296 Jojo Mehta - Making ecocide a crime in less than 5 years and for less than 6 million dollars

A conversation with Jojo Mehta, executive director of Stop Ecocide International, about making ecocide a crime, something you can get arrested for and end up in prison. How do we get it from a discussion in lawyer circles and academic circles into international criminal law? And why is it going much faster over the last 5 years than anyone has expected?

Law: an area we rarely touch but has the potential to shift our food and agriculture system, and many other systems, completely. Making ecocide a crime. Ecocide is broadly understood to mean mass damage and destruction of ecosystems – severe harm to nature which is widespread or long-term. Turning ecocide into a crime, most likely it would also over time change our consciousness and get ecocide into the realm of things you simply don’t do. What is even more fascinating is that large companies actually want this, so it creates a level playing field.

This episode offers a rare glimpse into the crossroads of legal innovation and climate activism that could forever alter our relationship with the Earth. We examine the extraordinary momentum gained by movements such as Extinction Rebellion and youth-led climate strikes as well as we pay tribute to the late Polly Higgins, a tireless advocate whose vision of legal reform continues to inspire action. Unveiling the intricate dance of defining ecocide, this conversation brings to light the necessity of a legal framework adaptable to the evolving methods of environmental harm, forecasting a world where atrocities against nature are no longer tolerated.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Today we dive deep into an area we rarely touch but has the potential to shift our food and agriculture system and many other systems completely, making ecocide a crime. Ecocide is broadly understood to mean mass damage and destruction of ecosystems, severe harm to nature which is widespread or long-term. If we turn that into a crime and it's no longer maybe a fine here or there, but actually something you can get arrested for and end up in prison, everything will change and most likely we'll also, over time, change our consciousness and get ecocide into the realm of things you simply don't do, like killing somebody else. What's even more fascinating is that large companies actually want this, so it creates a level playing field. So how do we do this? How do we get it from a discussion in lawyer circles and academics into international criminal law, and why is it going so much faster over the last five years than anyone has expected?

Speaker 1: 1:16

This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems, while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration, because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume, and it's time that we as investors big and small and consumers, start paying much more attention to the dirt slash, soil underneath our feet. To make it easy for fans to support our work, we launched our membership community and so many of you have joined us as a member. Thank you. If our work created value for you and if you have the means and only if you have the means consider joining us. Find out more on gumroadcom slash investing in RegenEgg that is, gumroadcom slash investing in RegenEgg or find the link below.

Speaker 1: 2:32

Welcome to another episode today, a very special one, with the Executive Director of Stop Ecocide International. Unlike suing and fining corporations, which simply budget for this possibility, making ecocide a crime creates an arrestable offense. It makes those individuals who are responsible for acts or decisions that lead to severe environmental harm liable to criminal prosecution. So how do we do that? Welcome, jojo.

Speaker 2: 2:50

Hi, great to be with you.

Speaker 1: 2:52

And first of all shout out to Judith D Swartz, who connected us and definitely put me on a path to learn more about. I mean, I've followed the work, but from a distance some headlines somewhere, some articles, but never really deep into it. So I'm very much looking forward to unpacking the ecocide side of things. But let's start with a personal question. We always like to ask how did you get into this? And spending most of your awake hours, let's say, on the ecocide side of things? I'm going to stop saying eco side of things, but how did you get into this? And really focusing on making it an arrestable offense, which is a fundamental piece we'll get deeper into in this conversation.

Speaker 2: 3:37

Absolutely so. I guess even from my childhood there was a sort of deep thread of care for the earth that came from, actually, my mother, who's a singer and a songwriter, and her deep inspiration had always been landscape seasons. You know the spirit of nature. So you know that was kind of the sea that I swam in, I suppose, as a child. But it probably wasn't till my 30s that I started becoming what we sometimes call an armchair activist, in the sense that you know sort of signing petitions, you know maybe writing a letter to my local parliamentarian, that kind of thing. But I think what got me out of that armchair, you could say, and really active in the environmental space was the discovery of fracking, of hydraulic fracturing, as a technique, an incredibly polluting technique for extracting oil and gas. When I read about it and I heard that it was established in America and was going to be coming to the UK, I just had this moment of outrage and I actually don't know any, you know, self-described activist that hasn't had this moment. You know where there's something where you go well, hang on, that just isn't right, that shouldn't be happening. And for me that was what it was. And I remember talking to my family and friends. And my little daughter, who was five at the time, overheard me talking about it and she burst into tears and she said Mommy, if they're poisoning the ground, they're poisoning themselves as well. They're going to die. You have to call them and tell them to stop. And it was this moment where I just kind of went my God, you know, my five-year-old understands this, you know. Surely this should be blindingly obvious to everybody. I remember having a conversation with my local politician who did that classic thing of sort of, you know, avoiding all my questions and somehow not responding. And I just remember having this moment of thinking that is never happening again. And I remember informing myself, starting researching, giving talks, organising demonstrations.

Speaker 2: 5:25

I got very involved in the anti-fracking movement in the UK, which is my home country, and it was through that that I met a remarkable lawyer, polly Higgins, who was a barrister actually, but she was pioneering something. She was actually resurrecting a concept that had been dormant in the sort of legal and political sphere for some decades, and that was the concept of ecocide. And so it seemed a very simple way to address mass harm to nature simply make it a crime, and that just felt so blindingly obvious that. You know that it was hugely appealing and we actually met, because she moved to the area I live in and it was a kind of kindred spirit moment. We basically worked together from that point onwards and we co-founded what is now Stop Ecocide International back in 2017 to actually work on the kind of, if you like, it's an advocacy organization I mean, it's now a sizable international one but to work on effectively, you know, raising awareness of and furthering the conversation at every level of society really around this one.

Speaker 1: 6:50

These crimes now, like fracking et cetera, they're not crimes yet Like in current law, how are they treated? I mean, they're treated like externalities in the economy, but in law, of course, depending on the place. But what's the current situation and why is it just not enough? There is, of course, depending on the place, but what's the current situation and why is it just not enough?

Speaker 2: 7:04

There is, of course, a growing body of environmental laws around the world that vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but what we are clearly witnessing is the fact that they're inadequate to deal with the scale of damage that we're seeing to ecosystems around the world, Damage that also has an exacerbating factor on climate change, for example, and part of I mean we would put this down to I mean a number of things. Obviously, there are some environmental crimes, not many. Most environmental regulation is in the kind of administrative or sort of civil sphere, and so there are a couple of things at play there. One is that there's no great moral stigma attached to breaching regulation. It's not something that is kind of deeply understood to be something that's wrong. It's something that a company might get a slap on the wrist or a fine for.

Speaker 1: 8:00

Meaning like I'm polluting a river because I left a valve open or something. There's a massive thing now in Mississippi River, I think, for like a lake of, I'm going to say, fertilizer spilled over but something went wrong and went into a river, killed 750 million fish or something like that, like an insane amount and but it's going to be maybe a fine, maybe something you're going to get a slap on the wrist.

