“Guilty.”

It was a unanimous verdict by the jury of a ground-breaking mock-trial in September 2011. The Athabasca Oil Sands Project had been found to constitute ‘ecocide’, instated in this scenario as an international crime. The prosecuted CEOs of companies operating in the Tar Sands, played by actors, squirmed as the ruling was read out. This was a test run, but if the proposed Ecocide Act becomes reality, bona fide CEOs will find themselves in the firing line.

Ecocide is defined as ‘the extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been or will be severely diminished.’

International barrister, Polly Higgins, is working to make this a crime punishable by international law. As a corporate lawyer, Higgins found herself asking, “Why is it that I’m representing people in court, who I get on with very well, who think it’s normal to make money out of mass damage and destructions?” Whilst the law mandates that CEOs produce the best return for shareholders, it does not force them to act in an environmentally-responsible way.

But Higgins is careful not to lay the blame with abstract concepts like individual greed or corporate irresponsibility. “The law was basically determining that we weren’t looking to the consequences,” she explains. “So the law has caused the problems in a lot of ways.”

In 2006, Higgins became a lawyer for the earth itself, a client which had thoroughly inadequate protection under the law. “There are over 500 pieces of international legislation to do with protecting the environment and they’re clearly not fit for purpose. You just have to look at the Amazon,” she says, with a note of exasperation.

Not content to let this stand, it seemed to Higgins “that it was about fundamentally changing what kind of law we were applying, it’s about changing the rules of the game.” Existing environmental laws are premised on permits and fines (“catch-me-if-you-can laws”), which do not encourage prevention of environmental damage. Higgins believes they must start from the Hippocratic principle, “First, do no harm.”

“We need to apply the same care as the medical profession to the earth.”

But these changes do not come easily, and Higgins’ initial submission of a proposal to the UN in 2010 was unsuccessful. “They did nothing,” she laughs, “They didn’t respond to me.” Undeterred, Higgins kept working to build support. “Now there’s huge international engagement in this… the international legal community really get it, they see this as progress towards where the law needs to go.”

Higgins was clear that the Ecocide Act needed to have the force of international law, so “being a good lawyer I went back to first principles to look at what international laws we have.” These were the Four Crimes Against Peace (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression) incorporated in the Rome Statute, the founding Treaty of the International Criminal Court (born in 2002). “They’re the crimes of most serious concern to civilization as a whole,” says Higgins. “Hence the need to include Ecocide.”

And precedent for such an inclusion does exist. Higgins recently discovered that a 1985 precursor to the Rome Statute, the draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind, had included Ecocide right up until 1996. “It just goes to show you can’t keep a good idea down,” says a delighted Higgins, who was “absolutely over the moon” about the new information. “It was a recognition that at the international level the legal community had very seriously engaged with this… it wasn’t a radical idea. We’re just reinstating what should have been put in place.”

The aim of Ecocide legislation is to change the behaviour of governments and global business, with one of the most important tenets of Higgins’ act being ‘superior responsibility’. This principle means that CEOs will be held personally responsible for environmental damage done by their company’s actions (plus, the ICC can only try individuals). “It’s actually about ensuring that those who hold the power of decision making at the top end, who hold power over many millions of people below, are held accountable.”

Higgins thinks these changes will have a “huge”, but positive, effect on the future economy. “This is about building resilient economies, about getting away from a boom-and-bust cycle.” She sees it as “incentivizing technologies that will have long term effects for future generations.”

Economic realignments were continually highlighted by speakers at Oxford’s Climate Forum a few weeks ago, identified as one of the keys to combatting dangerous future weather change. In a keynote speech, physicist Professor Myles Allan even suggested that a feasible solution would be to mandate fossil fuel extractors to use carbon capture storage to bury the equivalent amount of carbon they are releasing.

So whilst legal and technological solutions appear to be available, political will for change has been lacking. “I think politicians, like big business, have been bound by law that puts profit first,” says Higgins, generously. “It’s a mixed bag. Some countries have fantastic legislation… but nobody comes to the table with clean hands here, especially because of environmental legislation not being good enough to tackle this until just now.”

But Dapo Akande, who is University Lecturer in Public International Law and Yamani Fellow at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, says that the ICC is subject to major limitations. “The ICC actually can’t do a lot. The fact that it has a global reach shouldn’t induce us to think it can do a lot of things.” Realistically, “it can only undertake a small number of prosecutions of symbolic value.”

And as an organ of international justice, the ICC is powerless to make a difference to the activities of several major global players. The USA has an uneven affiliation with the ICC, and India and China have not even ratified the Rome Statute.

But despite these drawbacks, “it’s worth starting somewhere,” says Akande. “The reach of the court is actually wider than might appear at first sight,” he adds, pointing out that the court can try any national of the states who are party to the Rome Statute, even if they have acted on territory of a state which is not party, and vice versa. 

