach? Another $5. So, as Johnny says, how is it possible that the municipality is too broke to implement proper wastewater treatment? And what are the many foreign NGOs conserving if they can’t even ensure that gray water doesn’t enter the marine protected area?

The two leading Galapagos NGOs, just as Johnny claims, are foreign based. The Galapagos Conservancy has its HQ in Connecticut Avenue, Washington DC, while the Galapagos Conservation Trust is located on Dover Street, London. Meanwhile, the Galapagos National Park that is administered by the Ecuadorian government barely provides any online information of its activities, and clearly doesn’t provide much support to the municipality of Santa Cruz.

“It’s complex, but that’s our reality. Tourists should buy the tour from local operators. This would be an ideal solution for all the taxes to stay in Galapagos, stay in Ecuador, and for the local community to also reap the benefits from the influx of tourism.”

Listening to Johnny, made me wonder how many tour operators were actually owned by local Galapagueños? And if foreigners mainly sold the wonders of the Galapagos to other foreigners, was this another form of economic colonisation?

In our group, a local girl had been gifted the cruise as part of a program that offered the opportunity of visiting the islands by boat to locals who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford it. Johnny stressed the importance of these programs as few locals appreciate the natural abundance of their home.

“We should be able to oblige all tourist cruises to take at least two or three children from the Galapagos. Large ships can accommodate 100 passengers and could easily sacrifice five spots to bring locals. Because we can’t talk about conservation if the local people don’t know what they have. They do not have the economic possibilities to go for a cruise and see how beautiful it is to be in the water with a sea turtle, with a shark, with iguanas.”

For the last five years, Johnny and his father have been taking children out on their boat to swim with wildlife and teach them about the local flora and fauna. Again, I wonder what the Galapagos National Park, the Galapagos Conservancy or the Galapagos Conservation Trust are doing if they’re not educating the local children on the wonders of their world famous home? If these organisations are solely focused on conservation, surely they know that community-based conservation models are by far the most successful? So I wonder, for a relatively old National Park and MPA, have their conservation efforts been successful? I ask Johnny if, during his years as a guide, he’s seen a decline in wildlife?

“Yes, both above and below water. The sharks and fish are not nearly as abundant as they were twenty years ago.”

Johnny advocates for a local economy that flourishes along with the increase in tourism. He dreams of a community-led conservation that educates local children to learn to love and protect their home. Whereas the NGOs that are currently profiting from the Galapagos are following an outdated model, one that is congruent with the western worldview that separates humans from nature, alienating the local population from the process of “conservation” while filling their own pockets. Perhaps it’s time that conservation in the Galapagos focused on its human inhabitants and valued them for what they are: an intrinsic part of nature.

“I think it is time to shout to the world what is happening in Galapagos so that the world finds out the truth.”

So if you’re thinking of visiting the Galapagos, make sure you book a local tour.

Isabella Cavalletti is a storyteller and co-founded eco-nnect.

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In August, we focused on the development of the European Union’s Nature Restoration Law, a key part of the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, or the Green Deal. This group of proposals and policies has the ambition of no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 and for economic growth to be decoupled from resource use. With the EU’s poor conservation record, the Parliament felt the need to sanctify climate action through policy.

The European Commission published the Nature Restoration Law on June 22 2022, a proposal for legally binding targets to revive forests, wetlands, sea and landscapes that have been adversely affected by human development, with emphasis on those with the most potential to capture and store carbon, and that prevent and reduce the impact of natural disasters. The focus was to safeguard at least 30% of EU land and 30% of EU seas designated as protected areas.

The proposal was reviewed and amended by EU States and Members of the European Parliament, with opposition emerging through agricultural, fishing and forestry lobby groups. The European Parliament debated and voted on the Nature Restoration Law last June and July, with a final vote resulting in 336 votes in favour of the Law, 300 against and 13 abstentions.

The draft law then went through a series of negotiations between the European Commission, Council and Parliament, which concluded on November 9 with a new ambition of restoring at least 20% of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030. It also contained binding targets to restore at least 30% of degraded habitats by 2030, rising to 60% by 2040 and 90% by 2050. Further revisions included land used for agriculture, stipulating that EU countries needed to enact measures that result in a positive trajectory in at least two of three key indicators: the grassland butterfly index; the amount of biodiversity features in agricultural land; and the amount of organic carbon in the soil of crops. This revised deal still required a vote by both the Parliament and Council on the final text.

Farmers’ vocal opposition of the Nature Restoration Law became outright protest in January. Their frustration of the increasing restrictions on their activities, included the obligation for four percent of their land to remain unused to support biodiversity. In response, the French Government abandoned their plans to reduce state subsidies and agreed to ease environmental regulations. This was followed by the EU stating it would delay the four percent rule for farmers until 2025. Despite these concessions, farmers continued to protest throughout February in the hope that EU decision-makers would concede to more of their demands.

In the face of this significant pressure, earlier this week, on February 27, the European Parliament approved the revised text of the Nature Restoration Law — despite last-minute attempts by members of the European People’s Party to block its approval — with 329 votes in favour, 275 against and 24 abstentions. The text still faces a final vote in the EU Council.

Considering the increasing amount of research highlighting the importance of healthy soil and biodiversity for agricultural production, it is clear that the Nature Restoration Law needs to be coupled with grassroots education initiatives to empower farmers with expanded environmental awareness.

Anton Rivette is a writer and photographer. He leads storytelling at eco-nnect.

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The term globalisation describes how local cultures and economies became interdependent through technology and trade. It is a process that developed over centuries — through military, cultural and government imperialism — which led to our current global society and the dispersion of goods, services, money, culture and people across national borders. While this global society is now ubiquitous, there was a time before the proliferation of affordable air travel when the step-by-step process of globalisation was visible, and Helena Norberg-Hodge bore witness.

Helena grew up near Stockholm. Her childhood was immersed in the wilderness of Sweden, and she developed a strong relationship with the environment. 

“I always had a deep love of nature, but it took time for that to translate into being an activist. I wasn’t aware of the developing changes and issues.”

Her family was spread across Europe, exposing Helena to different cultures at a young age, while also developing her ability and interest in learning languages.

“I learned to speak languages mainly by spending time in different countries: I learned Italian in Italy; Spanish in Mexico; and because I was Swedish, English and German, I learned those languages earlier on. I appreciated the different lenses they gave me to see the world.”

At the age of 29, she moved to Paris to study French, the sixth language she spoke fluently. She worked with a company creating language education programs, and word spread through the artistic community of Paris of her linguistic ability.

“A German documentary filmmaker knew that I picked up languages very quickly and had worked with sound, so he wanted me to join a small documentary film team to go to this unknown place called Ladakh, to pick up the language and communicate with the people there.”

Nestled amongst the high peaks of the western Himalayas, close to Pakistan, Ladakh is an alpine desert spread across India and China on the Tibetan Plateau.

“I thought I was going for six weeks, but I was completely blown away by a very rare situation: a culture that had not been transformed by missionaries, that had not been affected by colonialism, and that in the mid 70s, had still not been affected by modern development.”

Due to its remote location, and the many conflicts for control of this territory, Ladakh only opened to tourists in the 1970s.

“I had an incredible privilege of learning to speak the language fluently at a point when the people I was engaged with never described themselves as poor, backward, or in any way inferior. I realised that many indigenous and traditional peoples who had contact in any way with the modern world, developed this sense of inferiority. The people I met exhibited the most incredible vitality and joy and sparkle that was so magical, and I fell in love with both the people and the place, so I decided not to go back when the film was finished.”

Helena documented the spoken language of Ladakhi with the written word for the first time, a process that brought a lot of lessons of oral communication and its role in society. 

“Oral communication works with the flow of life in a way that the written word doesn’t. When we’re communicating, we’re always communicating in the context of knowing whom we’re communicating with. Through face to face communication, there is all kinds of wealth for us to understand, it’s experiential knowledge, the knowledge in the here and now, in the living context of complexity. It’s not knowledge that has been transmitted to us about things from the outside world that we may have never seen and have no idea about, and this has been a very dangerous process through modernisation.”

Helena ended up staying in Ladakh for a few years before going back to Europe, and seeing Western culture in a very different light.