Speaker 2: 8:23

That's because it's in the administrative sphere it to really look at and highlight, because you know our current kind of global economic system has grown out of assumptions that are, you know, a, inaccurate and B out of date, in the sense that, you know, one cannot continue to extract infinitely from a finite planet. You know these things that you know, and we know intellectually actually I think quite well how damaging some of the practices that we come across I mean both in industrial agriculture but in many other areas, sort of mineral extraction and other kinds of sectors but we don't act as if we actually understood that. We kind of know it intellectually but we don't act as if we understood it. And part of that problem is the deeply cultural one, where we consider ourselves to be separate from nature. And I'm sure you'll have come across, you know, discussion of this in many of your podcasts, because this system has grown up from a time you know that actually. I mean you know we're sort of still living in, really, where the Western paradigm which has come to dominate the globe, sees human beings as effectively lords and masters of nature and that sort of dualism runs back centuries. I mean you can actually, if you I mean writers like Jeremy Lent, you know trace it right back to.

Speaker 2: 9:58

You know Plato's ideal versus the real. You know you've got the centuries of the domination of the Catholic Church, where you've got a spirit versus body dualism going on and then, of course, you come forward into the Enlightenment. You have the kind of it's almost the same split, it's just called different things. I mean you know you've got rationality versus emotion, or you know, mind versus nature, all of these kinds of dualisms that run right the way through, and because we have a system that's based that way, we simply don't think of damage to nature as terribly serious. It just doesn't occur to us as something we should recoil from. We don't have a taboo around it and we do around damaging other people. I mean it's not like you're going to go to a government and say you know, can I have a permit to kill 500 people for my new infrastructure project? It's literally not even going to cross your mind. I mean that's not to say that there aren't people that get killed in the process of major projects, but it's just not going to be yeah, but it's a different.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Yeah, it's a totally different yeah, exactly so.

Speaker 2: 10:56

But in terms of being able to sort of make a shift, in that, criminal law has a particular role to play, because we use criminal law to draw moral lines in a way that we don't for other kinds of laws so effectively. You know that recoil from, you know, damaging another person, it's a moral recoil and it's you know, it's a profound taboo and criminal law has the potential to create that. I mean just one small example. Well, it's not so small really, but in the UK, for example, the Child Protection Act came in in 1989. I still feel like that's insanely recent, but you know, up until that, time I was going to say that's very interesting.

Speaker 1: 11:39

That was after I was born. Well, exactly, I mean me too.

Speaker 2: 11:42

I mean I still have friends whose parents campaigned against that law because they believe that, you know, parents should have the right to discipline their children however they want it. Now what we kind of saw in the late 80s was the evolution of a sort of cultural awareness that children should be protected, to the extent that that criminal law was put in place and at the same time you still had perhaps quite a large percentage of the culture that weren't necessarily at that place. But once the law was in place you then see a major shift in the general population. So now if you were to stop somewhere in the street and say, is it OK to beat your child, nobody's going to say yes, I mean, you know it's. Effectively it's shifted the whole mentality. That doesn't mean there might not still be some people that do it, but effectively there will be a different awareness around it.

Speaker 2: 12:32

And so that's, in a way, I feel, the place that we're at with major environmental destruction. Right now, we are reaching a point where the consciousness at high level when I say high level, I mean, you know, sort of legislative level, not necessarily a high level yeah, exactly, it may not be the same thing, but in terms of the way we stratify society and politics, you know that awareness at the political level is reaching a point where this is a very serious discussion. It's now being taken seriously, but at the same time, you know, we're still in a position, and sort of economically speaking, where there are huge amounts of money going towards practices that are still very destructive. So you know, it's like that we're sort of right at that nexus point, if you like, where that evolution is possible, and that's what's very exciting about doing what we're doing, but it's also, I think, what has really helped to accelerate the conversation around creating a law of ecocide around the world over the last few years.

Speaker 1: 13:28

Yeah, because I think when you're in it, like you starting this and co-founding this in 2017, and looking at it, it seems like an almost impossible mountain to climb, like you're pushing up that wall, you have no idea how big it is.

Speaker 1: 13:41

You have no idea when it, let's say, say, being taken seriously in at the levels we need to I'm not saying high levels, levels we need to when suddenly and then suddenly it will tip over.

Speaker 1: 13:51

But of course, as any tipping point, we can study it later, but we cannot study it in advance and we have an idea. We think, maybe next year, maybe now, maybe in five and and that sort of movement, but it it's um, it definitely feels building and we'll look back, like any big civil movements or any big movements, we'll look back and look at the moments. And look at the, the bus protests, or we look at this and that like crucial moments. That when we're in it, we don't see it necessarily, or we can at least see other moments and we think they're way bigger, like it's very interesting, of course, looking back at that. So when you say the last year, something has shifted, um, what do you mean or what do you see or what do you feel like take us into that process, because you're in the middle of the fire and you can see what's happening, but you're also in the middle of the fire, so it's very difficult. Like what makes you say that it's accelerating.

Speaker 2: 14:36

Uh, compared to maybe six, seven years ago, when, when you started, I mean it's interesting because when we when we, polly and I co-founded this, what was a public campaign in 2017, it was partly in response to the fact that there was very little funding available for this kind of work, and yet Polly had quite a strong international following and we kind of converted that to an initial membership, if you like, to actually sort of, you know, raise some funds to continue with the diplomatic work, which sort of you know, raise some funds to continue with the diplomatic work which was just starting at that time.

Speaker 2: 15:06

So you know, the difference between how seriously that was viewed and how extreme it was considered to be back then, you know, compared to now, is really quite interesting, and I think there are a number of factors. I mean one is that, you know, obviously certain reports have been have come out since then at a kind of intergovernmental level that have kind of alerted governments to how drastic the situation is on the planet. There's that aspect, there's the very kind of, there's the immediacy of us, of us as public witnessing kind of on our screens the effects of climate change, the effects of, you know, for example, pollution, disasters and these kinds of things, which has become much more in our backyard.

Speaker 2: 15:47

Exactly, exactly, and it is that kind of tragically human thing of you don't pay attention to something until it's right in front of you, and for most people that is just simply true. And so there's, you know, the visibility and the immediacy of these disasters or climate effects, all of these things has obviously increased awareness. And then, of course, I don't want to discount, and I think it's actually really important to underline, in fact, the civil mobilisation aspect around this as well. We're looking at sort of grassroots movements like Extinction Rebellion, or like the school strikes movement, a sunrise movement, perhaps in America and others around the world, you know, where these issues of climate and environment have been brought to the fore in a very kind of disruptive way, but that have effectively opened that conversation.

Speaker 1: 16:40

And actually, when we look at, you know, this is not exactly exactly, and slightly disruptive, let's also.

