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Jojo Mehta

Co-Founder & Executive Director, Stop Ecocide International. Chair, Stop Ecocide Foundation.

Jojo Mehta is a prominent environmental activist and social entrepreneur dedicated to addressing ecological destruction through legal and advocacy means.

Professional Background:

  • Co-Founder & Executive Director of Stop Ecocide International since June 20171
  • Chair of the Stop Ecocide Foundation1
  • Co-founded the organization alongside the late legal pioneer Polly Higgins1
  • Active in environmental activism since at least 20131

Key Areas of Work:

  • Focuses on making ecocide an international crime3
  • Advocates for ecological defense and environmental protection
  • Works to raise awareness about mass destruction of nature2

Additional Professional Roles:

  • Co-Founder of Ecological Defence Integrity1
  • Writer, speaker, and advocate for Earth activism1
  • Co-organizer of various local environmental initiatives in Gloucestershire, including:
    • Frack Free Five Valleys
    • 38 Degrees Stroud1

Personal Details:

  • Located in Stroud, England, United Kingdom1
  • Multilingual, speaking English, French, and Italian1
  • Has been involved in design and entrepreneurial work, including roles at Side Street Designs and Cyborganic Ltd1

Mehta is recognized as a dedicated environmental advocate committed to creating legal frameworks that protect the planet and hold entities accountable for ecological destruction.

Highlights

Jun 3 · linkedin

Wow.  🎉

The The UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe conference hosted by Professors Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh and Kate Mackintosh felt like a veritable “who’s who” of those working on international law to address environmental crisis.

#EcocideLaw featured significantly… not just in the first day’s discussions, themed around international criminal law, but in the keynote speeches for both plenaries.

International Criminal Court Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan’s Monday keynote made special mention of the Independent Expert Panel’s definition of #ecocide (https://lnkd.in/eKrHG-T3), concluding by urging participants to consider what the Statute might look like if drafted today:

“I wonder, if the Rome Statute was being drafted today, what would it look like? Would it include ecocide as a separate international crime? Would it include the liability of legal persons? How would it deal with the problem of attributing responsibility to multinational corporations? How would the jurisdictional model of the Rome Statute respond to harms that have a global dimension? Will the jurisdiction of the ICC still be determined by national boundaries? What kind of Rome Statute would today’s pressing concerns and today’s legal imagination produce? I leave you with these questions and hope that they will find their way into your discussions…”

High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk’s keynote on Tuesday added a compelling endorsement:

“... recognition of environmental crimes, including the crime of ecocide, by international, regional, and domestic legal systems would strengthen accountability for environmental harms. It would also speak to people’s sense of fundamental justice, and that violence against the environment is serious harm to our common good.  And act as a behavioral deterrent, including for businesses, to cease practices which perpetrate environmental harm.”

Recent months have been peppered with milestones: adoption in Belgium, first cases prepared in Ukraine, proposals in various national jurisdictions and formalisation of the EU environmental crime directive… showing that recognition of ecocide as a serious crime is now becoming an obvious and appropriate legislative response to mass destruction, with the promise of a powerful course correction for economic activity.

When voices like Khan’s & Turk’s (hard on the heels of António Guterres’ the previous week) are joined to this swelling chorus - no other phrase for it, especially after the Helsinki choir concert (https://lnkd.in/eDQT9dAE?) - there is a real sense of a tide beginning to turn.

And if anyone is in any doubt that the term is entering the popular lexicon, I refer you back to an episode of the decades-long-running BBC quiz show University Challenge in December (https://lnkd.in/eNevFJTj) - check it out at 13m38s…

Related Questions

What inspired Jojo Mehta to co-found Stop Ecocide International?
How has Jojo Mehta's work impacted environmental laws globally?
What are some notable achievements of Stop Ecocide International under Jojo Mehta's leadership?
How did Jojo Mehta and Polly Higgins meet and collaborate?
What challenges has Jojo Mehta faced in promoting ecocide as an international crime?
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Location

Stroud, England, United Kingdom