“I realised all the cultures I had come to know had been shaped by modernity, and by shaped I mean pulled away from the experience of deep relationships with nature. I also realised when I went back to my native country of Sweden, why there was already serious issues with depression, alcoholism, even suicide. People living in high rise apartments, the majority having been pulled away from smaller towns or villages into the main cities, where nothing is alive and often one person lives alone, sometimes with plastic plants and literally no contact with the living earth. That sense of deep loneliness and alienation was so clearly the main cause of depression.”

These realisations were inspired by witnessing the process of modernisation and globalisation in Ladakh. 

“The process of development and growth was destroying the local economy. I saw butter in the local market in Ladakh, which had been transported over the Himalayas in diesel fuelled lorries for two weeks, and it would sell for half the price of the locally produced butter that was available five minutes walk away from the market. It opened my eyes to this artificial economy, where global traders have been given rights, they have been supported from the beginnings really, going back to pre-economic thinking, with the help of missionaries and traders, forcing and imposing production for export. Later on that was formalised with the basic principle in economics, the principle of comparative advantage, which says it’s not in your interest to produce a diversity of things in your region or your country, you should focus on production for export, and then you can import everything else you need, and that was a trick on the part of global traders to enrich themselves and to impoverish local economies worldwide.”

This new understanding sparked a deep interest in the dynamics of the global economic system.

“I was alerted by friends from Malaysia in the mid 80s, how the process that had started after the Second World War — when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund was set up — was a process of continuous trade treaties, it was all about ‘free trade’, and individual countries, including individual ministers and the greater population, were led to believe that supporting global trade was the only way to grow the economy, it was in everybody’s interest. The environmental movement and the general public were asleep, not aware that ‘free trade’ was about freedom for global corporations and banks to come into a country and do as they please without any rules. And those same companies were of course not paying taxes, and around the world, in virtually every single country, the local, the regional and even the national businesses, and the activities of charities, they were being heavily regulated and taxed. So you had this completely crazy situation where the only winners were those who benefited from global trade.” 

Helena was learning a new language, the process of globalisation, which has been a focus throughout her life.

“I realised over the many, many years in Ladakh — I was there for part of every year for about 40 years — inherent to the language was that it carried a profound respect for experiential knowledge, and that means local knowledge, it means knowledge about the specific trees, the water, the soil, the people that you engage with. It’s a deeper contextual and holistic knowledge. And I saw what happened when the modern world and modern education brought in a simplistic map, and we’re now understanding this leads to a very superficial understanding of the infinite complexity, the constant movement and change in the living world.

“I think it is vital for anyone who wants to contribute to health and life on Earth to understand the dominant system better. I was forced to become aware of it, when I saw this black and white transition, as modernity came in step by step. I saw the link between schooling and urbanisation, I saw the link between the destruction of the local economy and urbanisation. Urbanisation and its dependence on faraway trade is really the enemy, which is completely structurally linked to monoculture, to biological and human monoculture. This is an economic path to death, it truly is, by trying to extinguish the key characteristics of life, we are extinguishing life itself.”

Helena was invited to speak across the western world, to share her insights on globalisation and her experiences in Ladakh. This led to writing a book, “Ancient Futures”, and making a film (with the same title). She went on to teach at an interdisciplinary department focused on energy and resources at the University of Berkeley in California, which supported a collaboration on renewable energy projects with the communities in Ladakh.

“Some people thought we were trying to improve the traditional culture but no, we were trying to present alternatives to what the government was bringing in, the corporations were bringing in, which was fossil fuel based. So we did small-scale renewable and particularly passive solar for water heating and space heating, and also some very small hydro projects to demonstrate there was an alternative.”

This was part of Helena’s focus on promoting what she calls “the economics of happiness”, and led to her founding a non-profit organisation Local Futures, to encourage ecological and social wellbeing by strengthening communities and local economies. During this period she also helped establish the Global Ecovillage Network, which links and supports intentional communities across the world who live harmoniously with their environment. Through connecting to these ecovillages, Helena and her husband John decided to live this way themselves. A friend recommended they visit Byron Bay, on Bundjalung Country in Australia, a town renowned for its beautiful landscape and a community that has embraced a nature-based lifestyle. Helena and John fell in love with the area and decided to call it home.

Helena’s work was centred on rebuilding the fabric of community and its connection with nature, and in Byron Shire she focused her efforts on creating a local food economy.

“I was and still am very committed to encouraging what I would call ruralisation, instead of urbanisation, and during the Covid Pandemic this partly happened around the world. If people don’t understand the global, they often think localisation is just about supporting a local business or a local farmer, which overlooks what the market is. Often people support the local with no attention on creating systems that respect diversity, and that’s the key. When we don’t respect diversity, we don’t respect the quality of the food and for that you need to have a more direct communication with the market, you need to be closer to the land. This central focus on food and farming as part of localisation is key to what we’ve been doing.”

Soon after arriving in Byron Bay, she was asked to give talks where she met members of the community who were interested in her ideas. This led to the formation of a group that eventually formed the Byron Bay and Bangalow Farmers Markets. Several years later they established the New Brighton and Mullumbimby Farmers Markets. It was at the Mullumbimby Farmers Market where we met for this interview. My family lives nearby and through visiting these markets, and learning how they were formed, I first heard of Helena and her work. 

The farmers markets in the Byron Shire are an essential thread in the fabric of the community. Not only is it the place to find good quality produce, it is where I meet with friends when I’m in the area. We often get something to eat from one of the many food stalls, and sit and listen to the different musicians who play music each week. If my friends bring their kids, there is a craft tent where children are supervised. I’ve visited farmers markets across the world, and there is something unique about what Helena and the community have created in the Byron Shire. 

Helena and I were seated under a large fig tree, near the kids craft tent. As we ate the fruits of her work — I had purchased a bucket of fresh blueberries we were enjoying as we spoke — I could feel the experiential knowledge imbued in each of her words. I asked Helena what she felt we had lost through the process of globalisation.

“Humanity has lost countless species, languages, cultures, a wealth that we were never even aware of, so we’re not even sure of how much we’ve lost. And we’ve lost time, which is a very precious wealth, because everything that’s important, in terms of nurturing others and nurturing ourselves takes time, and that’s extremely dangerous. 

“We need to be aware that this loss of time and space means we’re more vulnerable to respond to very simplistic, top down solutions, and we shouldn’t be wasting our time on that, we need to take a deep breath and take the time to understand more deeply and broadly the system that’s working against us, and now it has an army of algorithms that support the war machine, that support ill health. Just looking at the global food system and the localised alternatives is one of the best ways to understand what I’m saying. When you see it as a system, you see truly that it’s contributing to our early death. Literally now, through the fake foods that are being pushed through, the generation that is growing up are going to die younger than their parent’s generation, and that’s in the most affluent countries.”

I finally asked what we have gained.

“We are gaining ever more awareness and we can see it, there’s a huge cultural turning that has been going on in reaction to a dominant economic, econometric, technological trajectory for hundreds of years. And there has been a reaction against it, there is a cultural turning of more appreciation for nature, more appreciation for the indigenous, more appreciation for the feminine, more appreciation for animals. There’s such a hunger to reconnect to life, to the living, and that’s translating into a broad shift in cultural values, particularly when you look at the map of it, it comes out of the urban industrial experience. The more people have experienced that, the more they want out. 

“Our bodies and our souls are speaking to us. Our minds are still being drawn to the system, particularly through the help of very centralised, top down tools of social media, of the internet, through the way things are being framed. But we are making progress towards nature, towards life, and I think we now have to cultivate it in our hearts and our bodies through a reconnection to others and to every form of life, to the animals, to the plants. We can become part of a genuine community with all forms of life.”

By affirming all forms of life we affirm our own. It’s a simple yet complex way of being. But if we are to go on living, it’s our only way forward.

Anton Rivette is a writer and photographer. He leads storytelling at eco-nnect.

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Until relatively recently, legal systems all over the world have been positioned against the environment’s conservation. The path toward legal reform requires a delicate balance between new and existing principles that ensure the preservation of nature, and thus environmental and human rights, for present and future generations.

Humanity’s relationship with nature is in a new phase, where environmental and human systems are inextricably determinative of one another and their respective fates. With recent reports suggesting we have passed six of nine planetary boundaries, there is a tangible shift in understanding that we cannot sustain the illusion of unchecked interference with our finite natural environment, and that our shared planet, and even outer space, has a hastily depleting capacity to sustain such practices. 