Speaker 1: 16:45

I mean, I know it's annoying to be in a traffic jam, but nobody has died in this process, and it's compared to some and I'm gonna get emails for this but compared to some, some protests of certain farming groups, uh, this has been a joke in terms of negative impact, in terms of disruptive.

Speaker 1: 17:02

Maybe a bit of transport has been disrupted by extinction rebellion, um, but I just read how to blow up a pipeline, um, let's say, an interesting book, by the way, fascinating book, but the movement hasn't really pushed for for real destruction yet, and it might go. It might not go, but let's not be surprised if that happens at some point. So we're also still in a very I'm not saying cute phase, but it's extremely important and extremely needed. And at the same time, the protests have been extremely mild, to say the least, and so, but maybe that I mean I don't know if that's good or bad, I don't know if it needs to be more slap in your face or less, because otherwise you lose public opinion or I have no idea but it's been mild, I think, to say.

Speaker 2: 17:45

From our perspective, does?

Speaker 2: 17:48

it help you Well at a certain point, particularly sort of 2018, 2019, particularly where that there was a real growth in that climate activism space.

Speaker 2: 17:59

That was very important for us in the sense that I mean particularly in the UK, which is where we started, you know which, where it opened up the conversation politically and in a sense, I mean, when you look back at, you know, the civil rights movement, suffragette movement, you know anti-slavery movement, all of that you know you're seeing these kinds of on the ground disruptions and then, of course, what you're seeing afterwards is the legal change. So, effectively, what that did for us is open up that conversation and allow us to you know the conversation that we were bringing to the table, the one about criminalising ecocide to land as a kind of, almost a kind of logical follow up to that. The opening of that conversation, so that you know there's, you could say, I mean one analogy would be to say that you know the climate activists are sounding the fire alarm and you know if ecocide law actually brings the hose. You know it's that kind of relationship, I suppose.

Speaker 1: 18:51

It's been very. It will be a fascinating case there will be PhDs about this for sure Like what would have happened if COVID wouldn't have happened at that time, because it felt like a huge buildup of momentum and we will never know, because we cannot run the scenario then with all the strikes. Of course they couldn't happen anymore because we, because COVID happened, and so and it doesn't seem I haven't been following it very well, but it doesn't seem like it picked up after that again, like sort of that momentum disappeared. Maybe it wasn't lost, maybe moved into other places, maybe, but it didn't. Doesn't feel like Fridays for the Future. The school strikes are back at the level it was like winter 1920 or something like that. There was a moment.

Speaker 2: 19:33

I think that may be the case, but at the same time, in a sense, again from our perspective, that may have been all that was needed in order to set off that conversation. That may have been all that was needed in order to set off that conversation and actually, weirdly I mean obviously the whole COVID lockdown thing was terrible for huge numbers of people, but actually for us, there was a weird silver lining to it, which was that at the time when that happened, there's no way we could have afforded to be present at the international conferences that would have been useful for us to be present at, but because everything was online, that was all open to us. So actually, we actually had a huge growth period during COVID because we were able to access spaces a lot of people and political spaces that we would not otherwise have been able to access.

Speaker 2: 20:19

And once we came out of that and the conferences restarted, we were already in a completely different position where we were able to then, you know, become, you know, un observers and holding official side events and all of these kinds of things, which was, you know, has been hugely important in terms of the growth of the conversation.

Speaker 2: 20:39

Your previous question about milestones, I mean actually weirdly I mean it's a very personal one but there was actually quite a sort of tragic moment in for us when Polly Higgins passed away because she had a very aggressive she was diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer in early 2019, and she actually passed away almost exactly five years ago Actually, it'll be five years probably by the time this is aired and what happened then was that you know a lot of people who had been inspired by her, you know and this was in many different arenas from politics, campaigning, academics, ngos started to get in touch with me, actually as her closest associate, and saying, well, we don't want this work to die with her. What can we do to help? And it was almost as if and this is a strange phenomenon, but again, I think, possibly very human. When there's a very charismatic sort of figurehead for an initiative, people often sit back and they say, well, they're doing that, so I don't need to. And so, of course, when she was no longer there, Are you saying you're less charismatic?

Speaker 1: 21:40

Sorry are done playing your own role here.

Speaker 2: 21:42

That's very kind, but put it this way, I didn't expect to be doing what I am now. You know, at the time it was very much Polly who was the front person and, effectively, what I suppose I discovered my initial task to be was actually a kind of big dot joining exercise of bringing together all of these different voices who clearly, you know, often had been inspired directly by Polly but who were kind of very much interested in working on this, whether legally, whether academically, whether politically or whether at a grassroots level. And so, you know, it was a very key moment for the beginning of the movement, if you like. But there've been some other and I would say the milestones have all been sort of slightly different. So there was that one which I feel, as I say, was very kind of personal on one level and human, and then there was one at the diplomatic level at the end of that year. So we were already working with the Pacific Island Republic or I should say Ocean State really, of Vanuatu, which now has really started to carve a niche for itself in the diplomatic world as championing legal avenues to address climate change, because of course, the Pacific Islands are directly threatened by sea level rise and various other ecological issues that are connected, and the conversation with Vanuatu had already been ongoing for two or three years, but it was in 2019, at the International Criminal Court where we listed the international crimes genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity that Vanuatu officially called on the member states in the annual assembly of that court and said that they should all consider the possibility of adding ecocide to the list of international crimes.

Speaker 2: 23:31

So at that point the conversation was reignited at the diplomatic level, where it actually hadn't been since 1972. I mean, the term ecocide was actually coined to describe the damage caused by Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. It is awful defalien, but it was first mentioned on the diplomatic stage by the Swedish Prime Minister, olof Palme, back in 1972, which was the first UN, first international environmental conference. But it sort of sat in a way, in the sort of legal and political backwaters since then, despite having a number of different moments where lawyers or academics would try to sort of elaborate the concept. And then during the 90s it was discussed or there was a clause that would have addressed severe, widespread and long term harm. That was actually in the discussions for the treaty that was to become the Rome Statute, which was actually the governing document for the International Criminal Court, but that environmental clause never made the final cut, and actually that was one of the things that had inspired Pollock, because she had discovered that that conversation had happened, that it had been dropped, and so she saw herself as dedicating what turned out to be the last 10 years of her life to replacing a crime that should have been there.

Speaker 2: 24:45

So Vanuatu obviously as I say, very much frontline victims of the climate situation put this on the table in 2019. And that reopened the conversation at the international diplomatic level and we started to sort of, you know, see conversations emerging in countries that were discussing this. So, france, belgium, you know, the conversation started to emerge, and it started to also emerge in citizens assemblies like climate assemblies, but I think the real, you know, the biggest milestone came about a year and a half later, in the summer of 2021, when a definition of ecocide was launched, was proposed into the public sphere by a group, an independent expert panel of top lawyers from around the world that was convened by our foundation. Now, in the past, there had been sort of working definitions of ecocide, but it had mostly been a lawyer or a small group of lawyers, and the same was true of Polly. She had a definition that we used as a campaign definition for some time, but in a sense, none of those had the level of credibility where a government would take that seriously.

