The term ecocide has is in fact been around for some time, first appearing more than 40 years ago at the first United Nations summit in Stockholm. However the term garnered wider exposure in 2010, when British lawyer/campaigner Polly Higgins mounted a proposal to the UN to accept ecocide (along with genocide and other war crimes) as an international ‘crime against peace’. Higgins’ argument is that ecocide leads to the depletion of the world’s natural resources, and the inevitable consequence of this is conflict and war.