Unlike human rights, the environment doesn’t have a comprehensive and foundational legal provision that reflects the severity of violations committed against it. Accompanied by very weak monitoring and enforcement, environmental protection is misaligned in both theory and procedure. For example, Article 4(2) of the Paris Agreement – widely hailed as the best international commitment on climate change to date – only states parties shall “aim” to achieve objectives, a non-binding obligation that doesn’t emphasise the need for strong environmental action. The framing of environmental offences as regulatory infractions enables environmental damage through the acquisition of an appropriate licence, and environmental regulation is frequently contingent upon decisions of administrative authorities, often overlooking cultural sensitivities. Thus, environmental crimes have been regarded by European prosecutors and judges as difficult to identify, define and enforce effectively.

By their very nature, regulation of environmental issues necessitates a global and inter-disciplinary approach to reflect the complexity of our interrelated climatic system. Repercussions of environmental crimes and harms are transboundary and trans-generational, and the challenge of legal reform is simultaneously inter-spatial and inter-temporal. It is therefore fundamental to propose comprehensive and inclusive legal frameworks that reach a wide variety of actors and contexts and preserve rights for nature and humans. Given the scale of the crises, it is also essential to pose effective offences that can adequately deter and punish the worst forms of environmental harm.

The assumption that capital holds the sole solution to the climate and ecological crises conceals the systemic roots of these crises, embedded in current patterns of global production, consumption, finance and the organisation of social life. In recent years, there have been significant advances in environmental law and the protection of environmental resources, not only for their human-derived value but for their intrinsic value in themselves. 

With the changes onset by capitalism, accelerated by the neoliberal era of the 1980s, the world has bent further and further to the insatiable drives of a social system predicated on infinite growth, changes that depend on the exploitation of both citizens and the environment. Many are acquainted with Marx’s arguments to this effect, but neglect the fact that the environment, predominantly since this era, has also been viewed as a tool for profit. The ideological discourse that grounds this is “concerned about human impacts on the environment but at the same time deeply romantic about the existing capitalist world”, which is accepted a priori as progressive development and anthropocentric in our agency as a species.

The logic of unlimited growth has enabled ecocide: the wilful or reckless destruction of conditions that maintain life such as ecosystems. It is clear all human actions result in an ecological imprint, and it is undoubtedly important that environmental law acknowledges and reflects competing considerations such as the right to development, which is why it is so fundamental to create a framework of safety around these inevitable considerations. Increasingly, experts are convinced a paradigm shift is vital that advocates the interdependence of human and non-humans based on a community of interests. 

Criminal law can play a pivotal role in affirming our inherent interdependencies with the natural world and our collective duties to it. As the ultimate sanction, it is important that criminal law has a restricted field of application: we must extend our vision beyond theories of punishment to understand criminal law’s fundamental role in facilitating coordination around essential collective social values. Due to the different nature of their legal frameworks, reconciling environmental law with criminal law raises complex new issues, although there are strong reasons to supplement existing environmental legal frameworks with a criminal law backstop. A new crime of ecocide, a preventative and all-encompassing framework, can rectify an existing taboo in international environmental regulation: the most serious destructions of nature are morally reprehensible and thus criminally liable acts. Ecocide law therefore holds significant potential to usher in a new era of environmental governance that can ensure exacting protection for nature, on Earth and in outer space.

Ecocide Law  

Ecocide is not a new concept in domestic or International law. For example, a provision with similarities to ecocide is found in Article 8 (2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute, which provides for the crime of “intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause…widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.” Ecocide was almost a crime in peace time too, and was included in early drafts of the Rome Statute. The crime has been promoted at various high-level conferences such as the UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, been subject to various juridical formulations — such as Professor Richard Anderson Falk’s draft Convention, published by the competent UN Sub-Commission on the prevention and punishment of genocide — and has been debated amongst the International Law Commission regarding the “Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind”. The crime gains traction at legal, academic and grassroots levels for its possibility to provide an enforceable legal measure that can deter the severest forms of environmental damage. 

Adapted from existing international law, the most authoritative definition of ecocide defines the crime as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment caused by those acts.”

The existing nature of international environmental harm is largely considered technical, scattered and difficult to enforce, and does not account for the reality of nature, and the damage committed against it, as interconnected and occurring on a multitude of scales.

An Independent Expert Panel considered these limitations when creating the definition of ecocide. To ensure all aspects of the environment, including its interlinkages and interconnections, were included, the environment is defined on the basis of earth-system science and the five main spheres of the Earth — biosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere — as well as outer space. 

The qualitative nature of the definition ensures it applies to any actions, whether committed intentionally or through gross negligence, that directly or indirectly expose the environment in its various components to an immediate risk of substantial degeneration, endangering the safety of the planet and the survival of humankind. This is important to change behaviour: faced with an ambiguous list of legally prohibited actions against the environment, a potential perpetrator may spend a significant amount of time or resources to evade legal liability. A general standard of significant harm shifts mindsets from how do I avoid fitting into this list, toward how do I avoid creating that level of severe environmental harm.

The “unlawful” element of the definition promotes a strengthening of existing environmental laws, as they would be invoked in ecocide law’s application. The “wanton” standard — referring to an action’s potential harm in relation to the social and material benefits anticipated — can reflect the reality of new and emerging issues in environmental law, providing an appropriate analytical tool to ensure that ecocide law is reflective of other human rights. It is essential that environmental provisions can operate both independently and interdependently, ensuring that impunity does not result because of legal technicalities. Ecocide law, according to a continuum of enforcement through domestic criminal courts to the ICC, would further prevent severe and widespread or long-term environmental offences that occur under the existing protections of a licence, those committed in countries with poor environmental laws, and areas beyond national jurisdiction, like the high seas and outer space.

Ecocide Law and International Environmental Governance

Society’s relationship with nature under extractivist capitalism largely reflects “individualism and individualisation, leading to the appropriation, monopolisation, commodification and financialisation of nature against a backdrop of scarce natural and living resources and the deterioration or dysfunctioning of ecosystems”. The success of this system is largely contingent upon insufficient wages, the exploitation of natural resources and societal indifference to environmental and social issues. It is well accepted that the unhindered commodification of nature has accelerated climate change. Globalisation in particular is understood as a key driver of environmental and biodiversity damage due to increased consumption, production and movement of goods, along with their associated GHG emissions. Consequently, legal measures proposed for governing the climate and ecological crises must be aware of these considerations, in conjunction with the more specific, and just as significant, local and national elements to environmental governance. 

The definition of ecocide law largely reflects a “natural commons approach”, where the environment and its regulation is conceived as a relational and dynamic system, composed of a web of interdependent relationships between humans, non-humans and the planet. The things or resources classified as natural commons thus form part of a whole called “common heritage”. By including them in this heritage they can be collectively managed with the purpose of preservation. This perspective conceives law’s role in environmental protection distinct from the dichotomy between a subject and object or an exploiter and exploited, towards relationships of solidarity and greater balance. Conceptualising environmental resources as “common heritages of humankind” implies that such resources belong to all of humanity in collectivity, available for everyone’s use and benefit, taking into account future generations and the needs of developing countries. 

From the perspectives of Indigenous peoples and local communities across the world, the emphasis on resources and relations to things that are held as common ownership is critical, where community and kinship relations, and relations with nature and life are highly intertwined with the idea of commons. The legal construction of natural commons proposes an alliance of companionship between species and nature. On this basis, the common heritage principle embodies new connotations, highlighting our “special responsibility to safeguard and wisely manage the heritage of wildlife and its habitat, which are now gravely imperilled by a combination of adverse factors”.  The collective responsibility to preserve nature is referred to as “Earth stewardship”. 

There has been a resurgence of interest in community-based conservation and resource management systems that use customary practice and local knowledge, as it is no coincidence Indigenous communities are guardians of roughly 80% of the world’s biodiversity. On a local scale, commons management, when implemented correctly, has consistently led to improved rates of regeneration, protection and biodiversity. Increasingly, it has been evidenced that the assumption that common-property regimes will lead to the famous “tragedy of the commons” — in that allowing open access and unrestricted demand for common resources will inevitably lead to over-exploitation, requiring privatisation —  is simply a misunderstanding of how commons operate successfully. When Hardin referenced a “a pasture open to all” in his depiction of the commons tragedy, he was referencing an ungoverned, law-less, open-access scheme from which nobody could be excluded. This is not a reference to common property regimes as properly managed, but a resulting collective action problem. Climate change itself is a clear collective action problem, for example. The distinction between common property and open-access is well understood in the relevant literature. Moreover, a growing body of empirical evidence exists that demonstrates users of commons are able to work their way out of the trap envisaged by Hardin and, in fact, environmental management according to theories of the commons reveal significant success. Therefore, the necessary question in reviewing the suitability of common property schemes in global management of the climate and ecological crises is not whether common property is feasible at all, but rather under what (legal) conditions.