Speaker 2: 25:55

And that all changed with this panel, which actually came from a request from politicians from Sweden who approached us and by this point we had a charitable foundation as well as our nonprofit, that sort of runs on the strategic and operational side and they said you know, could you convene a panel to draw up a consensus definition that would have the weight that we could take it to our government and say would you propose this as an international crime?

Speaker 2: 26:22

And on the basis of that, we were able to convene that panel, and that was 12 lawyers from all different parts of the world, and it was co -chaired by a jurist from Senegal who was the first female prosecutor in Senegal, had long history in international criminal law and also a very highly renowned international lawyer called Philippe Sands, who has worked with international courts and tribunals on behalf of states and so on, for a number of years, very highly regarded. And so that panel came up with a definition of ecocide that emerged in June of 2021. And that really transformed the landscape. I mean from a very personal perspective. Until that point I was able to read all the emails in my inbox. It just kind of went bananas after that.

Speaker 1: 27:08

Because then what happens? You launch this group and the foundation Okay, we have a consensus with probably the top-notch lawyers we could find on a definition, and then people start emailing you because they want to use it. People start emailing you because they're angry. People start emailing you because they want to change it. Like, what are these emails?

Speaker 2: 27:29

about? That's a good question, okay. So mainly there was a sense of excitement around it. There was a sense of, I mean and this is partly because of the definition itself, and actually the core of it is very short and I'll read it to you in a moment but effectively what it was doing was it was somehow hitting a spot that was triggering conversation at a political, academic and legal level, and also, of course, the level of campaigning as well, of people saying, oh my God, this is something we need or this is something that actually responds to what we're seeing out in the world. That was, if I was to give a sort of overall kind of broad stroke sweep of what kind of response this was.

Speaker 1: 28:09

It hit a nerve it definitely hit a nerve.

Speaker 2: 28:11

It definitely hit a nerve.

Speaker 1: 28:13

And like the work before, like there's like if you look at the graph, whatever graph it would be, there would be a strong uptick of people talking about it, getting excitement or not.

Speaker 2: 28:27

Definitely. And of course, there were some you know, particularly some academic lawyers who you know, who, obviously, who might have had their own ideas about what it should look like, and there was some of that.

Speaker 1: 28:35

Might have, would have liked to be invited to join that group, and they weren't.

Speaker 2: 28:38

Yeah, I'm sure there's a few of those, but I think, yeah, largely what it spoke to was that up until that time, when we talked about ecocide, people would say, well, what exactly do you mean by that? And so to have a very, you know, like a kind of a weighty, credible text for what that meant, and also a very concise one, I mean it actually. I mean, obviously this is an audio so you won't see it. But I normally pull a business card out of my pocket and say, look, this is the definition, because it fits on the back of a business card, the core of it, and it's really simple, it's one sentence. It's 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, which covers most of our culture and that's something, let's say, the legal world can live with.

Speaker 1: 29:38

That's their language, that's how the other crimes are also defined, that fits in their buckets, etc.

Speaker 2: 29:47

Exactly so. Although it's quite straightforward language I mean, it's easy for you or I to understand or for a layperson to understand but it is actually based on quite strong legal precedent. It's based on Geneva Protocols, the NMOD Convention from 1974, also on other aspects of the Rome Statute, so the legal language will actually be familiar to those in that territory. No-transcript looked at quite early on, and I think this has a huge sort of. It's hugely important for how well the definition has landed sort of out in the world. And that is there was this discussion of.

Speaker 2: 30:44

You know, should this definition be a list of things you shouldn't do, in other words, a list of acts? And actually that's how most environmental regulation works. It's a long list of do's and don'ts and very exact kind of you know how much of a certain toxin in a certain context. All of that or and this is where they ended up or should it be something that is, in a sense, a general offence that focuses on the severity of consequences? And that is where the panel, you know, with quite a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, but ended up with going in that direction and I actually feel that this was actually fundamentally important.

Speaker 1: 31:19

It's much more powerful than a list of things.

Speaker 2: 31:21

Exactly Because if you have a list of things A, you have the potential of you know people not being on that list and therefore feeling that it's implicitly permitted what they're doing, but also, and you end up with you know, I know risk managers and legal counsels in big firms kind of going, well, how do we manage to not be in one of these categories? You know, there's that whole aspect. There's also the aspect that it goes out of date. It goes out of date, actually potentially quite quickly at the level of innovation and technology and so on that we're looking at in our world today.

Speaker 1: 31:53

It's a bit like saying you cannot kill a person with a machete, with a knife and a sword and a whole other list, and then we invent guns and it's fine, exactly.

Speaker 2: 32:05

I mean, that's absolutely on the nail. That's exactly the problem, which, of course, is not fine Just for people. No's exactly the problem, which, of course, is not fine just for people.

Speaker 1: 32:11

No, no, exactly, but it's the easiest thing to do because you can come up with a massive list and think, okay, we covered the world and so we're fine, but it will get out of date in a second because we invent another chemical to do stuff, or we did another mining thing or we invent fracking. That wasn't part of the list.

Speaker 2: 32:34

If you would have made this in the 70s and then suddenly in the 80s, 90s, it exploded, etc. Yeah, that's, that's exactly the point and and actually you're you're bringing that that sort of idea of the, the parallel with murder is actually really important because of course, you know, murder isn't a crime because of how you do it, it's a crime because the person ends up dead right. So, effectively, what what this definition does is something quite similar in terms of the sort of conceptual side of it, which is to say that you know, if what you do is substantially likely to create severe and either widespread or long term damage, then that is what defines it as ecocide, and of course it has to be quite severe. I mean, we're talking about an international level crime here. You know, we're not talking about chopping down the trees on the village green. We're not talking about you the trees on the village green, we're not talking about a one acre field, we're talking about something big scale, because what that does is it puts it in the category of an international level crime, which an international level crimes are meant to sort of elevate existing criminal offenses to a higher level, and it also it. Then you know, if you describe something at the international level.

Speaker 2: 33:34

If you describe something as an international crime, what you're describing are what we sort of globally conceive of as the worst crimes, and that has an important, that has a very important deterrent function.

Speaker 2: 33:47

And it has a very important function morally speaking, because what it does is, I mean, on one level it's quite simple, you're adding a crime to a list of crimes, but on another level, it creates a kind of profound shift in our understanding of our relationship with and our responsibility towards the natural world. Because what you're saying is that if ecocide and we can certainly talk about the ways in which this is the case if ecocide is as serious a crime as genocidal crimes against humanity, then effectively my responsibility towards the ecosystems that surround me is very different. It actually is just as bad, just as wrong, just as dangerous to severely destroy the environment. And, of course, ultimately although one of the main points of putting ecocide in that list is that you access severe damage to nature that doesn't necessarily require people to be hurt, at least not initially, of course, longer term, there's a huge potential effect on humanity as well.

