Iran & United States

Expertise:
Human Rights
Law & Policy

Humanitarian Action and DRR Advisor

Day 1: Impacts

Panel:

Friday, December 2, 2022

Elham Youssefian joined the International Disability Alliance (IDA) Secretariat in November 2019 as the inclusive humanitarian action and DRR advisor. She leads and coordinates the implementation of IDA’s strategy to promote and support the effective enforcement of inclusive humanitarian action and disaster risk reduction. She ensures strategic leadership, coordination, provision of technical expertise and advice to optimize the impact of IDA’s work in this area.

Youssefian has a PhD in international law from the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Iran, and a master’s in human rights law from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She also has diverse experience in protection and human rights, with a focus on issues related to human trafficking, refugees, domestic violence and discrimination against people with disabilities.

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United States

Expertise:
Law & Policy

Partner

Day 2: Obligations

Panel:
Climate Justice Activism: Litigation and other strategies to hold governments accountable in the context of climate change

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Marieke Faber is a partner at law firm NautaDutilh. She leads its Dutch Dispute Resolution and ESG Practice in New York. 

On a pro bono basis, Faber was part of the team representing the Urgenda Foundation against the Netherlands before the Dutch Supreme Court. In this landmark ruling, the Netherlands was ordered to reduce emissions by 25% by 2020. She assists corporate and financial institutions navigating environmental, social and governance challenges, with a focus on climate change-related advice and litigation. She advises on climate strategy, climate targets, Scope 3 emission issues and EU regulatory developments (e.g., the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive). Faber is based in New York, where she facilitates an inter-EU/US dialogue on ESG-related developments among peers and industry experts.

Faber frequently speaks and publishes on the topic of climate change-related legal developments. Recent speaking engagements include the IBA Annual Litigation Forum on Climate Litigation and the New York State Bar Association annual meeting. 

In 2020, Faber received a Resilience Award at the Dutch legal awards for setting up a platform providing small-business owners with pro bono legal assistance related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Faber holds an LLB and LLM from the University of Utrecht and a master’s in management from London Business School.

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Lebanon

Expertise:
Law & Policy
Human Rights

Vice Chair

Day 1: Impacts

Panel:

Friday, December 2, 2022

Nahla Haidar El Addal is one of the vice chairpersons of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Haidar has also been elected as a commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). She acted as the rapporteur for the elaboration and adoption of CEDAW General Recommendation 37 on the gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction in the context of climate change.

Haidar has over 30 years of professional experience, mainly within the United Nations System in various capacities at headquarters and in the field, ranging from social development and humanitarian assistance to peace-building and human rights. She holds an LLM in law from Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris and a law degree in international law from Saint Joseph University (USJ) in Beirut, Lebanon, as well as a license in sociology. Arabic is her mother tongue and she is fluent in French and English with a fair knowledge of Spanish.

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Colombia

Expertise:
Law & Policy
Human Rights
Climate Change & Environment

Lawyer, Consultant and Board Member

Day 1: Impacts

Panel:

Friday, December 2, 2022

Astrid Puentes Riaño is a lawyer with more than two decades of experience in environmental law, human rights and climate change, and the intersection of these, with a perspective of climate justice, diversity, equity and inclusion. She has worked for and with communities and Indigenous peoples in Latin America, contributing to the protection of their rights and territory, including in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. She received her law degree from the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, holds a master's degree in comparative law from the University of Florida and has an environmental law degree from the University of the Basque Country. She served as co-executive director of the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense, AIDA, from 2003 to August 2021. She is an independent consultant and has advised the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights in Mexico on catalyzing actions to better protect the environment, human rights and climate. 

Riaño has extensive experience in public interest environmental, human rights and climate justice litigation. She has published several articles and lectured at the Human Rights Academy of the American University, and at the Diploma on Strategic Litigation and Tools for the Defense of Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights at UNAM in Mexico, among others. She has been part of the board of directors of International Rivers since September 2021.

