See you at the European Parliament! 🇪🇺
📆 Sunday, 19.06.2022 / 11am
📍 Brussels, right in front of the European Parliament
🙋🏻♀️ Join 100+ rebel groups from 🇧🇷 🇧🇪 🇳🇱 🇫🇷 🇩🇰 🇮🇹 🇩🇪 🇬🇧 🇦🇹 🇨🇭 🇵🇱 🇨🇿
We are rebelling to save our common home in Europe. The EU has to #CriminaliseEcocide and act now to save our forests and oceans!
Ahead of the important European Council meeting on 23-24 June, rebels from Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, the UK, Austria, Switzerland, Poland and Czech and many more are all coming together. Indigenous leaders from Brazil will join us to stand up together against the destruction of our ecosystems.
Hashtags: #EUStopEcocriminals #CriminaliseEcocide #BiodiversityNow #EUWeWantToLive
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We won’t watch the destruction of our planet
Since the dawn of civilization we humans have lived on a planet with two permanent ice caps, flowing rivers, lush forests and an abundance of life. This planet has given us food to eat, water to drink, and clean air to breathe. Now we risk losing it all.
A looming biodiversity catastrophe
The Global North, and especially the richest members of its societies, are driving our planet to collapse. The biodiversity catastrophe — the mass die-off of animal and plant species, the damage to our oceans and forests — is as real and dangerous as the climate crisis, but is not receiving the urgent attention it needs. Despite the fact we humans depend on it for our wellbeing and survival.
We just cannot live on a planet without natural systems to provide fresh water & oxygen, pollinate fruits, absorb CO2, grow fish and provide vibrant soils and nutrients for our crops.
EU institutions are responsible
In 2019 the European Parliament declared the climate emergency, but since then the EU has continued with the deadly business as usual. European governments keep paying for destructive fossil fuels. They allow business leaders to greenwash their polluting industries. They let Big Agriculture destroy our natural environment. The wood in our forests is burned and this is sold hypocritically as renewable energy. The EU allows the breakdown of life in our oceans.
The driving force behind this destruction is the thirst for profit and endless economic growth, regardless of the natural boundaries. We need fair policies that are decided by the people, not by corporations and their well-paid lobbyists.
Our demand: stop Eco-criminals! We call on EU leaders to safeguard biodiversity by:
- Implementing bold legislation against 'ecocide' as fast as possible and making environmental destruction a crime.
- Cancelling trade deals that destroy the environment (e.g. European Union–Mercosur Free Trade Agreement, post-Brexit UK trade deals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_trade_agreements_of_the_European_Union).
- Shifting away from unsustainable agriculture, by reducing livestock, halting deforestation and dangerous pesticides use, and promoting plant-based diets.
- Designing a masterplan to restore our ecosystems all over Europe and support low- and middle-income countries financially in protecting biodiversity.
- Implementing a global Debt-for-Climate initiative, to help leaving fossil fuel reserves in the ground, while freeing countries of the Global South from a strangling debt burden used as a tool for further extraction of natural resources.
What is Ecocide?
Ecocide is broadly understood to mean mass damage and destruction of ecosystems – severe harm to nature which is widespread or long-term. Ecocide committed repeatedly over decades is a root cause of the climate and ecological emergency that we now face. Examples of ecocide are
1/ Ocean damage by industrial fishing, oil spills, plastic pollution, deep sea mining;
2/ Deforestation driven by industrial livestock farming, mineral extraction, oil drilling, palm oil and wood production;
3/ Land and water contamination through oil spills, mining, mountaintop removal, tar sands, fracking, textile chemicals, agricultural pollution of soils, river systems and insect populations;
4/ Air pollution through chemical disasters and weapons, radioactive contamination, oil industry, industrial emissions, agriculture and cement industries.
How can we stop it?
Ecocidal activities undertaken by big corporations and heavily lobbying industries can be stopped by an “ecocide law”. Ecocide can be criminalised internationally by amending the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to add a fifth crime: Ecocide, next to Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes and Crimes of Aggression. Unlike suing and fining corporations, making ecocide a crime creates an arrestable offence. It makes those individuals who are responsible for acts or decisions that lead to severe environmental harm liable to criminal prosecution.
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