Rather than promoting rigid protection and management of landscapes under centralised state agencies and institutions, community management seeks to incorporate the perspective of Indigenous and local peoples, setting up a negotiable framework that supports local innovation and experimentation and is thus tailored to the specific requirements of the environmental resource. Elinor Ostrom and colleagues have identified that the distillation of certain features in common property regimes across the world, which have proved effective in ensuring the sustainable management of common-property resources: a clearly defined community of resource users; a clearly defined resource; the presence of clearly defined rules clarifying rights, responsibilities and sanctions for non-compliance; effective monitoring systems; graduated sanctions matched to the level of the offence; cheap and easily accessible conflict resolution mechanisms; minimal recognition of rights to organise; and systems for adaptive management. Community models adapt technical and regulatory norms to specific local conditions. The challenge is understanding how to translate local principles to global environmental governance issues, such as transboundary environmental crime. 

Existing international law, in conjunction with ecocide law, supports this possibility. In current international law, the “common heritage of mankind” (CHM) generally refers to the high seas, outer space and celestial bodies, all of which may not be subject to the sovereignty of any state, and states are bound, at least in theory, to refrain from actions that adversely affect their use by other states. The term mankind here reflects a collective concept referring to an entity comprising all people in the world. In Article 137(2) of UNCLOS for example, the rights are vested in “mankind as a whole”. In terms of scope, mankind is “inter-spatial” and “inter-temporal”. Since mankind is a separate legal entity representing all people in the world, the CHM, as mankind’s property, should meet the demands of mankind. As the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies note, “the principle of the Common Heritage of Mankind demands intra- and intergenerational equity, and entails a particular respect for transparency, accountability and environmental sustainability”. On this basis, the “common heritage of mankind” principle highlights our “special responsibility to safeguard and wisely manage the heritage of wildlife and its habitat, which are now gravely imperilled by a combination of adverse factors”. 

As the State of South Africa has highlighted: “[T]he common heritage of mankind principle is not solely about benefit sharing. [It] is just as much about conservation and preservation. The principle is about solidarity; solidarity in the preservation and conservation of a good we all share and therefore should protect. But also solidarity in ensuring that this good, which we all share, is for all our benefit.” 

In spite of our traditional top-down international models of environmental regulation, the “common heritage” of humankind principle has sustained conceptions around particular global resources for decades, and the relations of Indigenous communities with the environment for millennia. This different perspective and practice reveals a different picture for environmental protection possibilities, and the unquestionable success of common-property management schemes globally in ensuring more exacting environmental protection than traditional state-based models. Reiteration of such principles at the international level is one important step, however the critical issue is integrating global and local perspectives in a legal framework of environmental protection which is neither excessively punitive — and therefore hindering other crucial rights such as the right to development — or neglectful of vital ecocentric mainstreaming to international and national societies.

Ecocide law is relevant to theoretical and procedural elements to protection of the global commons. At the root of the growing movement for the international criminalisation of ecocide is the protection of the Earth and the biosphere as the common good of humanity, which requires necessary interventions to be taken in order to stop and avert the dangers for present and future generations. Along with a greater assurance of enforceability of environmental and therefore human rights, ecocide law offers an avenue for shifting general values underlying the legal framework, from anthropocentric to ecocentric, a move from a relationship of dominance to mutual reciprocity and respect for the environment in law. Ecocide law’s theoretical basis is that of a universal value: respect for our natural environment. Moreover, with a rooting in criminal law — a legal framework constituted by morality and accountability, which is enforceable in national and international courts — ecocide law can also represent a less political and more localised avenue for environmental protection than the existing state-based liability international framework, reflecting the “common heritage of mankind” principle in theory, with accompanying procedural protection strategies. 

The Role of Enforcement

Research details that in order for regulation of the commons — at local and global levels — to be effective, it must be rooted in adequate enforcement. For example, in a discussion of the Marine Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, it was argued that “ideally, a central international governing authority would apply the same policies and rules to all countries activities’ in the ABNJ”, which would “likely produce more coherent and consistent results than a Paris-style system of each country formulating its own policies and submitting them to a central authority for review”. It was further highlighted however that hybrid governance models, or smaller, regional, authorities are also effective when they include strong reporting and enforcement requirements. Similar results were obtained in research by Helen Ross and James Innes on cooperative management of the Great Barrier Reef, where they found that “for a range of factors that we have identified as necessary to successful co-management in the context of the Great Barrier Reef, we advocate treating the non-negotiable ‘givens’ as parameters, outlining a flexible shared space where common interests can be developed”. Research of another commons, outer space, showed that top-down regulations, combined with monitoring and sanction mechanisms, could ensure greater sustainability in orbit.

Where clear and non-discriminatory rules facilitate convergence towards cooperative behaviour, enforcement mechanisms can dissuade “free-riding”. Ecocide law is reflective of this framework, as the crime would not neglect the role of adaptive, community-oriented environmental governance, while providing clear and enforceable rules for key decision-makers. 

Substantively, ecocide law under the Rome Statute could provide clear parameters and homogenised rules of environmental protection to the international community. Procedurally, national, regional and international levels of an ecocide crime could provide the multi-spectred and networked enforceability, and prevention of impunity, that effective environmental protection, and consequently protection of all our human rights, requires. 

The place of criminal law in tackling the climate and ecological crises is a key question. More and more stakeholders see the merit of a legal parameter, and criminal law is the guarantor of social values deemed essential to the collective. An intentionally evolving legal discipline that follows changes in society, encompassing the social needs of the time and reflecting new challenges. This now includes the inescapable emergence of the issue of the environment and the narrative we sustain globally around it. To this effect, terminology and its associated narrative is central to the ecocide debate, most prominently in the 2021 definition. As Daryl Robinson has argued, “the argument in favour of ‘ecocide’ [etymologically] is that it is striking: it is the proposed crime of ‘ecocide’ that has stirred public and political interest and passion, whereas anodyne labels have not. The expressive function of a label is a legitimate consideration; an important function of criminal law is ‘message’.”

Legal history denotes a traditional reliance on criminal law by a sovereign state as a primary and effective way to solve numerous social, political and economic problems. As Andrew Ashworth has highlighted, criminal law’s boundaries are “historically contingent” – depending not on the product of principled inquiry or consistent application of a given set of criteria, but the fortune of successive governments, campaigns in the media and the activities of various pressure groups. 

With increasing engagement and support at governmental, academic and grassroots levels, ecocide law stands to promote a new era of environmental governance: one that can provide a useful cross-sector outer-boundary through which to examine business, prevent the most destructive projects, and invoke investment and action in more sustainable practices. It also reflects a deeper respect of nature and our duties as its steward for future generations.

Criminal law has been historically used to guide societies, protecting our most fundamental rights and ensuring social order. The International Criminal Court was devised with the understanding that some offences are so grave their criminalisation warrants further international protection and a greater emphasis on transboundary cooperation on the world’s most serious crimes. In the face of catastrophic climate and ecological breakdown, and recent estimates of a near guaranteed warming close to two degrees, ongoing hesitations and protracted deliberations are no longer possible. We need exacting legal sanctions that punish individuals who threaten disruption of our most vital life systems: if not from an ecological appreciation of our environment and its species, but from an anthropocentric lens regarding the delivery of our most basic human rights. 

As the Rome Statute professes in its preamble, its ambit is to protect the peace and security of international society from the gravest crimes that “shock the conscience of humanity”, for present and future generations. It is intuitively clear that significant environmental harms threaten not only environmental rights but also all other human rights, for present and future generations. There is a compelling argument that this consideration should be transposed into legal rules and enforcement. 

We would be wise to reflect on the potential consequences of further exploitation of nature and put limits in place to ensure any developments no longer reflect a one-sided relationship. Protecting our planetary boundaries protects our peace and security, and the route to action in this regard is enforceable law, for people and nature, on Earth and in space.

Ecocide may be conceived as the missing crime against peace.

Anna Maddrick is a Climate Adviser at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Vanuatu to the United Nations, New York, and PhD student at the University of Bologna, focusing on ecocide law.

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Three months ago, I boarded a Sea Shepherd ship, the Sea Eagle, in Paola, Calabria, in southern Italy.

