Co-founder and director of US-based Movement Rights, an Indigenous and women-led organization working primarily with tribes and communities of color to align human laws with the laws of the natural world.

Previously Community & Nature’s Rights program Director at Global Exchange for 12 years. At that time she was among a handful of US organizers to articulate and spread the ideas that have become a vibrant global movement for the Rights of Nature. Co-founder of GARN.

Globally, she has worked with Indigenous communities, led Rights of Nature fact-finding delegations in India, New Zealand, Bolivia, and Ecuador, and organized and participated in international Rights of Nature Tribunals.

Co-author of two books, Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grass Roots and The Rights of Nature: Making the Case for the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth. Senior staffer at International Forum on Globalization (IFG) and Lecturer in International Relations and Environment at SFSU, holds a Masters in Economics, Empire and Decolonization from the London School of Economics (LSE).

Author, practicing environmental attorney, and governance expert who has worked on environmental governance issues in more than 20 countries. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa, and is a director of Cullinans, a specialist environmental and green business law firm of the governance consultancy, EnAct International, and of the Wild Law Institute. His groundbreaking book “Wild Law A Manifesto for Earth Justice” has played a significant role in informing and inspiring a growing international movement to recognize rights for Nature. In 2008 he was included in Planet Savers. 301 Extraordinary Environmentalists, a book that profiles environmentalists throughout history. At the invitation of Bolivia, Cormac spoke at the 2009 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and led the drafting of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth which was proclaimed on 22 April 2010 by the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. In September 2010 he played a leading role in establishing GARN and currently sits on its Executive Committee.

Founder and Executive Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). Works nationally and internationally with grassroots and Indigenous leaders, policy-makers, and scientists to mobilize women for climate justice, resilient communities, systemic change, and a just transition to a clean energy future. Member of GARN’s Executive Committee and member of the Steering Committee for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Visionary behind the International Women’s Earth and Climate Summit, which brought together 100 women leaders from around the world. Directs WECAN’s advocacy work in areas such as Women for Forests, Divestment/Investment, Indigenous Rights, Rights of Nature, and United Nation Climate Conferences. Author of the award-winning book, Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature and The Story is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis.

Allessandro is an Associate Professor in the School of Law and Society at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He completed his LLB/LLM at the University of Turin in Italy, specializing in comparative law and legal anthropology with a field research project conducted in the Andes. His doctoral research, conducted at the University of Wollongong, focused on native title and legal pluralism in the Illawarra region. 

Alessandro has been exploring the emerging discourse on Rights of Nature, Wild Law, and Earth Jurisprudence since its inception, with a particular focus on the intersection between this emerging discourse and different legal ontologies. In addition to having published extensively in the area, he has organized numerous events in Australia on Wild Law and Earth Jurisprudence, he is one of GARN’s founding members and of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance, and he has been a moderator at the UN General Assembly Dialogue on the Harmony with Nature. 

Alessandro is currently an Executive Committee Member at GARN and an expert member of the UN Harmony with Nature program. Alessandro’s main areas of research are legal anthropology, legal theory, comparative law, ecological jurisprudence, constitutional law, sovereignty, and Indigenous rights.

Director of the NGO NatureRights and an artistic director. Helps organize, fund, and promote the End Ecocide movement. A key ally in the organization of the Third International Rights of Nature Tribunal in Paris, France.

Judge of the International Rights of Nature Tribunal, chair of the the Tribunal’s Judge’s Assembly. He is the founder of In Difesa Di per I diritti umani e chi li difende, an Italian NGO network in support of human rights defenders, and an associate of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. He served as senator of the Italian Senate with the Greens and then with the European Left for 7 years as member of the Senate’s Human Rights and Foreign Affairs Committees focusing on human rights, peace, development, international financial institutions, globalization, and disarmament. Formerly Board Chair for Greenpeace Italy, after having worked for various years in Greenpeace International, he is now one of Greenpeace Italy founding members. He founded a campaign against the World Bank in Italy, and has participated in several countersummits in occasion of G7, UN, World Bank, IMF and WTO meetings, and in various World Social Forum activities. He is also judge of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal. In the past decade he has been advising Indigenous peoples’ organizations on issues related to forests, climate change, climate finance and Indigenous peoples’ rights. His current areas of interest are: critique to the Anthropocene, resistance to extractivism, Rights of Nature, Indigenous peoples’ rights, human rights and land defenders. He is the co-founder of A4C-Artsforthecommons, a platform for artists and activists working on issues related to migration, social justice and Rights of Nature.