Speaker 1: 34:52

So Like your daughter was pointing out, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 34:55

Absolutely so, you know. So it brings it sort of shifts. It does a kind of subtle shift in how we understand ourselves and how we understand our responsibilities. So that's also a really important aspect. And I think one of the other things and I remember during these discussions I remember thinking about the fact that there was this additional threshold. It's not just about the level of harm, it's also that acts should be unlawful or different jurisdictions, and if you make something absolute you're treading across existing law and that politically is very difficult because obviously that potentially is not going to fly. But also, you know, it takes into account that you know that there are, effectively it gives a flexibility. It gives a flexibility to the definition that is politically and diplomatically useful. But it can also be practically useful in the sense that you know there are some parts of the world that you know where the kinds of you know balancing acts that might be going into, you know coming into play in terms of what can be done, or you know what needs to be done and what can be done and what the balance with what damage is created may be different than in other parts of the world, and so that's also an important aspect.

Speaker 2: 36:23

But apart from that, I think the other thing for me was realising that what you're doing by saying that is actually weirdly it's actually encouraging and drawing forward the development of better laws in all of the environmental areas around the world. So if you're an academic, you're an expert, you're an NGO working on specific regulation in a particular area because it really is needed in that area and I'm sure there are areas like this in agriculture then what you can be reassured by is the fact that the better you do, the more effective this crime is going to be. So effectively, as law develops, this definition remains valid and actually gets strengthened over time. So you end up with a kind of future proofing in terms of you know, you don't get restricted to certain acts, but you also end up with a kind of dynamism over time that actually encourages the development of better environmental law. Because, effectively, if you're in breach of some kind of law and you're threatening this level of harm, then you're in ecocide territory. So, of course, as soon as you know, as those regulations improve and the legal sort of landscape improves, then so does this crime.

Speaker 2: 37:36

So I mean, obviously that was quite a you know, a sort of long and wide ranging, I suppose, explanation of some of the reasons why this definition landed so well and why it triggered so many discussions. And literally within a year it became the kind of de facto starting point for when people talk about ecocide and that's made a huge impact on the conversation and we would say, I mean, you know, you say when you're inside a movement you can't always see, you know what the key points are and how things are developing. But all I can say is that things have moved, probably a lot faster than we thought they would, and so, you know, we've kind of ended up at a point where we're almost kind of running to keep up with developments. In a sense, the proof of how seriously this is being taken and how far advanced we are with this conversation is what recently happened in the European Union, and it'd be good to just explore that a little bit.

Speaker 1: 38:48

Let's explore that a bit in a second because I think, bringing it back to agriculture and food as well, in general, I think there's so many paths that smart legislators can take now, like when, once this is and we'll get to that either from even the personal harm, like what we learn now, what food is doing to us, how it's been grown, and then what it ends up doing to us, mainly through a significant group of large corporates that's selling stuff that we simply cannot stop eating and it's not good for you. Um, or as amazing brazilian researchers call it, food like substance. It's not food, it's a food like substance and, um, that's actually a definition that's extraordinary um which is extraordinary, and and so we're literally killing ourselves with the food we grow.

Speaker 1: 39:25

Apart from what we're doing to the land and what we're doing to the forest and I understand, of course it's not like chopping down one tree, it's going to make it anything an ecocide but what is interesting is what we now see in in um large-scale degeneration or regeneration. It is affecting um whole continents in some cases, like we know now, reducing the, the, the congo-based forest and and jungles, will affect rainfall in Brazil and will affect stuff there and the other way around as well. And there are massive cause and effects that we're now seeing that are not just, oh, I chopped down a tree so I have slightly less shade on my land, which is potentially okay or not okay. But we see with water cycle disruptions, we see with the olive oil industry in Andalusia, it is disrupting potentially snowfall in Germany and it's disrupting potentially rainfall in the UK, and we're starting that body of science and knowledge is now growing exponentially on these water cycles and how we affect weather.

Speaker 1: 40:20

Literally weather and climate to this realm makes it potentially a very powerful tool to argue for large-scale regeneration at the right spots at the right time, to stabilize weather, to stabilize climate systems that are disruptive. As we see it, we see floods and fires and drought constantly, but it usually is because somewhere we chopped down something or we paved over something or we planted a monoculture desert. That's usually the few effects, and and so this is a very yeah powerful tool. So let's get back to to your point on the european union. Um, what has happened recently that probably our listeners don't really know, and and why is it so fundamental?

Speaker 2: 41:01

yeah, absolutely, and and it's brilliant what you brought in about those kind of, you know, cross-feeding effects that happen, um, because I think I think one of the aspects about one of the useful aspects of ecocide law is potentially when we look at the kind of transition, whether that's transition to renewables, transition to regenerative agriculture and so on.

Speaker 2: 41:22

You know there's a lot of conversation around. You know, obviously a just transition which is absolutely important, but actually what we would say is it must also be a safe transition and actually that's where the you know the law potentially comes in into you know very serious play. Because you know when you talk about, I know, the Congo Basin, for example, and there are other sort of key systems around the world where the potential future extractive industries are also, you know, are also sort of setting their sights, if you like, and you know what we don't want to do is jump from, you know, the sort of I don't know the fossil fuel frying pan into the lithium fire, for example, you know the ways that that transition emerges are going to be super important. But anyway, sorry, that's a bit of a sidetrack.

Speaker 1: 42:10

When you say safe, sorry, what do you mean by safe?

Speaker 2: 42:14

Safe for humanity, for ecosystems? I mean essentially the whole point of putting a parameter in place like ecocide law is it steers decision making? So, because you're looking at particularly at the international level of crime, you're looking at responsibility with people who have you know, who are at the top of a given production chain or potentially, Do you dare to stray to cut to mine?

Speaker 1: 42:36

Yeah, exactly. Do you dare to sign up for that?

Speaker 2: 42:38

Yeah exactly and ultimately and that means that this is really the whole point the whole point is to change behavior.

Speaker 2: 42:44

You know, it's actually not really about who's going to be in the dock or who's going to be in prison. It's about what different decisions will be made as a result of this being in place. And actually, when you start talking about this kind of period of transition, what we absolutely want is for those kind of levels of deterrence to be in the minds of the key decision makers, so that actually the decisions all start to shift in the right direction makers, so that actually the decisions all start to shift in the right direction, because, at the moment, doing the right thing and your audience be well aware of this doing the right thing in terms of sustainability, in terms of regeneration, it's an uphill struggle Because there is a kind of baseline of companies that I mean one could say they don't care, but one could also simply say that they are doing what current laws channel them to do, which is, you know, return to their shareholders. And you know, you know I'm not saying like the big.

Speaker 1: 43:35

I mean the big corporates and plus are also in a lock in battle and it's not that one can say, it's not that Nestle can say tomorrow, let's stop selling ultra processed food because their shelf space will be taken by somebody else in a second. And so there's a lock-in, plus a lot of chemical companies and plus most farmers are also in a lock-in that we've all created. It's not to blame. No, no, exactly, we've created a lock-in system and we're stuck.