Sea Shepherd Global is an NGO that protects wildlife and combats illegal fishing in direct-action campaigns around the world. You might have heard of them as the good pirates of the sea. Today its fleet, also known as Neptune’s Navy, is made up of eight refurbished fishing vessels a one custom-built ship, each one is crewed by volunteers that share a deep love for the ocean and defending its voiceless creatures.

I had traveled by train from Florence and by the time I made it to the ship it was nightfall,  past dinner time. Most of the crew was already asleep but the First Officer, Yuval Elroy, had stayed awake to greet me and offer me some delicious vegan food. As I ate, we got to know one another, and towards the end of our conversation, I asked Yuval what was the plan for the following day?

“Removing longlines from dawn ‘til dusk.”

For the last six years Sea Eagle’s Operation Siso has been focused on removing abandoned or illegal longlines, octopus traps and FADs (fish aggregating devices) from the Mediterranean. Since its inception the campaign has decreased illegal fishing in Calabria by 70 percent. When I boarded the crew was searching for longlines, a very harmful method of fishing, where floating nylon lines connect a buoy to the seabed with several hooks and baits attached to it. Once attached fishers go and check, every once in a while, to see whether a swordfish has taken the bait. About 300,000km of abandoned longlines are currently floating in the Mediterranean, which is the same distance between the Earth and the Moon. As a result, the population of swordfish in the Med has decreased by 90 percent. Every day, the deck crew on board the Sea Eagle work tirelessly to remove thousands of abandoned longlines that, despite not being in use, still catch hundreds of marine wildlife as bycatch.

The following morning, the core team met at 7:30am on the bridge where the Captain suggested the plan for the day as well as locations of possible abandoned longlines, then everyone flocked to the dining room to share a nutritious vegan breakfast. Apart from the core team, everyone else onboard are volunteers — from the oiler to the deckhands, the cook and the photographers — exchanging their time and work for food, shelter and an experience out at sea. After breakfast, everyone dissipated to their respective work areas and the day began. It felt as though every crew member has an important role to play to keep the ship afloat and its community safe and healthy, just like a buzzing hive, where each working bee is aware of where they have to be and what they have to do to ensure smooth sailing.

We set sail in search of longlines. Once we anchored, I joined the deckhands pulling longlines out of the water on the bow. Finally, I had a longline in my hands, actually touching what had been an abstract fishing method until now. Only twenty minutes into pulling, we found a dead swordfish.

There’s a conceptual dilemma in ocean conservation that is referred to as the “out of sight, out of mind” problem. Arguably, only a tiny fraction of the world’s population has a direct relationship with the ocean and an even smaller number has actually spent time out at sea. This is exactly why the fishing industry — which now numbers over four million vessels — can get away with destructive methods of fishing: nobody sees what they’re up to, except for the volunteers of Neptune’s Navy.

After spending the morning working on the deck, I approached Yuval and asked her about her experience in several Sea Shepherd ships. Over the past six years, she has worked with Sea Shepherd in almost every ocean: the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, the Southern Ocean of Antarctica, the Atlantic near West Africa, the Pacific near Latin America, and the tranquil blue Seas of the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. I asked her what have been the most intense operations she has worked on?

“When I was working on the campaign in Peru, all the time I kept thinking this is so far away from the public eye, I can’t believe that I’m witnessing this brutality. I couldn’t believe the amount of fishing vessels, probably more than many other countries combined. In Peru fishers are mostly looking for tuna. I remember being on watch and at some point our radar was packed with vessels coming in and out to sea, at least a few times a day. Each time they were probably taking between 200 to 300 tonnes of fish. That coast has a huge population of seals, and of course they were attracted to the tuna the fishers were catching, and they just kept coming in until there were thousands of them, and they were constantly getting caught in those nets. I remember looking with the binoculars and watching them trying to escape from the fishing nets, their heads popping out of the water under the black nets, trying to find a way out that they will never find, because that’s it, it’s over. And all of this is just because the fishing industry gets away with killing thousands of other animals as bycatch. Few people realise how much damage they’re truly causing.”

Bycatch is a term used to describe animals that are not intended to be caught by that fishing operation. An estimated 300,000 cetaceans and 500,000 turtles are killed each year in unintentional entanglements, but the real number is probably higher.

Where else did you see a lot of bycatch? I asked.

“While in Mexico during Operation Milagro, patrolling the Sea of Cortez, when we were out spotting gillnets.”

Gillnets are another destructive method of fishing, they look like floating curtains that are anchored to the seabed and attached to buoys on the surface. They entangle anything that tries to swim through it, from small juvenile fish to whales.

“Those nets were full of marine life, as the Sea of Cortez is known to be as the aquarium of the world. It is just so rich, it’s teeming with life. Every night that we were pulling in nets we found tens of caught marine animals. Sometimes we would pull those nets and we could tell that those carcasses had been there for a long time. Probably the fishers took what they needed, which was the bladder of the totoaba, and just left. It’s frustrating because they don’t clean up after, it shouldn’t be the end for more animals, but the nets become ghost nets and keep killing. Every day we pulled between 10-14 nets. When we’d find a dead animal we’d put the carcass in a tarp in the bow of the ship. I remember one day that tarp had about 20 stingrays.”

In Chinese medicine, the swim bladder of the totoaba fish is thought to cure ailments. Due to overfishing the totoaba can’t be found anymore in Chinese waters, increasing the price of one bladder to nearly $20,000 – $80,000 per kg. In Mexico, the intense fishing of the totoaba with gillnets has caused the quick decline of the world’s smallest cetacean, the vaquita.

Technically, since 2017, the use of gillnets has been banned in Baja California in an effort to save the elusive vaquita porpoise. However, laws out at sea are hard to enforce, which is why Sea Shepherd works with local authorities to support the enforcement of fishing regulations and apprehend illegal fishers. Sea Shepherd’s presence in Mexico has encouraged more regulation in the sector, as they have provided strong evidence against destructive forms of fishing. Last October, Sea Shepherd managed to secure an agreement with the Mexican government to help expand the protection area for the vaquita porpoise and therefore expand the area where they can patrol and operate. I asked Yuval, where else has Sea Shepherd successfully worked with local law enforcement?

“In West Africa we collaborated quite closely with the local governments: we provide the ship, the crew, the fuel, and the country will provide the local authorities to make all the required inspections and investigations that are needed to tackle and eventually apprehend illegal fishing operations in the water. With each operation we are showing the area that illegal fishing is not tolerated, giving the fish and the animals and the ocean the opportunity to thrive again.”

So what happens when you find an illegal fishing vessel?

“When we find a ship suspected of illegal activity, we board with the local authorities to begin the inspection. Usually our field medic will also join as workers’ conditions on these ships are horrible, they lack basic safety gear and hygiene. So the first thing our medic does is to treat wounds, infections and cuts — many fishers are not even allowed to leave the ships, there’s a lot of forced labour out at sea, essentially modern day slavery. Then our media team joins us to capture footage as evidence of what is happening onboard. What is really shocking to witness is how much bycatch is caught in these fishing vessels that just goes to waste. For example, we’ve found shrimp boats that throw away 90 percent of their catch, hundreds of fish and marine life are just thrown overboard, it makes no sense.”

Shrimp trawlers are notorious for having the worst bycatch ratio, the standard amount is shocking: for every pound of shrimp caught, six pounds of bycatch is thrown overboard, including sharks, turtles and rays. In September 2021, during Sea Shepherd’s Operation Albacore, a trawler was arrested in Gabon that had an even worse ratio of 0.2% shrimp to 99.8% bycatch. Gabon’s Minister of Fisheries Maganga-Moussavou was present during the arrest and was completely dumbfounded by the waste:

“It was important for me to see firsthand the impact of the shrimp fishery off Gabon’s coast. These wasteful practices cannot be tolerated in Gabon. I have commissioned an official inquiry into the shrimp fishery and pending the outcome of the investigation, I am prepared to suspend the fishing season until a solution can be found to the bycatch problem.”

Yet 65 percent of the world’s seas don’t fall under any jurisdiction, the high seas or Antarctica are no man’s land, places where Sea Shepherd can’t apprehend vessels with local authorities. In those areas their strategy is different. Last winter, Neptune’s Navy’s newest addition, the Allankay, headed to the Southern Ocean for Operation Antarctica Defense to document the fishing industry’s furthest endeavour, supertrawlers catching krill. Yuval was onboard.