Coordinator of GARN’s European Hub and its Francophone network – Léa completed a Master’s degree in transdisciplinary political science entitled “risks, science, health and the environment” at Sciences Po Toulouse, which focused on risk management and adaptation to climate change (2018-2023). She is specializing in environmental law at the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her Master’s thesis is focused on the translation of science by law in the area of pesticides. She is actively involved in the MerMed project for the rights of the Mediterranean Sea bioregion.

Environmental lawyer, university professor and parliamentary advisor. Climate and Energy Coordinator, Project Manager and Legal Advisor of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers, co-founder of the Global Parliamentary Front for the Rights of Nature. Member of the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South. Judge of the International Rights of Nature Tribunal.

Weaver and dancer, born in Mhuysqa territory, plastic artist of the National University of Colombia, designer of regenerative permaculture and bioconstructor. Member of the Council of Sustainable Settlements of Latin America, bearer of the matrix of intercultural ancestral thought. Master in Rights of Nature and Intercultural Justice from the Andean University Simon Bolivar of Ecuador. Founder of the Alliance for the Rights of Nature in Colombia. Creator of the “Campus Vivo por los Derechos de la Naturaleza” (Living Campus for the Rights of Nature). 

Director at the Center for Earth Jurisprudence. Key Advisor to Barry University law students that work with CEJ as Earth Law & Policy Fellows.

Formerly served on the Executive Committee and chaired the Legal Committee of the Florida Springs Council. GARN Executive Committee member, currently facilitates the GARN Legal Hub.

Contributing author to the first ever Earth Law textbook, Earth Law: Emerging Ecocentric Law: A Guide for Practitioners. Earned her undergraduate degree in Political Science from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, her Masters in Non-Profit & Human Resources Management from Penn State University, her Juris Doctor from Barry University School of Law, and her LL.M. from Western New England School of Law. While in law school, Margaret earned her Environmental Law Honors Certificate and worked two semesters in the Environmental and Earth Law Clinic. She now lectures on Earth Jurisprudence and Earth Law at Barry and around the world. She is a member of the Florida Bar.

Lauren Tarr lives by the shores of Lake Michigan and is a lifelong student of the Great Lakes. She’s an environmental social scientist with a background in teaching and public administration. She helped advise GARN’s Youth Hub from 2020-2023 and is now helping to co-facilitate the Academic Hub. She joins GARN from the United States, where she is an Environmental Policy PhD Candidate at the State University of New York (SUNY ESF). Her research focuses on Rights of Nature, Environmental Justice, and Community-based Conservation, with an overall interest in restoring human-nature relationships. 

Multilingual master’s student in global forest sciences and climate activist, originally from the Netherlands. She was involved in a grassroots initiative aimed at practically protecting the rights of a forest to own itself and never be deforested, and also embarked on a campaigning traineeship to get the Dutch constitution to recognize the Rights of Nature. After finishing her bachelor’s in Forest and Nature Conservation at Wageningen University with an exchange semester in Chile, she became part of GARN’s Youth Hub at the start of 2023. As a governance facilitator, she is responsible for setting up strategic plans, monitoring progress towards objectives, working in close liaison with the GARN global office, and helping to create and monitor budget and possible sources of funding. 

Her personal and professional goal is to contribute to transforming our relationship with Nature from harm to harmony. She has recently returned from doing fieldwork in Community Forestry areas in Nepal where she studied sustainable human-wildlife coexistence. Her latest interest is in multispecies ethnography and interspecies communication.