Speaker 2: 44:00

Exactly, and that's one of the things that's so exciting about ecocide law, because it actually ultimately, I mean, one of the things that we make a real point of is not pointing fingers, because what we realize is that the current system has constraints that make it carry on going down the same tracks. And so when you actually, when you shift those parameters, you actually it's almost like shifting the points on a railway system you start actually steering decision-making down a different track, and that's much easier, actually, when everybody has to do that, that playing field is leveled and it's much easier to remember, I think that from the conversations you've had with large corporates I remember Judith mentioning that that they would love it, in a sense like give us guidelines, give us, give us not guidelines.

Speaker 1: 44:46

Give us actually parameters. Give us we can act, but give all of us a learning playing field, because I don't want to be the only one, because I'm going to get hammered in my quarterly results and my investors, even the most enlightened ones, will start pushing.

Speaker 2: 44:59

We've seen that.

Speaker 1: 45:00

Like everybody, stick their necks out in terms like up, up, up in the what is it?

Speaker 2: 45:07

the monkey mountain will get pushed off Because it's not it doesn't fit.

Speaker 1: 45:11

We've seen it with Danone, we've seen it with Unilever, we've seen it with others in the food space. I'm sure it's the same with your super responsible mining company. It's difficult to survive in this environment, that's exactly right and actually it's interesting.

Speaker 2: 45:22

You mentioned mining. I mean, we've got on a couple of occasions I mean obviously I can't name them but saying you know, please, please, move ahead with what you're doing, because I want to be able to say to my board we can't do it this way, we have to find another way. And actually I mean, one of our advisory board gave a lecture and I think it was in Paris to a whole room full of CEOs and she received a standing ovation and she had people coming up to her in tears afterwards saying, please, this is so exciting that this is happening, because it's actually going to give us the ability to put parameters around what we can do and not to be beholden to the bottom line with our shareholders. We can actually say well, we're not allowed to do that, we have to do it in a new way, and so that's actually really important.

Speaker 2: 46:11

And I think I mean I guess I should come back to your question about the EU, because there's been a really massive step taken, and that is that the revised Environmental Crimes Directive, which has literally just been adopted a couple of weeks ago, which has literally just been adopted a couple of weeks ago, contains an offence within it. That sort of it's kind of they've called it comparable to ecocide. They haven't called it ecocide within the operative text because I think they found the word a bit scary.

Speaker 1: 46:44

But they've called there's that side part. That's a bit.

Speaker 2: 46:46

Yeah, could be a bit but I mean, yeah, like genocide, ecocide, you know people.

Speaker 1: 46:50

Yeah, do we care what words is used in, or do you care?

Speaker 2: 46:54

I mean that's interesting. You ask that because I think the word ecocide has a huge power to it, has a lot of momentum to it and it's a lot of the reason behind the growth of this conversation is precisely because it's a powerful word. In practice, of course, what we actually want is the prohibition of severe, widespread and long term destruction, and you know, calling that ecocide is a shorthand that works really well, but in terms of the actual laws themselves it may not specifically matter, because once the you know, once the understanding of that word is there culturally and ideally legally as well, it has that kind of taboo effect that we're looking for. But in the European case, what we've seen is they've created almost an aggravating factor, they've called it a qualified offence and they actually do have quite a broad list of acts. I mean this is partly because of the way that the EU law is set up, is that that directive includes kind of various environmental crimes that emerge from different bits of EU law. So they've kind of put it all together and they've also added a few more.

Speaker 2: 48:00

You've got a list of 20 potential offences and if any of those is committed and creates the level of damage that we would describe as ecocide effectively, then it has much more severe penalties, it has worse fines, it has all of the sort of elements that we would want with an ecocide law. So it's kind of ecocide in all but name. So it doesn't quite go as far as we'd like in terms of that totally general offence of you know, whatever you do shouldn't hit that. But it's not far off and that's a huge development because now within the next couple of years there are 27 states that are going to have to harmonise with that law. Now that's actually a kind of minimum. They can actually go further, they can fully describe ecocide.

Speaker 1: 48:46

Do you see that, with your Swedish friends and others that have been on this path, do you see them taking this as a step or as a potential like, okay, this gives us the door, this opens the door to that in our local legislation?

Speaker 2: 49:02

I mean it's a little bit too early to see, because it literally has literally just been adopted a couple of weeks ago and this conversation is, in terms of you know, the sort of likelihood of it being in place has only been there for sort of three or four months, so it's quite new still. But there are a number of European countries that are already discussing ecocide at national level, and I mean the Netherlands is one. I mean Belgium has actually already adopted ecocide at the federal level. It still needs to address it at the regional level because Belgium has this federal regional relationship. But you know, proposals were made also in Italy and Spain last year, also in the UK Now, actually, because this is an election year, not all of those might go through. But effectively what we're seeing is that the conversation is very live.

Speaker 2: 49:45

It's now being taken very seriously because you know, effectively, with this development of the EU, that has also pushed things at the international Criminal Court level you know where previously. You know there's a conversation that's been building at the International Criminal Court for some years, but you know effectively it was, I suppose, before it felt a little bit more speculative. Now it feels like OK, this is obviously going to happen. It's just a question of when and how, so you know. So that has sort of shifted on to a whole nother level. So, yeah, I mean this it's a really, really important milestone because it, you know, it really shows that there's that this has been taken seriously and that actually, I suppose what you could say is a legislative direction of travel has now been established. So it really is now just a question of what does that mean?

Speaker 2: 50:30

Well, that means that, effectively, the direction in which the laws are going at the kind of, is clear.

Speaker 1: 50:36

Is clear exactly.

Speaker 2: 50:38

And so you know it is a bit I mean sometimes describe it as you know, we sort of draw a stick or a pencil through water. You know it's a very precise thing, this criminalisation of ecocide. And so you know, at the front end of it there's not a huge amount of resistance, it's actually quite hard to argue with. I mean, actually putting that definition in front of somebody, and I've yet to have anybody say, well, I'm not sure that should be a crime. I mean, it's kind of obvious in a way that it should be. But you know, behind that sort of very precise sort of point of the spear you could say there's actually quite a large wake. And so what we're seeing here is that the wake of that sort of that travel is becoming bigger and bigger and it's, you know, it's moving forward at a faster rate.

Speaker 2: 51:24

So, and I think part of the reason for that is precisely how specific this thing is. I mean, I think if we had had a kind of very broad political agenda in some way, or you know what many people do have, which is a kind of five point plan to save the world, you know, if we'd have something like that, you know we might well have bumped up against different political obstacles than we have, because you know that you've got more potential to sort of find disagreement, whereas you know on one level you could call this the easiest campaign in the world, because it's actually very hard to argue with, certainly on a public level. I mean, I think we've already got to the stage politically where no government is going to want to be seen directly objecting to ecocide law because they're just going to look terrible. And when it comes to the sort of big companies that potentially could be, you know, affected by this.

