Participation at the seminar was by invitation only and invitations went out to a limited number of business leaders – Chairs, Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Sustainability Officers, General Counsel and Managing Partners of major law firms.
Programme highlights:
Mia Edwall Insulander, Secretary General of the Swedish Bar Association and Nina Macpherson, Chair of the Ecocide Law Alliance Stiftelse, formerly General Counsel of Ericsson, welcomed participants.
Viveka Hirdman-Ryrberg, Head of Corporate Communication & Sustainability, Investor AB, spoke on why these issues are important for the Swedish business community.
Philippe Sands QC, Professor of Laws at University College London, co-chair of the independent drafting panel that proposed the new definition of ecocide, showed the connection to the crime of genocide, which was developed to meet the realities of World War II. He emphasized that changing reality requires new laws, that such laws are long-term and that they build the foundations for new behaviour.
Jonas Ebbesson, Professor of Environmental Law at Stockholm University, discussed the contents of Philippe Sand’s presentation and conclusions and agreed with the importance of impacting and changing behaviour.
Sands and Ebbesson then took questions from the audience.