Dr. Somabha Bandopadhay teaches at The West Bengal National University for Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS), Kolkata where she also completed her doctoral work. An awardee of the Indo-Canadian Shastri Mitacs Scholarship she pursued research on victimization of transgender persons at the School of Criminology, University of Montreal, Canada. She pursued BA.LLB (International Law Honors) from School of Law, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar and pursued LLM (Human Rights Law) National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore. She was awarded the Nani Palkhivala Memorial Gold Medal at NLSIU Bangalore and the Chancellor’s Gold Medal and Nanibala Devi Memorial Gold Medal at KIIT University. She has more than fifteen research publications to her credit, including a few in Scopus indexed journals and numerous blog and magazine articles. She has presented extensively at international platforms like the European Society of International Law. Her papers titled “Steering Earth Justice with Principles of Environmental Ethics” and “The Indian Culture of Agricultural Commons” were selected to be presented at 6th International Eco Summit by Elseiver in Gold Coast, Australia in 2021. Her paper “Agricultural Commons: Where Does India Stand?” was selected for presentation at Annual New York State Political Science Conference, Manhattan College, New York in 2020. She regularly undertakes trainings of police officials, judicial officers and advocates in India on transgender sensitization. She has undertaken several research endeavors and has recently concluded a collaborative project with University of Leicester, UK on Ponzi schemes in Bengal. She also volunteers for the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature (GARN) and facilitates the Asia-Pacific Hub and Youth Hub. As the most recent moot court judging experience, Somabha judged the national and international (US and Nepal) rounds of the Phillip C Jessup Moot Court competition. Apart from her law career, she is a classical Manipuri dance artist and has been awarded two Government of India scholarships. She is presently pursuing research on Glyphosate and Rights of Nature in collaboration with Earth Thrive, United Kingdom, and another with WBNUJS, Kolkata on Transgender trauma and stigma. She is the Governance Facilitator of the GARN Youth Hub and a member of World Youths for Climate Justice. She also serves on the advisory boards of various organizations.

Chairs board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch, Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council, Honorary Chancellor of Brescia University. Recipient of fourteen honorary doctorates and leader in the campaign to have water recognized as a human right by the UN. Author of dozens of reports, as well as 19 books.

Co-founder and Director of the Gaia Foundation. Developed and co-facilitated a three-year training in the philosophy and practice of Earth Jurisprudence. BSc in Environmental Sciences, Masters in Philosophy and Education for Social Change.

Director of Programs at the Earth Charter International (ECI) Secretariat in Costa Rica. Overseer at the ECI for Latin America, Africa & the Middle East, and the Asia Pacific since 2006.

Member and founder of Acción Ecológica. Co-founder of Oilwatch. President of Office Pro Defense of Nature and its Rights. Biologist and lawyer. Consultant to the Constitutional Assembly of Ecuador in 2008. Authored numerous articles and books on the Rights of Nature, oil, and environmental struggles in Ecuador.

Co-founder and lead coordinator of the Earth Law Alliance. Faculty member and professor at Findhorn College. Presented a new case for consideration at the Third International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature in Paris, France, on the issue of Depletion of Marine Life in 2015.

Lawyer and advocate for Earth-centered law and governance. Co-Founder and National Convenor of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance (AELA), Adjunct Senior Fellow, Law Futures Centre, Griffith University; Director of the New Economy Network Australia (NENA) and Future Dreaming Australia. Member of the Steering Group for the International Ecological Law and Governance Association (ELGA). For more details about Michelle’s work please visit her profile here.

Environmental lawyer, Executive Director of the Science & Environmental Health Network (SEHN), leading expert on the Precautionary Principle. Authored a number of papers and publications.

Executive Director of Environment Now. Developed and implemented nature’s rights initiatives as Executive Director and Co-Founder of Earth Law Center, led the California Coastkeeper Alliance as Executive Director, and oversaw Ocean Conservancy’s work as Pacific Region Director.

Catholic Sister and civil lawyer. Prioress (President) of the Dominican Sisters of Adrian, Michigan since 2016. Founded the Center for Earth Jurisprudence at the Barry University Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law in Orlando, Florida, in 2006 and the Earth Law Center in 2008. Taught Earth jurisprudence and legal rights of nature as an adjunct professor at Barry University and St. Thomas Universities Law Schools from 2006 to 2016.

Social and environmental activist. Director of Fundación Solón working on issues of energy, forests, climate change, investment, and systemic alternatives.

Founder and board president of Amazon Watch and served as the organization’s first Executive Director for 18 years. Director of global strategy for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative.

Co-founder of Pachamama Alliance, serves as its chief executive officer and president since 1996.

Doctorate from Munich in Germany, previously Professor of Theology at the Jesuit Institute for Philosophy and Theology in Petropolis for 20 years. Professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro since 1993, where he is now Emeritus Professor of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion and Ecology. Member of Earthcharter. One of the founders of liberation theology.

Founder and board president of Amazon Watch and served as the organization’s first Executive Director for 18 years. Director of global strategy for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative.

Co-founder of Pachamama Alliance, serves as its chief executive officer and president since 1996.