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Jojo Mehta

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Ella-Jo Maria “Jojo” Mehta (born 28 June 1972) is a communicator, entrepreneur and environmental activist. She is best known for co-founding Stop Ecocide International with barrister and legal pioneer, the late Polly Higgins, to advocate for and support the establishment of ‘Ecocide’ as an international crime alongside Genocide, War crime and Crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Mehta is Chair of the charitable Stop Ecocide Foundation and convenor of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide chaired by Philippe Sands QC and Dior Fall Sow. As key spokesperson and Executive Director of Stop Ecocide International, Mehta has overseen the growth of the movement.[1] to criminalise ecocide in recent years, coordinating between legal developments, diplomatic traction and public narrative.

Mehta has spoken at law conferences, diplomatic events, environmental summits and climate rallies, as well as contributing to interviews, articles and podcasts for publications and broadcasters ranging from the Financial Times, The New York Times and Time (magazine), to The Guardian and the BBC.

File:Copyright Ruth Davey Look Again Photography Jojo Mehta Stop Ecocode -1360.jpg
Jojo Mehta is co-founder and executive director of Stop Ecocide International and chair of the charitable Stop Ecocide Foundation.

Early life and family[edit]

Of Indian, German, Irish and English descent, Mehta is grand-daughter of religious teacher Phiroz Mehta and daughter of songwriter and poet Jehanne Mehta.  She attended Wynstones Rudolf Steiner School in Gloucestershire, before attaining a First Class Honours degree in Modern Languages in 1996 at St Hilda's College, Oxford followed by an MA in Anthropology in 1999 at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Entrepreneurship[edit]

Mehta has a background in travel, communications, entrepreneurship and design.  She has designed computer hardware and websites, run companies, educational tours and parents’ groups, and spent years researching environmental, health and children’s concerns as well as cultural and consciousness studies.

Activism[edit]

Mehta describes the moment that got her out of her "activists’ armchair"[2] - from signing petitions and sending emails to becoming politically active and taking non-violent direct action - as the moment she found out about fracking in 2013. Her daughter overheard her talking about it and burst into floods of tears, saying “I don’t understand if they’re poisoning the ground, surely they realise that they’re poisoning themselves as well."[3] Mehta recalls her daughter, at five years old, had a clear understanding that harming the Earth meant harming ourselves, and wanted to know what her mother was going to do about it. It was during this time that Mehta met Polly Higgins and they embarked on what Mehta refers to in retrospect as a four-year "one-on-one training”[4] to spearhead Stop Ecocide and take on the legal and diplomatic work, alongside the campaigning, after Polly died in 2019.[5]

More recent history[edit]

Mehta co-founded the public Stop Ecocide campaign (originally known as Mission LifeForce) with Polly Higgins in 2017, setting up a crowdfund structure to support the diplomatic work in which Higgins was already engaged. The UK non-profit which originally managed the campaign (Ecological Defence Integrity) was renamed Stop Ecocide International in 2021 in line with the global brand and the charitable Stop Ecocide Foundation. Members of the campaign declare themselves Earth Protectors and contribute to a globally validated Trust Fund; the legal document governing the Fund can also be used as evidence in a criminal court by activists[6]

Advocacy[edit]

Speaking on why she has focused on ecocide in particular, Mehta has said: “If we could just go to the source of where all the damage is happening and say, you’re not allowed to do this anymore, that would be the most powerful thing to do.”[7]

In 2021, at the time of launching the legal definition of ecocide Mehta explained: “Although there’s plenty of environmental law in the world, very little of it acts as an enforceable deterrent, particularly for larger corporations. We see this law like an acupuncture needle; you hit that pressure point and you really galvanise change in the system. The time is right for this.”[8]

Mehta emphasizes the potential of a crime of ecocide to change cultural norms: “Currently we accept without question that damaging people lies beyond [the] moral red line; once an ecocide amendment is proposed, significant harm to the natural living world will begin to be recognised as similarly abhorrent by virtue of the fact that at least some states deem it such. We see that moment as the beginning of a major shift in the cultural moral baseline...”[9]

Selected media[edit]

Websites[edit]

  • www.stopecocide.earth / Netherlands / Espanol / Francais / Portugues / Deutsch / Italiano / Svenska / Suomi
  • www.ecocidelaw.com / French / Spanish / German / Italian / Dutch / Finnish / Portuguese / Swedish

Articles[edit]

  • CNBC (2021)[10]
  • The Guardian (2021)[11]
  • TIME Magazine (2021)[12]
  • Teen Vogue (2020)[13]
  • The New York Times (2019)[14]

Radio and podcasts[edit]

  • BBC Radio 4 Women's Hour (2021)[15]
  • Global Optimism: Outrage and Optimism - Episode 97 (2021)[16]

Films[edit]

  • TEDxStroud (2021)[17]
  • Interview at the Swedish Parliament (2020)[18]
  • Al Jazeera, The Stream (2019)[19]
  • Sky, TRT World (2019)[20]
  • Changing the Rules series[21]

Books[edit]

  • Introduction in Dare to be Great (2020) (ISBN 978-0750994101) (re-publication with new forewords, introduction & appendices)

References[edit]

  1. "Leading states". Stop Ecocide. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  2. "This movement wants to make harming the planet an international crime". The Guardian. 2020-09-16. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  3. "Episode 12: Jojo Mehta on Establishing a Law of Ecocide and Drastically Changing the Rules – Go Simone". Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  4. "Episode 12: Jojo Mehta on Establishing a Law of Ecocide and Drastically Changing the Rules – Go Simone". Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  5. "Polly Higgins, lawyer who fought for recognition of 'ecocide', dies aged 50". the Guardian. 2019-04-22. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  6. "Become an Earth Protector". Stop Ecocide. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  7. "Inside the Growing Movement to Make Ecocide an International Crime". Audubon. 2021-06-17. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  8. "The 200 Words That Could Save Life on Earth". www.vice.com. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  9. "Ecocide as an atrocity crime – an idea whose time is overdue". JusticeInfo.net. 2019-12-02. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  10. Meredith, Sam (2021-06-22). "Ecocide: How a fast-growing movement plans to put environmental destruction on a par with war crimes". CNBC. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  11. "To stop climate disaster, make ecocide an international crime. It's the only way | Jojo Mehta and Julia Jackson". the Guardian. 2021-02-24. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  12. "Lawyers Are Working to Put 'Ecocide' on Par with War Crimes. Could an International Law Hold Major Polluters to Account?". Time. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  13. Nast, Condé. "'Ecocide' Explains What Humans Are Doing to the Earth". Teen Vogue. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  14. Londoño, Ernesto (2019-09-21). "Imagine Jair Bolsonaro Standing Trial for Ecocide at The Hague". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  15. "Woman's Hour - Babes in the wood, Ecocide, Sexism in craft beer, and How to save a life - BBC Sounds". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  16. "97. Jojo Mehta on Ecocide and Ending Impunity". Global Optimism. 2021-04-15. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  17. Ecocide law: protecting the future of life on Earth | Jojo Mehta | TEDxStroud, retrieved 2021-06-26
  18. Open Council at the Swedish Parliament with Mother Earth Delegation and Stop Ecocide Movement, retrieved 2021-06-26
  19. Climate change: Should it be a crime against humanity? | The Stream, retrieved 2021-06-26
  20. Do we need a new law to save the planet?, retrieved 2021-06-26
  21. "In conversation videos". Stop Ecocide. Retrieved 2021-06-26.


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