“There are several supertrawlers that are out there looking for krill, and one of the biggest challenges in Antarctica is that this is perfectly legal, because they are licensed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). So the best thing we can do is to go down there and just do a lot of documentation and show the world what happens when they choose to consume krill.”

In the last five years, krill fishing has increased five times. Krill are vital for the survival of the Antarctic ecosystem. As a keystone species they are the main source of food for whales and penguins. In early 2023, the Bob Brown Foundation joined the Sea Shepherd’s Antarctica campaign to dive deeper into this topic. Their research shows that one supertrawler catches around 50 tonnes of krill per day, that’s enough to feed 30 whales.

“Mainly, krill is used for the colouring of salmon in fish farms or it’s used for omega 3 supplements. I think few people are realising how much this industry is decimating Antarctica’s marine life. This is a marine area that is so rich with life, whales, seals, truly the last wilderness on Earth. Yet these supertrawlers are huge, huge floating factories, and they are literally taking food away from those animals’ mouths.”

Technically, the CCAMLR is also supposed to protect Antarctica’s wildlife and nature. Last year, the krill industry was directly lobbying CCAMLR in an effort to increase their yearly catch allowance. Thanks to the Bob Brown Foundation’s report and Sea Shepherd documentation of Antarctica’s destruction, the CCAMLR rejected the krill industry’s request, a win for the whales and the world.

It was another success for the replicable system that Sea Shepherd has created, which can actually protect the ocean from its worst enemy: industrial fishing. Sea Shepherd’s campaigns support local law enforcement, encourage more regulation, deter illegal fishing activities all while showing the world what is happening out of sight and out of mind on the High Seas. One could say that they’re the much needed eyes watching our oceans. This has made Yuval, along with the rest of Neptune’s Navy, a key witness of the fishing industry’s shady and murky business: from slavery, to absurd amounts of bycatch and destructive and senseless methods of fishing in giant floating factories. The sad reality of how the fishing industry operates is miles away from their idealistic marketing image of a fisherman with his rod.

Thanks to this passionate and global community of volunteers, the oceans and its creatures finally have some protection. After four days, I disembarked the Sea Eagle with a heart full of hope and admiration for this floating crew of dedicated activists.

Isabella Cavalletti is a storyteller and co-founded eco-nnect.

You might also like: Making a Marine Biosphere

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It is with a heavy heart that I again sit down to write about Marco Temporal and the laws surrounding the demarcation of Indigenous Territories in Brazil, particularly PL 2903.

We first published a story in July, chronicling Marco Temporal’s long history in Brazil’s political and legislative systems. In October, we returned to the topic after the Supreme Court’s decision on Marco Temporal in September, which was swiftly followed by the Senate’s approval of PL 2903. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva then exercised presidential veto powers on 47 provisions of PL 2903 that removed protections of Indigenous Territories, allowed the revocation of Territories already demarcated, and made the demarcation of new Territories near impossible.

Two weeks ago, on December 14, the Federal Congress of Brazil, led by the ruralist caucus representing agribusiness and mining interests, voted to reject the President’s veto, bringing into law 41 of the previously disapproved provisions of PL 2903, including those focused on Marco Temporal. An absolute majority is required to reject a presidential veto, and this was achieved with Congress voting 321 in favour and 137 against, which was followed by a vote in the Senate with 53 in favour and 19 against.

The new law — known as 14.701/2023 — contains several measures that have been labelled “anti-Indigenous” and that NGO Survival International stated are “the most serious and vicious attack on Indigenous rights in decades”. These include permitting non-Indigenous occupants of Indigenous Territories — including illegal loggers and miners — to remain there until the territory is demarcated; enabling a loophole that allows mining, the installation of military equipment, and construction of roads on Indigenous Territories without prior consultation of the Indigenous population or the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI); and the immediate nullification of Indigenous Territories that currently do not comply with the new laws.

In an article published on December 15, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) stated the new law is “legislated genocide” and that they will file a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (ADI) with the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil to request the annulment of law 14.701/2023. Dinamam Tuxá, the Executive Coordinator of APIB, explained that until the ADI is ruled upon by Supreme Court Justices, the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil will remain in a vulnerable position. Congresswoman Célia Xakriabá stated in Congress that “the overturning of these vetoes, which are so crucial, is not only a defeat for Brazil but for all of humanity.”

We agree, which is why we continue to follow this story. It is crucial to the future of our world that we continue to put pressure on the people who hold power within the political and legislative systems of Brazil to protect the Amazon rain forest, as well as all of the nation’s precious ecosystems.

Anton Rivette is a writer and photographer. He leads storytelling at eco-nnect.

The post The Ongoing Struggle Against Marco Temporal appeared first on eco-nnect.

Jojo Mehta is a force of nature. Her connection to the Earth was inspired by her Mother, a songwriter and poet, whose inspiration emanated from an emotional and spiritual connection to land. 

“I think of her as a kind of English/Celtic Indigenous voice, and the kind of music she writes is largely from the English folk tradition.” 

Jojo grew up swimming in the waters of her Mother’s environmental worldview, in the beautiful landscape of Stroud, a small town in the Cotswolds in the south west of the UK. “Of course, as a teenager, I couldn’t wait to get to the city and jump into life”, so her 20s and 30s were centred in London, working in travel, design and manufacturing, along “a meandering path… with a common thread of communication”. At 32 she got married, and her husband suggested moving to the countryside so their kids could grow up with a connection to nature. 

“We moved back to this area that I grew up in, this beautiful area of the Cotswolds and I remember having this moment, it was actually in our garden not far from Stroud, and I had this experience of reconnecting with this land. I realised it meant something to me, it felt like home, not just physically, but energetically… I remember feeling a deep sense of commitment: whatever the focus of my life moving forward, it would be in commitment to this land.”

Over time, Jojo has strengthened and deepened the connection with her homeland.

“I find that grounding myself quite literally on the ground every day is fundamental to my wellbeing. If I’ve been away, and I travel quite a bit, I can’t wait to get my shoes and socks off and get into the garden and connect directly with the land, and doing that every day, there’s this real sense that grows over time of the cyclical nature of the seasons, and also becoming aware of how that rhythm is now slightly off and potentially becoming more so. I mean I watch the cycles of what the plants and the trees are doing and sometimes they’re now doing quite unusual things. But it’s that sense of responsiveness to the cycles of nature and connecting to that is very deeply stabilising, it feels really important, it feels like a meditative practice.”

It was during those early years of living back in Stroud, committing to and connecting to that land, when Jojo’s life began to shift.

“I had become what we might call an armchair activist, you know, I’d be signing petitions and sending letters to parliamentarians, but there was a moment about ten years ago where that shifted to another level, when I got up out of that chair and went okay, boots on the ground, I need to get involved in this. It was actually my Daughter who was the catalyst. I had started to learn about fracking, hydraulic fracturing, which is an incredibly polluting way of bringing oil and gas from deep in the ground. It was already being practiced in the US, and there was consideration of bringing the technique over to the UK, and I was very upset about this when I discovered what it was. Not only was it incredibly polluting, it wasn’t even productive or economically viable and it just seemed like such a bad idea on every possible level. 

“I remember talking to my friends and family about it, and my Daughter, who was five at the time, just burst into tears and said, ‘Mummy if they’re poisoning the ground they must know they’re poisoning themselves, you have to call them and tell them to stop or they’re going to die.’ And it was in that moment, I was thinking my five year old understands this, why do we all not understand this? It feels so intuitively obvious. And there was a call to responsibility there, responsibility in the sense of response to her and thinking about her. If this is the world that she’s growing up into, if I know that this is happening, how, as her Mother, can I not do something about it? I remember saying at the time, ‘I don’t know how much difference it will make, calling this big company, they’re not going to listen to me’, and she said ‘but there must be someone you can talk to. She said maybe you could speak to the voting man.’ She called him the ‘voting man’ because I had explained what that system was in fairly gentle terms…

“We had recently been to the local elections, and she and her brother had been doing cartwheels around the ballot box. On my daughter’s suggestion I then ended up in this conversation with our local elected parliamentarian, our MP. And this politician did that politician thing of avoiding my questions, and I remember coming out of that meeting thinking that is never happening again, I’m going to research and inform myself so that I know exactly what I’m talking about and I can’t be fobbed off. So you could say a determination crystallised in that moment. 

