Quakers renew calls to ‘Stop Ecocide’
'In recent months we have seen the horrific consequences of failing to protect the natural world.'
Bristol Quakers hosted a ‘Stop Ecocide’ event last month to raise awareness of the campaign to make ecocide an international crime.
The event at Redland Meeting House on 16 September was held after a growing network of Friends renewed calls for Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) to support the campaign to make ecocide (‘the mass destruction of nature’) a crime in international law. Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) considered the issue in July, and will be returning to it at October’s residential gathering in Leeds this weekend. Around sixty people attended the Redland event, online and in person.
Hilary Saunders, from Redland Meeting, told the Friend: ‘In recent months we have seen the horrific consequences of failing to protect the natural world – heatwaves and wildfires erupting across the planet; rising sea levels and hurricanes threatening island nations; thousands of people being swept out to sea or burnt to death. We cannot tolerate this any longer: the destruction has to stop – and we believe that Quakers can play a crucial role in enabling this to happen.’
In a statement sent out to MfS representatives ahead of the Leeds gathering, Friends – including Hilary Saunders (Redland Meeting); Jo Flanagan (Redland Meeting); Helen Moore (Andover Meeting); and David George (Isle of Wight Meeting) – said the aim was not to send people to prison, but ‘to protect nature by making it possible to hold key decision-makers individually and criminally liable for causing mass destruction of the environment’.
The group maintained that ‘no CEO would risk being charged with a crime and potentially tried and sent to prison, because that would seriously damage the reputation of the company’. This would also deter banks, insurance companies and government officials from backing environmentally-destructive programmes. The newly-adopted UN right to a healthy and sustainable environment has ‘no enforceability and it is not working’, they added.
The Friends have urged Quakers ‘nationally to join the Faith for Ecocide group, which is part of the Stop Ecocide International campaign and includes faith, spiritual and indigenous leaders from around the world’.
MfS will consider the issue during its Saturday evening session. At the July MfS discernment, a BYM representative said that, with only two part-time staff members working on climate justice, they would not want to lose momentum, or divert funding, from the ‘incredible progress’ made on the loss and damage campaign. The team also had questions they were still considering, such as: ‘Is there evidence to suggest that a law would actually deter ecocide? What are the advantages and disadvantages of a criminal law approach, versus a rights-based approach, such as the newly-adopted UN right to a healthy and sustainable environment?’
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