However, another potential stumbling-block for Higgins’ law is that alterations to the Rome Statute must be approved by two-thirds of the 121 states that have signed and ratified it. 81 heads of state must be persuaded that consciously protecting the environment is in their interest. How is Higgins planning to convince them?

“I’m not going to do that, you are, and many, many millions of people,” she laughs, “This is about calling for bold, moral and courageous leadership as citizens and those who have more public platforms.” Higgins may be a successful negotiator, but “this is not something I can do alone.”

Akande is not so optimistic about the Act’s chance of making it to the ICC agenda. “A number of other crimes are competing to be on the list (for consideration),” including acts against terrorism, corruption, and drugs trafficking. “I suspect people will be afraid to put anything else on the table.”

However, Akande agrees with Higgins that the power for change rests with the public. “It is not widely appreciated how influential civil society can be in making changes. Talking to people in government I’m often impressed that they do take the views of civil society seriously.” If the general sentiment swings towards better environmental legal protection, the law is much more likely to follow.

On 21 January, Higgins’ call for citizens to speak out against Ecocide was answered. A European Citizens’ Initiative was launched to make Ecocide a crime under EU law. One million signatures are now required to force the European Commission to consider the proposed legislation (one month later they had 9,165 signatures). Higgins is confident that the number will be reached thanks to an “appetite for change”: “Oh it’ll happen, absolutely, not a problem.”

Higgins has called her work, “my quest.” When I ask if she sees herself as a knight for nature, she laughs merrily (as she has done throughout the interview). “There’s something that happens when you stand up and speak out about something you care about. When you shine your own light you give people permission to shine theirs,” she muses, referencing Martin Luther King. “God knows when I stand up on platforms I do that every time. More and more people do that and the message spreads. It’s not just my quest, it’s other people’s quest.”

“I think it’s the challenge of our times,” Higgins says soberly. “A most unique time for the whole history of civilization. If we don’t resolve this we won’t be around for much longer.”

If you’ve ever opened a tabloid newspaper for the purpose of instruction, you would have encountered a battery of home truths about immigration. You usually hear these views bleated by the more moronic members of the audience on Question Time, but in such cash-strapped times they are becoming more commonly held.

Immigrants both scrounge for benefits and steal jobs. They hoard social housing and also build houses. They both erode communities and furnish our dinner tables with their food. They spread disease and form our army of nurses and overnight doctors.

The latest furore is over the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union on 1st January 2014. Transitional controls will be lifted, emancipating the Slavic masses to scramble for the English Channel like sperm to an egg. As the argument goes: unless we batten down the hatches, our social infrastructure will implode.

Never mind same-sex hospital wards – it’ll soon be three to a bed. We’d have to start cling- ing onto the trains as they do in India. We’ll be- come sardines packed in tins, like it is for the British ex-pats choosing to live in those ghastly monolithic skyscrapers along the Benidorm coastline.

Importantly, government research finds that migrants have a much lower uptake of both in-work and out-of-work benefits than the national average. They take home lower wages and are under-represented in social housing.

In 2008, a House of Lords Select Committee reported that immigration overall had a net benefit to national income, which in theory means there should be no strain on resources.

Yet immigration does have acutely negative effects for some groups in society, particularly those in low-paid and unskilled occupations.

We should not handicap ourselves in the name of protecting this group. It is much better to understand, improve and harness the qualities they have. Immigrants should not be their easy scapegoat.

The surplus generated by immigration needs to be invested to build the social infra- structure for a larger population. That means more houses, trains, schools and hospital beds.

It may well be the case that we are reaching the optimum population for a country of our size and resources. The government is therefore right to focus on the fewer but more skilled people who want to come to Britain.

However, another argument for entirely pulling up the drawbridge centres on the cul- tural impact of immigration. Integration is a legitimate concern associated with the effects of rapid mass migration. It is somewhat natu- ral for new citizens in a country to coalesce in areas populated with people of similar origin: Poles in East Anglia; Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets; Britons in Alicante.

This is problematic. While these areas are the gratifying wellsprings of multicultural- ism, they can isolate those who lived in these communities before, prompting the stock cliché that they “feel like a foreigner in my own country.” It is an issue to the extent that communities feel divided along linguistic and cul- tural lines. As the natives flee, ghettos and polarisation result, leading to the palpable sense of disunity that you see in many areas of the country today.

If we can consciously build a parasol of strong values under which the individual cultures of local communities reside then we have the basis for a strong nation in the 21st century.

The Olympics were important and timely for the country in this regard. Many were euphoric when Mo Farah, a Somali refugee, won two long-distance golds. He embodied the common, somewhat Protestant, values of hard work, dedication, kindness and respect for others. Hostilities rightfully crumble when people realise their shared values and discount their ephemeral differences.

We devour Indian cuisine and imbibe Russian alcohols; we embrace mass-produced Chinese tat and Swedish flatpack furniture. Being a small wet rock surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean has made it expedient to be open to trade – and by extension different cultures, ideas and dispositions – right through the ages.