“I started researching, I started writing leaflets, I started giving talks, I started organising demonstrations and surveys and all of this more active work. And it was through that work that I met this remarkable pioneering lawyer, a barrister, Polly Higgins.”

Polly Higgins was another force of nature. She had already been working for several years advocating for the criminalisation of the worst harms to nature or “ecocide”, as she called them.

“I met Polly through mutual friends. She had just moved to this area (around Stroud), having fallen in love with the landscape here, and she was researching a potential case around fracking, and our friends said to her, well you need to talk to Jojo because she knows all about that. By this time I’d done all of this research and I was doing all of this work and started to do public speaking and running demonstrations, I was very active… And I think within half an hour of talking with each other, we’d realised there was a real kindred spirit thing going on. She was deeply practical, deeply committed, she was sharp as a tack, she was a fantastic barrister, but she was also hugely inspiring as a person, she had this enormous presence, she was charismatic, and when we look back, she was the absolute figurehead of this initiative.”

Polly’s work was focused on this term ecocide, a legal idea that had been discussed since the 1970s. 

“This word ecocide gave people a way of speaking about the worst harms to nature, what they could see happening but didn’t necessarily have a word for, and I think that is a powerful thing. It comes from Greek and Latin, from oikos, which means home in Greek, and caedere from Latin to kill, so it means to kill one’s home. I mean we’ve obviously come to associate eco with nature, which makes it in a way even more clear that it means killing nature, but I think it’s interesting to see the origins, particularly in relation to how deeply important Earth as home and land as home is. That etymologically ecocide means to kill one’s home, I think that’s fascinating.“

Polly brought ecocide back into global discussions around environmental harm, spreading awareness of the concept through the political and legal arenas, and through Jojo, ecocide began to make its way through activist networks too.

“Polly was working as a barrister in the employment law sphere, and she was just starting to hit the big time in the sense that her career was taking off in the early 2000s, and she had this epiphany moment. She was looking out from the Royal Courts of Justice, looking over London and thinking, it’s not just my clients that need a good lawyer, it’s actually the Earth herself that needs a good lawyer. She started thinking of how to create a legal duty of care for the Earth, and that inquiry ultimately led her to this initiative to criminalise the worst harms. 

“She started off looking at various different things, like rights of nature, there was the Earth Charter — the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth — which was adopted by Bolivia, but she discovered something when she started researching international criminal law. The Rome Statute sets out international crimes and created the International Criminal Court. The treaty was signed in 1998, but before that, through the 90s when it was being developed, it was known as the Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind, and was being developed by the International Law Commission. Polly discovered that the Draft Code originally had a clause that would have addressed severe, widespread and long-term harm to the environment. In other words an ecocide clause would have been in there, but it didn’t make the final treaty. So when the Rome Statute was signed, it included three crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes (the crime of aggression was added later), and the environmental clause was dropped without a vote. All they could find in the history of those meetings was that certain countries had stood in the way or had objected to it in discussions: the USA, UK, France, the Netherlands and, at one point, Brazil.

“This was before the school strikes led by Greta Thunberg, it was before Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement, it was before the big IPCC reports, so it was before the world really started to wake up to the climate crisis. At that time, the idea of creating an international crime of ecocide felt a bit extreme to a lot of people. Now of course it feels more like common sense, it really is starting to feel like something obvious in terms of creating a parameter that says ‘this far and no further’. And I think there has been a realisation that the intent is not normally to destroy the environment specifically, it’s normally to make money or to extract minerals or to farm meat or whatever it is, but the consequences of that level of destruction really are at the international criminal level, in the sense of the widespread, long-term, knock-on effects of destroying the planet, the destruction of multiple species is becoming much more visible and understandable now.

“So Polly submitted a potential definition to the International Law Commission and started talking about ecocide from about 2010 onwards. And in 2011 she had the opportunity to set up a mock trial in the Supreme Court in the UK, which showed that it was a viable criminal law, using the definition she was using at the time, which is not the same as the one we use now, but it was a proof of concept, if you like. And she became quite well-known for this particular route to addressing environmental harm, and that’s what ultimately brought us into conversation, when she moved to the Cotswolds and we started discussing it.”

It was from 2014 to 2017, before the formation of their foundation, that their personal work started to align.

”At the time I was involved in the anti-fracking community and local environmental protesting, but also writing and public speaking. Polly did not want to be seen as an activist, she was very much the lawyer, and I was doing public communication and more on the ground demonstrations. We were advising each other — I would be advising on the campaigning side of what she was doing, and she was advising on the legal side of what I was doing — but we weren’t publicly working together, even though we were working together quite closely. And through this work, what we realised — because it was still considered quite extreme at that time — was that funders were not that keen, it was hard for her to get philanthropic funding or foundation funding for the work she was doing.

“So in 2016, 2017, we started to put together a public campaign, because what became clear was the financial need for diplomatic work that was beginning through conversations with the Republic of Vanuatu — the Pacific Island republic that has been so crucial to creating legal avenues to address climate change and ecological breakdown. There wasn’t the funding to move it forward, for example by having people attend the International Criminal Court and other events and conferences. So this public campaign brought Polly’s and my work together, based on a legal document called the Earth Protectors Trust Fund document.

“It was based on fundraising for the diplomatic work, but Polly wanted to create something that could be used by those in the campaigning field, the activists and the environmental defenders. Effectively when you became a member of our campaign, you would put money into a fund which was used to support the diplomatic work, and there was a statement you would sign, which didn’t oblige you to do anything, it had no duties and obligations attached to it, but it was a statement that says you believe all the living beings on the planet have the right to peaceful enjoyment and existence… and that anything that severely disrupts that should be a crime. And the idea was that environmental defenders or protesters could produce this statement in court as a way of showing that the action they’d taken was not with criminal intent, but as conscientious protectors, and that was a term she coined, conscientious protectors.

“In order for this statement to be used globally in a court of law, she had to get it legalised all over the world, and nobody had ever done this before. She went to a notary in the UK, the people who specialise in cross-border recognition of legal documents, and normally you would engage them if, say, you had a house in Spain and you needed the deeds legally recognised in the UK or something like that. Polly said to them, ‘I want you to legalise this document, I want you to notarise this document for every jurisdiction in the world’, and they looked at her like she was bonkers and said, ‘why would you want to do that, no one’s ever done that’. And she said ‘just tell me, can you do it?’ And they said, ‘we can do it, but it will take us three weeks and it’ll cost you 50 grand.’ And she had just been given a big donation to begin the campaign, and she thought this is what this is meant to be used for, and she said ‘yep, okay, I’ll agree, but you need to sign something to tell me that this is a full and final settlement, you’re not going to ask me for any more money, and you will get this rubber stamped in every jurisdiction in the world.’ So they agreed to it and it actually took them ten months, and they couldn’t ask for a penny more.

“So now there’s this document that’s the fundamental financial and legal basis of this campaign, which has been validated in every jurisdiction in the world. I think there were maybe three small countries that didn’t have the administrative capacity to formalise it, but it has been used by a number of climate protesters in courts in the UK, and it was used successfully… however we ultimately realised this was not because of the document itself, but it was due to the narrative, the narrative of conscience and conscientious protectors. It chimed with the history of conscientious objectors. 

“For me, what is interesting is this interweaving of the grassroots disruptive resistance with high level political and legal discussions. One of the things that has evolved over time has been this clear sense that this law is a ‘no-brainer’, a clear and necessary step and one that has resonated through the corridors of power. I suppose we’ve been more successful than we expected, in terms of how that understanding has percolated through power structures. There are now dozens of governments discussing it. Obviously it’s not universal yet, but it’s really quite advanced considering how short the time span has been.”

2019 was a key moment in the course of the ecocide movement, when Polly Higgins was tragically and unexpectedly diagnosed with an aggressive lung cancer.

“It spread very quickly, she just thought she had a bad cough, but by the time it was discovered it was already past stage four, it was already beyond medical help, and her prognosis was six weeks. She actually only lasted a month after that. It was incredibly fast and it was deeply shocking to her community, her following, everybody, but the way Polly dealt with it was remarkable. I never saw her upset, I never saw her fearful, people around us were kind of falling apart saying ‘oh my God she’s going to die’, and she would just roll her eyes and say, ‘it’s a shame I have to snuff it for the campaign to get some attention, but if that’s the way it’s going to be’, and it was just extraordinary, it was really extraordinary.” 

It was during Polly’s last weeks that global awareness of ecocide began to expand.

