Cormac Cullinan (South Africa) – President

Cormac is a director of South Africa’s oldest specialist environmental law firm and of the environmental governance consultancy EnAct International. He is the author of Wild Law: a manifesto for Earth justice (first published in 2004), he led the drafting of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth which was proclaimed by the People’s World Conference in Bolivia in 2010, and was a founder member of both the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and the International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature. In 2008 he was included in a book profiling 301 extraordinary environmentalists in history and in 2012 he won an award for South African environmentalist of the year.

Alberto Acosta (Ecuador)

Alberto Acosta Studied Energy Economics, Economic Geography, Industrial Economics and Business Administration at the University of Cologne in Germany. These studies enabled him to work as a consultant for the American Institute for Social Research ILDIS (Friedrich Ebert Foundation) and to lead this organization’s project to analyze the economic situation of Ecuador. One of the main outcomes of this investigation related to the external debt. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at universities in Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca, in Ecuador, and the Universidad Complutense of Madrid in Spain. Since November 2008 he has worked as a researcher and professor at FLACSO. Before that, he was Minister of Energy and Mines (January- June 2007) and President of the Constituent Assembly (November 2007 – June 2008). For the 2013 elections, Acosta ran for president by the Unidad Plurinacional de las Izquierdas. Acosta has participated as panelist at national and international conferences and is the author of numerous articles, books and book chapters.

Nnimmo Bassey (Nigeria)

Nnimmo Bassey is director of an ecological think-tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and Coordinator of Oilwatch International. Bassey has authored books on the environment, architecture and poetry. He was chair of Friends of the Earth International (2008-2012) and Executive Director of Nigeria’s Environmental Rights Action (1993-2013). He was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award also known as the “Alternative Noble Prize.” In 2012 he received the Rafto Human Rights Award. In 2014 he received Nigeria’s national honor as Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) in recognition of his environmental activism. His book, To Cook a Continent – Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa (Pambazuka Press, 2012) has been translated in Portuguese and Finnish (2014).

Christophe Bonneuil (France)

Christophe is historian and co-author of The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and US (2016, French Ed. 2013) and of Crime Climatique Stop (2015), he also directs the “Anthropocène” at the Seuil publishing House. He is a member of Attac France’s Ecology & Society Commission.

Dominique Bourg (Switzerland)

French philosopher, Dominique Bourg is a teacher as the faculty of Geoscience and environment of the University of Lausanne. His field of research focuses on the sustainable development ethics the social construction of risks, the precaution principle, the functionality economy and participatory democracy.

Vice president of the Nicolas Hulot Fondation he belongs to the Coppens Commission, which prepared the Environmental Chart, included in the French Constitution since 2005. Dominique Bourg is the author of “The dictionary of Ecological thought” published in 2015

Philippe Desbrosses (France)

French scientist, farmer and writer, Philippe Desbrosses is one of the pioneers of Organic farming in Europe. In 1999 he creates the association Intelligence Verte (Green Intelligence) that aims at the protection of the genetic patrimony and biodiversity. Edgar Morin, Jean Marie Perlt, Corinne Lepage or Pierre Tchernia, are among the founding members. Philippe Desbrosses is also one of the pilots of the Grenelle de l’Environnement in order to triple the organically cultivated surface within 5 years. He is also member of the ecological watch committee of the Nicolas Hulot Foundation

Tom Goldtooth(Turtle Island, USA)

Director and activist for Amerindian Indigenous rights, he is the executive director of the Indigenous alliance Environmental Network. Since the end of the 1980s, Tom Goldtooth works on environmental issues within tribal governments worldwide. He is famous for his leadership of grassroots movements for environmental justice in North America. Toxic substances, mining, energy, climate, water, globalisatiion, sustainable development and indigenous rights are among the topics of his struggles. He is also the founder of the Durban group for climate justice and of “Climate Justice Now!”.

Ruth Nyambura (Kenya)

Member of African Ecofeminists Collective, Nairobi, Kenya

Ruth is a political ecologist and eco-feminist based in Kenya. Ruth has and still collaborates with various collectives and organizations based in the Global South* working on the intersections of gender, economy and ecological justice, such as the African Biodiversity Network (ABN), No REDD in Africa Network (NRAN) and the Southern scholar-feminist collective Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN).

Osprey Orielle Lake (USA)

Osprey Orielle Lake is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). She works nationally and internationally with grassroots and Indigenous leaders, policy-makers and scientists to mobilize women for climate justice, systemic change and a just transition to a clean energy future. Osprey is Co-chair of International Advocacy for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and teaches international climate trainings and directs WECAN’s advocacy work in areas such as Women for Forests, Rights of Nature and UN Forums. She is the author of the award-winning book, Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature. www.wecaninternational.org

Felício Pontes Jr.(Brazil)

He is a federal prosecutor of the Public Federal Ministry in the State of Para in Brazil; he is an active member of the Indigenous struggle and of the opposition to the Belo Monte Dam in Altamira for 10 years. He specializes in theory of State and Constitutional Rights. He has presented more that 20 legal processes to attack the project and its disastrous consequences for the Xingu people and their environment.

Damien Short (UK)

Dr. Damien Short is a Reader in Human Rights at the School of Advanced Study, university of London. He is the director on the University’s Human Rights Consortium and the extreme energy initiative. He has written widely on the social and environmental impacts of extreme energy, from Alberta’s tar sands to fracking in Lancashire, UK. He is also a member of the development team for the Permanent Peoples Tribunal session on fracking. Dr. Damien Short is the Director of the Human Rights Consortium School of Advanced Study University of London

Atossa Soltani (USA)

Atossa Soltani is the founder and board president of Amazon Watch, an international NGO dedicated to protecting the rainforest and advancing the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. Ms. Soltani became President of the NGO effective January 2015 after serving as the organization’s executive director for 18 years . Ms. Soltani is the Hillary Institute of International Leadership’s 2013 Hillary Laureate and serves as the chair of the board of trustees of The Christensen Fund, as a board member of Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs, as an advisor to the Peruvian organization The Arkana Alliance, and as an advisor to the InterAmerican Clean Energy Institute. Since 1991, Ms. Soltani has been leading international campaigns in defense of the world’s tropical rainforests. Before founding Amazon Watch in 1996, Ms. Soltani directed campaigns at the Rainforest Action Network to end logging in endangered ecosystems. She began her environmental career as conservation director for the City of Santa Monica where she designed and directed an award-winning energy and water conservation program. Ms. Soltani received her B.S. in public policy from the University of Akron and speaks Spanish, English, Farsi, and Portuguese.

Terisa Turner (Canada)

As a United Nations energy specialist she has worked in Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East. She has edited many books about Environmental, Gender, and Class Oil and Class struggle. As a founding member of the International Oil Working Group, she worked to implement the United Nations oil embargo against apartheid South Africa.

Through First Woman: the East and Southern African Indigenous Knowledge and Oral History Network, she records the life histories of old women who engaged in the 1950’s Mau Mau anti-colonial war. Since 2006 she has focused on ‘commoners against climate change.’ Terisa is an editor of the Journal of Asian and African Studies and Capitalism Nature Socialism.

For more visit:  Paris International Rights of Nature Tribunal