There are few more open-minded, tolerant and civilised nations on Earth than Britain. But we’re also a nostalgic people, one that looks proudly on its past achievements: industry, language, our rule of law, not to mention codifying most of the world’s important sports whilst being hopeless at them. Rapid change and scapegoating fuelled by a populist media can lead to hostility and escapism, which are not natural to the British character.

We’re a country equipped for the future, with a people that can speak most of the world’s languages. Britain is expected to be Europe’s largest economy in 2050 mostly because of population growth from immigration.

From someone who has Nordic, African and Spanish heritage, I hope the national debate starts to trumpet the good aspects of immigration, places its many challenges in a more realistic context and remembers that homo sapiens are a nomadic species with no natural monopoly on any part of the world’s land.

What is localism?
In Switzerland, the national legislature convenes for 30-40 days a year. It is a citizen legislature; there is no political class, as such. Why? Because power is devolved to the Swiss cantons – that’s what localism is all about; decision-makers being rooted in their communities. Making decisions amidst the people who are most affected by them doesn’t just amount to common sense. It’s makes for good government too.

Is the British political system ‘local’?
No. We have the most over-centralised political system in the Western world. Local government raises less of revenue as a proportion of the state than any other government except Malta. To take an example, Liverpool need to take a bill through Parliament to ban smoking in public places. Decisions that in America or Western Europe would be taken in a town hall meeting are, here, taken by a Whitehall bureaucrat.

Why is the system so centralised?
Good question. Partly it’s about job security. In Europe, whatever views new MEPs had before they got to Brussels, they change as soon as they get their teeth around the teat of the expenses system. They don’t even realise it, but they subliminally switch all their opinions to suit what you happen to do for a living. Then there are the big corporations. They have huge lobbying organisations in Brussels; they’re brought into the system and benefit from the way they can change it from the inside. Big firms can afford the compliance costs of EU regulation; ‘Big Pharma’ is a classic example.

Is localism a conservative cause?
Frequently, but not always. The Left tends to trust the state more. They’re more comfortable with the idea of it making decisions for others and spending their money. There is a correlation between welfare spending and centralisation. But the Right in Britain has made the same mistakes. Thatcher was a good example of someone who got it wrong on localism: instead of making local authorities more accountable to voters, she got involved in rate-capping and so on.

Is the Coalition government a ‘localist’ one?
I like some of what they’re doing. Police and Crime Commissioners will be a very good thing once they get off the ground, but a lot of the candidates didn’t excite me this time. The party leaders didn’t push it either. They need to do more, no doubt.

Last week, I attended the Oxford Union debate entitled “This house believes that we are all feminists now”. Despite the rather clumsy wording of the motion, it was by all accounts an entertaining evening with some marvellous anecdotal moments from Michael Beloff QC. But the argument that made the most impact on me, funnily enough, had nothing to do with the debate at all. Indeed, in an understated, yet clear address, Rachel Johnson stated that while at Oxford, she was the archetype example of the over-ambitious, pushy undergraduate: the sort who gets involved in an endless raft of university societies and committees: the sort, she pointed out to the chamber, most people hoped would get their comeuppance once they left university.

Instead, she pointed out, the very opposite was the case. These same people ended up virtually running the show: they became today’s MPs, CEOs and Director-Generals, heading up the great private and public institutions of the country. 

Johnson’s remark was in substantiation of a wider point about feminism, but it got me thinking about why exactly we have come to university. The idealist in me would say it is all about enjoyment and fun: the last opportunity to revel in the relatively carefree life of a student, before plunging into the inevitable abyss of job-searching and tax. But another part of me, stirring admittedly in the face of internships and vacation schemes, feels that this idyllic model of university life is really a cruel trap, designed to catch the most naive undergraduates out. For in reality, the graduate job market is so competitive that only students with the very best credentials can hope to break in at the top level. This does not just mean a shiny 2:1 from Oxford either. In sharp contrast, you need to show “competencies” that apparently make you fit for the job. “Have you worked on a society at university?” “Were you in a key position of responsibility on a large committee?” are the crucial interview questions that require you to become the Rachel Johnson “pushy undergraduate” if ever you want to be one of her MPs or CEOs of tomorrow. But for this, you have to inevitably sacrifice a “normal” university experience: summer punting (at least in Oxford), frequenting the college bar and natural socialising that doesn’t include a society committee meeting. 

But if you want that “normal” life then beware, it seems. Countless graduates who did well in their exams, made lifelong friends and had a fantastic time at Oxford were met with a rude shock. The moment they tried applying for internships and jobs, no doubt with a sense of smugness at their academic credentials, they found themselves rejected by a system which demands a plateful of extra-curricular and competency activities that can only be attained through an endless roulette of university committees and societies.

We are, of course, living in tough economic times and it is only inevitable that the job market will get tougher and tougher to burst into. But there needs to be a concerted focus by government to make university not a time for mindless CV building, but one to truly relish and remember.