Speaker 2: 52:19

They're not saying anything and they're keeping very quiet Because, I mean, we don't know, they may be behind closed doors, we wouldn't see it. But effectively, if they've spent a certain you know number of decades greenwashing, shall we say, the last thing they're going to do is come out in public against this, because that will ruin all of that investment. So you know.

Speaker 1: 52:38

Yeah, maybe in the background they will be doing something had interactions with larger corporates, etc. That the legal departments are starting to prepare, or at least following this, as this is a potential major shift, major opportunity and major threat as well.

Speaker 2: 53:01

Have you had those conversations or is it too early? It's probably too early, but in terms of conversations generally with the business and corporate world and also with the investment world, interestingly that has been picking up quite a lot over the last year and actually we can see a thread emerging, I mean, in fact, even two years in a row the International Corporate Governance Network, which is a membership association of the biggest asset managers in the world and that includes pension funds and investment banks, but also some of the really big corporate players. They have submitted statements to the climate talks each year and two years in a row they recommended governments to criminalize ecocide, which is really fascinating. And actually when that first happened we got in touch with them. We said you know what was it that had your committee? You know, put this into your statement. You know, we're really fascinated.

Speaker 2: 53:52

And they said, effectively there were sort of two reasons. I mean one in a sense is the obvious one for the finance world, which is about risk stabilisation. So I mean what we're seeing is I mean you'll have come across that acronym, is it VUCA, volatile, uncertain, I can't remember what they all stand for, but it's an investment acronym about. You know how kind of volatile and unpredictable the investment territory is right now because of the very literal dangers of what is happening in the physical world, and so ecocide law in that context provides a kind of stabilizing factor whereby at least we'll potentially know that certain kinds of activities won't be permitted and that the decisions that will be being made are more likely to go down a safer path, and so that obviously is one aspect for the investment world that's actually very important. It kind of has this stabilizing factor with regard to risk.

Speaker 2: 54:51

But the other aspect actually, which was refreshing to hear, was that the committee had, you know, they'd been saying well, actually we can see that what's happening on the planet is pretty drastic and there is actually quite a muscular response needed.

Speaker 2: 55:05

And so there was, you know, there was this sort of acknowledgement that the criminal law aspect was actually going to be quite important in terms of actually addressing the level of destruction that we're seeing. So that was really interesting. For example, the UN High Level, climate Champions, which is a coalition of business voices sort of moving towards sustainability, nature, finance and various even I mean some of the more sort of sustainability leading investors and banks and so on starting to focus on ecocide law and support it. For these reasons, but not only that, I mean, for example, this year I was invited to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which is a first, and that was effectively kind of almost it felt like a real acknowledgement that that sort of world of finance and investment was starting to pay attention to this and realising that it needed to be part of the conversation. So you know, like I say, although it's still early days, there are definitely kind of interested noises and to some extent also positive noises coming through from the investment community.

Speaker 1: 56:23

And what is your message to Davo? But also, let's say we do this in a theater in the city of London or on Wall Street, let's say the heart of finance. What is your main message? Of course, after an evening they've learned a lot, they're very excited or interested, but if there's one seat you want to plant there, if you want people to remember once they walk out of the theater because we know daily life takes over and the next day you're in your normal commute, grind, etc. What's one thing you want them to remember.

Speaker 2: 56:53

I mean it's interesting. I mean I suppose the single word that comes to mind is always about safety. You know this is for us. You know this law is absolutely about safety and, of course, in the investment world, it's also about safety of your investments. But that concept of safety is also about safety for ecosystems, about safety for humanity, it's about effectively shifting us out of this incredibly dangerous space in which the investment world, but also industrial, agriculture and industrial many things, and industrial many things, currently reside in. So that is the sense that the ecocide law is about bringing safety into the picture. So that's probably the key thing. I think one of the things that's also interesting about and this is also related to what we were talking about about it being results focused, about the severe and widespread harm rather than listing specific acts is this sense of a reality check.

Speaker 1: 57:53

Which, by the way, is fascinating because it's exactly the discussion in agriculture, going from organic, which is very much a list of things to do and not do, to outcome focused, which many argue in regenerative, for potential certification, which is a whole different discussion. But we need to look at the outcomes. We need to look at improved soil, water quality, air quality, biodiversity, etc. We need to look at the outcomes and not just, oh, did you do your your checklist or not, which is not. I'm not saying that's easy or not, but that's holds us back, as it seems, because we're not looking at actual outcomes on the ground, in the ground, around the ground, and water.

Speaker 2: 58:26

That's really interesting. You say that because it feels quite similar. It's a sort of reality check factor. So you know just as I mean.

Speaker 2: 58:34

And again, for that sort of investment world, so when they're looking at you know where they want to put their money. What they're going to be wanting to look at is what is actually happening on the ground in the context of this project and is it likely to create this level of harm. So it's actually forcing a kind of link between that in my head, in my job, making my speculative investments or whatever, and what's actually happening to the planet. And again, that's the same thing with those risk managers. Those legal counsels in-house in those big corporations are actually going to have to start talking to the experts in their own sectors, in their own companies. In other words, and often this is not the CEOs who potentially they're trying to keep out of jail, by the way, with this law.

Speaker 2: 59:21

And neither is it the bottom of this or the end of the supply chain where know where things are happening on the ground. It's actually that sort of central sort of level of operational experts that know what's actually happening on the ground and can therefore give an assessment as to what kinds of decisions need to be made to avoid that, you know, becoming something dangerous. And that's something that they haven't necessarily had to do with environmental regulation in the normal sense of the word, where they're more interested in just making sure that they don't fall into a certain category or that they stay just shy of a red line or worse. But happens a lot is what is the cost of the fine versus what are the profits we're going to make? So it takes it out of that territory and into the cost of the fine versus what are the profits we're going to make, you know. So it takes it out of that territory and into the territory of we have to look at what's actually happening on the ground.

Speaker 1: 1:00:15

I'm seeing the title from a fine to a crime.

Speaker 1: 1:00:20

I'm not saying it summarizes the hour we did, but it's one of the essence pieces and what would you do I mean, I love to ask this this question, trying to flip the conversation in a sense if you would be an investor, um, and you had to put quite a significant amount to work let's say a billion pounds, um, as you're in the uk what would you and I'm not looking for euros or dollar amounts, I'm not looking for exact amounts, I'm looking what would you focus on? What would you, um, look at, what would be your priorities if you had to put money to work for quite a long time? It could be extremely long-term investments, but, um, it could be a bit of of grant in this as well, but majority should come back at some point with, with a kind of financial return. What would you focus on?