“I remember the last work meeting we had was with the founders of Extinction Rebellion, who were planning that April 2019 Rebellion.” 

Just like Stop Ecocide, Extinction Rebellion was founded in Stroud — “there’s obviously something in the soil here” — and they decided to focus their April Rebellion around ecocide. 

“We were looking at a rebrand at the time, because we initially started the campaign under the name Mission Lifeforce. It was a little bit Star Wars-y, a bit activist in that initial vibe, but we realised the message needed to be far more obvious, it needed to do what it said on the tin, and that’s when it became Stop Ecocide. And I remember sitting in Polly’s garden and we had this meeting with one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion, and we looked at each other and realised we’ve got to do that rebrand right now haven’t we? And those were the last weeks of Polly’s life, they were incredibly intense as I was one of the few people that she felt able to see, so I was spending several hours a day with her, I was also running the campaign and I was organising this entire rebrand, so it was an extraordinarily intense. 

“But I remember that last week when she was dying, she was in a hospice, and I remember her watching the week of the Rebellion unfold on her computer, looking through social media, and we had these placards saying ‘Stop Ecocide’, which have now popped up in demonstrations all over the planet. It was the first time she had seen that message she’d dedicated the last ten years of her life to, it was the first time she’d seen it on the streets, and it was all across London, and that was just such a poignant thing. I remember her turning to me and saying in her beautiful soft Scottish accent, ‘oh Jojo, it’s all going to happen now’. And she was right.

“When she passed, some of the community around her had been afraid the work would die with her, and actually the exact opposite happened, so many people got in touch with me as her closest associate and said ‘what can we do to help, how can we make sure that this work continues?’ And this became an extraordinary milestone in the journey of the work, because it was the beginning of the connectivity, of this gradually growing collaboration that has been an absolutely key characteristic of how we’ve driven this conversation. What we’ve realised is that the different sectors, the different arenas in society, the more they connect the faster the conversation grows, so that’s a big part of how we do what we do. 

“For example, we now do a lot of events in big international conferences and we always work with many other organisations, so there’s this collaborative sense of people bringing their own piece of the puzzle and linking it to this law that creates a foundational piece that supports everything, because this whole concept of criminalising the worst harms to nature, it’s not in competition with any other environmental campaign, it supports all of them. If you want to save the koalas it supports you, if you want to reduce massive plastic pollution it supports you, it’s supporting all of these different areas. It is a unifying concept.”

As awareness of ecocide spread, it became necessary to strengthen its definition.

“There have been a number of different definitions of what people mean by ecocide. Various lawyers at different points in time have come up with a definition, including Polly, and we used her definition for the campaign for some time. But there’s a difference between a lawyer saying I think it should be a crime and it should look like this, to something that is acceptable and credible at the political level, where a government will take it seriously and move forward with it. So the biggest, most significant milestone in all of this was the creation of a proposed international definition of ecocide, which was convened by our foundation in 2020. 

“We were approached by some parliamentarians from Sweden who asked if we could commission an international drafting panel for a consensus definition of ecocide, so that these Swedish parliamentarians could credibly take it to their government and say, can you put this forward as an international crime at the International Criminal Court, you know, can you actually propose this? It was a brilliant context that gave us the ability to approach top lawyers from around the world and invite them into this drafting project. 

“So by late 2020, we were gathering a group of lawyers, and for the first six months of 2021 they had this drafting project. It was during lockdown, so it was all done online, and in retrospect, there’s no way we could have afforded to do it if it hadn’t been, because it would have meant bringing people from all over the world to one place. We had people from different geographical places, it was ethnically and gender diverse and it was also legally diverse. We had humanitarian lawyers, criminal lawyers, environment lawyers and climate lawyers, and after six months they emerged with a genuine consensus.

“The definition we ended up with is less than a page long, it’s really concise with the core of the definition being one sentence, because it was designed to be submitted for the Rome Statute as an international crime. So ‘For the purposes of this statute, ecocide means unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there’s a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.’ It is a straightforward definition that’s strongly based on prior legal texts, so it has precedent, which is important for it to be taken seriously by both lawyers and politicians. It is also able to be understood by you or me and by pretty much anybody, and it has had an amazing reception in the media, it has had an amazing reception in politics, it has really catalysed governmental and parliamentary level discussions around the world, and it has been absolutely key in moving this forward.”

So what makes this definition of ecocide so important? 

“There are two thresholds in the definition: there’s how severe the harm is and that it must be unlawful or wanton. This identification of ecocide as the most severe and either widespread or long-term harms is really important because it focuses on consequences. There’s a huge body of environmental law around the world, and it’s often in the form of regulation or administrative law, and it can be pages and pages of very specific dos and don’ts, lists of what needs to be avoided and what a particular threshold is for a certain toxin in a particular context. What ecocide does, in contrast, is it says whatever you do, in whatever arena, it should not create a certain level of harm. 

“So it avoids a lot of what happens at the moment, which is that a big polluting company will employ risk managers and legal counsels to effectively make sure they are not caught by a particular regulation, or that the compensation or penalty they may have to pay is balanced by the profit they are able to make. Whereas if you bring something into the criminal law sphere that says you can’t create this level of harm, the focus has to move, the focus has to become what do we actually need to do to avoid doing this, otherwise our bosses are going to end up in jail, and that prompts a completely different approach to due diligence. It also future-proofs the definition, so if in two years some horrific new practice is conceived of that could be ecocidal that isn’t mentioned in a list of acts, having it based on consequences covers whatever might turn up in the future, it keeps it dynamic.

“Another threshold is unlawful or wanton. The unlawful acknowledges that a lot of the worst environmental harms are already in breach of a regulatory or rights frameworks, and currently they’re simply being ignored or companies have decided it’s worth the risk. So ecocide being unlawful enhances existing laws by saying if you’re doing this bad thing or you’re not meeting these regulatory obligations, suddenly you’re in criminal law territory and that’s very powerful, it strengthens existing laws rather than cutting across them, and that’s both practically and politically important. 

“Environmental law does not usually contain strict prohibitions, and criminal law has particular prohibitions, so an act being wanton is about these two things meeting, it is a balancing act that says if what you’re doing creates a disproportionate level of harm — compared to the potential social and economic benefits of your project — and it’s reckless, then effectively that is wanton. So it has a kind of tempering effect, because there will be cases like in developing countries that don’t have the necessary regulation that some of the developed countries have, or they have really genuine pressing social needs that have to be balanced out against the environmental damage, and it creates a necessary level of flexibility. 

“I think we have to realise there are no black and white terms for environmental harm. When we build a house, I mean on a small scale we are damaging a proportion of an ecosystem, because we cannot exist as a civilisation without affecting the environment, but we have long forgotten to balance this destruction by respecting what the environment needs to mutually support our civilisation. That reciprocity again speaks to the Indigenous understanding of the natural laws of the world, and that reciprocity has been forgotten, and this is what the wanton aspect of the definition brings.”

Ecocide is a word that is becoming increasingly influential and important to the global movement for environmental protection and restoration. It supports frontline protectors, Indigenous communities and nation states to articulate the destruction being committed by industry against our natural world. Since the legal definition of ecocide was proclaimed in 2021, the movement has advanced rapidly.

“We’ve had incredible progress. We saw this in November in the European Union with the necessary political agreement to make changes to the EU Environmental Crimes Directive, which will include cases comparable to ecocide. While they have not gone quite as far as we might like, they’ve acknowledged environmental harms need to be treated with more severity and that member states need to give them higher penalties. What they’ve given is quite a broad list of contexts in which this should happen, which isn’t comprehensive, but it is a massive step in the right direction.

“Ecocide law will protect life, it says ‘no you can’t destroy this, because if you do there are consequences’. And once again that speaks to the Indigenous understanding, when you damage Mother Earth there are consequences, it is that simple, it’s a fact. And for those cultures, it’s a fact on so many levels, it’s a spiritual fact as well as a physical fact, and it’s a fact that the whole of the world is starting to wake up to. And it’s that reality that you can’t get around. Nature is not an infinite bank of resources, we live on a planet that is a planet, it’s complete, it’s a whole, it’s not an infinite thing. And that is something that the corporate and political world are now really banging up against, they haven’t really had to before, or they haven’t felt like they had to, but that’s what’s now happening.”

Let’s trust it continues. Support Stop Ecocide to support this shift.

Anton Rivette is a writer and photographer. He leads storytelling at eco-nnect.

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