Speaker 2: 1:01:00

could be anything obviously outside food and ag in food and ag land, sea yeah, no, it's really it's really interesting and also it's a little bit how you think of an investment and what kind of return that you'd want on it. I mean, obviously, to begin with I would say you know you want to support legal initiatives like this because actually the impact is massive for you know it's an incredible bang for your buck. I mean actually. I mean just to give an example of what we've done. I mean we've gone from I mean obviously it's not just us, but we're the kind of engine at the heart of it I mean the ecocide law initiative. I mean we've gone in five years from no governments talking about this to the EU legislating. Now that is rocket speed for international law and we've done it on probably less than six million dollars in total. So when? So when you actually look at the relative value of that, it's insane.

Speaker 2: 1:01:52

So I think looking at law is actually really important because it actually creates the kinds of parameters that then steer decision making across the board. I mean, in this particular case, an ecocide law would be across the board. Obviously it may not be with other legal initiatives. It may be particular areas case. An ecocide law would be across the board. Obviously it may not be with other legal initiatives. It may be particular areas, but I think that's an incredibly useful point and I think it's one that people don't pay too much attention to. Actually, I mean, we're very good at saying, oh well, the oil lobbyists, you know, they help legislation go in certain directions. It's like, well, actually that's what we're doing. We're not doing it with bribes and expensive dinners, you know, but we are doing it in terms of having the right conversations in the right places. So the power of advocacy, I think, is wildly underestimated. So that's one aspect. And I don't know and by power of advocacy I'm not talking about the power of, you know, civil society demonstrate, I'm not talking about the power of, you know, a big demonstration that stops traffic, I'm talking about having the right conversations in the right places and I'm not saying that they're not both important and in terms of.

Speaker 2: 1:02:53

But in terms of, I mean it's funny because, of course, before this, because I knew this was a podcast around regeneration and focus on agriculture and food and so on, and I have to say I mean there's some very exciting things that I've seen going on.

Speaker 2: 1:03:11

I mean not in depth and detail because we cover so many sectors, but looking at things like, you know, soil food web looking at, you know sort of no-till agriculture, looking at those kinds of things that focus on soil, I think are just phenomenally important.

Speaker 2: 1:03:23

Because I also think and again this is something that we do come across with what we're doing is, you know, one of the first things that we're going to really really notice and it's going to fail if we don't fix it and sort it out and treat it differently is soil, and it's just absolutely huge.

Speaker 2: 1:03:40

And so, you know, looking at some of these ways of changing, you know, both sort of in harmony with local landscapes and local soils, strikes me as an incredibly good investment to make, because it seems that there's some very obvious results in terms of not just in terms of actually creating better food and better yields, but also just making happier people and happier land and all of that. So I mean I would so very much be investing in those kinds of things. But also, I think, I mean I suppose I sort of think of the longer term things because of what we're doing having this really strong cultural aspect. I think of areas like education and culture where I mean, do you know what I'd almost want to kind of invest in some, you know, do some kind of program that brings the head honchos of big companies in touch with the soil. And I mean there may be people who are doing it.

Speaker 1: 1:04:47

Coming back to what you said at the beginning, the separation between nature and ourselves.

Speaker 2: 1:04:52

Yeah, absolutely. So I would definitely be interested in doing that. I mean, I just think that, you know, I don't even think you necessarily need that much time for that to happen, you just need that connection to be made, and I think. And then the other end of education is looking at particularly children. I mean, you know, children in nature don't need telling what, the how to connect with nature, they just do. You know, it's our education system that pulls them away from that. So I would want to have, I would want to look at education programs that again, again, that bring children into connection with nature, that have them really get, um, how things grow. And yeah, I just think that that's so important.

Speaker 2: 1:05:38

And I think the other thing, that, and of course the other thing, is the sort of glue, the kind of cultural glue, um, I feel is also super important. I mean, you know, food is such a deep, I mean it's a profoundly deep part of our culture all around the world and obviously it's different in different places and so on, but we all, you know, we all have some kind of intense relationship with food and so any kinds of cultural pieces that highlight that or that make that sort of shine a light on that in a way that kind of potentially engages and maybe, you know, immerses. I mean, you know, an amazing had some amazing colleagues I'm trying to remember what they called themselves now but, um, you could look up mish fabra lewin, for example. Um, who does these incredible kind of cultural happenings around food, and it's like they're somewhere in this great interesting space between growing and art and eating.

Speaker 2: 1:06:43

Um, and the, the way that I sort of seen people respond to that and suddenly have a kind of different understanding of what their relationship is to food and where their food came from, you know, as of being part of something that's almost sort of slightly ritualistic but actually quite convivial as well, I mean really really remarkable. So those kinds of things I think would make profound differences. But obviously, as I said, I would start with law.

Speaker 1: 1:07:12

And as a final question that usually leads to others, but let's see, if you had I mean, it could be very simply what we've covered in the last hour, but could be something completely different as well If you had a magic wand and you could change one thing overnight, what would that be? It could be anything We've had people mention consciousness, but also ban all chemical fertilizer, like put all animals outside, like literally anything better taste in terms of flavor. What would you do?

Speaker 2: 1:07:42

Well, I mean, in some ways it's a bit of a no-brainer.

Speaker 1: 1:07:44

I would put ecocide law in place all around the world Because I and does it need to be necessary, Like if you do that under the Hague on the international court level, and then it goes down, like what's the order? Like is it a domino that starts there and then it goes, or now it's European and so Well, I think it's interesting, Like on a country level.

Speaker 2: 1:08:06

I mean, interestingly, when you say if you wave a wand and it could happen tomorrow, I actually, funnily enough, I wouldn't wave the wand for it to happen tomorrow. I'd wave the wand for it to happen everywhere within a limited time so that people could see it coming, because actually that's what really changes things. So it's not. If you suddenly put a law in place tomorrow, you know all the courts would collapse, everybody would freak. You know it would be complete chaos. But because people can and this is already starting to happen because people can see it coming, there's a window of change, there's a window of compliance, there's a window of shifting thinking.

Speaker 2: 1:08:41

So you know, you could, I could almost say that if I could wave my wand now and in, say, three years time, this law would be in place everywhere, you'd see unbelievable change happen. You know you'd, you'd see. So you know so many kind of knock-on effects and reframings, and you know, and and it's I mean it's the. The irony of all this is it's really relatively cheap. I mean, changing a law doesn't cost very much money, you know.

Speaker 1: 1:09:08

But actually the effect is enormous and it would change where all the investments go.

Speaker 2: 1:09:13

It would change where all of the you know high level decisions go. So, yeah, that would be incredible.

Speaker 1: 1:09:20

I want to thank you so much for joining us here and sharing a light on the law side of things, which we don't do enough and we should do more, but at least we covered it properly in this hour. So I want to thank you so much for the work you do and, obviously, for taking the time to come here and share it with our audience.

Speaker 2: 1:09:37

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been great.

Speaker 1: 1:09:46

Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. For the show notes and links we discussed in this episode, check out our website investinginregenerativeagriculturecom. Forward slash posts. If you liked this episode, why not share it with a friend or give us a rating on Apple Podcasts? That really helps. Thanks again and see you next time.