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Cameroon

Expertise:
Law & Policy
Environmental Governance

Chair of Political and Technical Affairs

Day 2: Obligations

Panel:
The Obligations of Governments Arising From the Human Rights Impacts of Climate Change

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Augustine Njamnshi is a lawyer with 26 years of experience in environmental policy and governance advocacy in Cameroon and the Central African subregion. He has extensive experience in legislative and policy drafting in the areas of access to genetic resources and benefit sharing, biosafety, biosecurity, access to environmental information, and public participation in decision-making.

Augustine has held, and continues to hold, several elected positions representing the environmental sector of Africa’s civil society at the international level. He co-founded and led various organizations, including the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance from 2008 to 2012; was the UNEP major groups representative for Africa from 2010 to 2012; and served as the francophone African coordinator of the Access Initiative. He was the African civil society representative on the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility as well as the Carbon Fund. He was co-chair of the African Development Bank CSO committee from 2018 to 2020 and was elected African CSO observer for Climate Investment Funds.

Njamnshi is the coordinator of the African Coalition for Sustainable Energy and Access. He is also executive secretary at Bio-Resources Development and Conservation in Cameroon, and serves as chair of political and technical affairs of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance.

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Sweden (Sámi)

Expertise:
Law & Policy
Human Rights
Education

Professor of International Indigenous Rights and Sámi Law

Day 1: Impacts

Panel:

Friday, December 2, 2022

Mattias Åhrén originates from Ohredahke Sámi, an Indigenous reindeer herding community in northern Sweden. He holds Master of Law degrees from Stockholm University and the University of Chicago, and a PhD from The Arctic University of Norway (UiT), where he is a former professor and presently a visiting law professor. Åhrén teaches international law, human rights, Indigenous peoples’ rights and Sámi rights at universities around the world. He has written extensively on Sámi and Indigenous rights, including Indigenous Peoples’ Status in the International Legal System. 

As a practicing lawyer, Åhrén has served in a diplomatic capacity in numerous UN negotiations and processes relevant to Indigenous peoples’ human and other rights, especially with his leading role in the negotiations before the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Åhrén has also been commissioned to write expert reports by UN system organizations and specialized agencies. He has acted as counsel to Sámi Indigenous reindeer herding communities in proceedings before domestic courts and international judicial institutions, most recently in the Rönnbäcken case before the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. 

Åhrén has also served, on several occasions, as an expert witness in domestic court proceedings on Sámi land and resource rights, including in the seminal Girjas case. He has appeared in the same capacity before national parliaments and has participated as an appointed expert member in national legislative committees. Åhrén was a member of the Expert Group, which wrote the draft Nordic Sámi Convention.

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EU/Spain

Expertise:
Law & Policy
Human Rights

Head of Global Issues and Innovation

Day 3: Solutions

Panel:
Economics, Pricing, Policy: How do governments and various stakeholders pay and otherwise take action to develop climate policy solutions in a manner that is equitable?

Sunday, December 4, 2022

Mercedes García Pérez is the head of global issues and innovation at the Delegation of the European Union to the USA. Her office represents the EU in the areas of climate, energy, environment, research and innovation, space, and public health. 

García Pérez has outstanding experience in the area of EU foreign policy and security strategy. She was the head of division for human rights in the European External Action Service until August 2018, leading the formulation of the EU’s human rights policy and guidelines applied worldwide. She conducted human rights dialogues with third countries, spearheaded EU efforts to support the International Criminal Court, advocated relentlessly in support of human rights defenders and initiated new human rights guidelines in the area of water. From 2012 to 2016, she was the head of operations in the Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability (CPCC), where she led the conduct of 10 EU civilian operations on three continents. In this capacity she oversaw the creation of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in the Hague, with a mandate over crimes against humanity and war crimes.

A lawyer by training, she practiced EU competition and trade law in Brussels from 1998 to 2002. She was a member of the Academic Council and visiting scholar at the Institut Supérieur de Management Public et Politique in Paris until 2011.

García Pérez is a visual artist whose current practice focuses on documenting life and our relation to the environment. She holds an LLM in European law from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, and two degrees in law and literature from Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain.

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United States

Expertise:
Law & Policy
Energy

Director

Day 3: Solutions

Panel:
Economics, Pricing, Policy: How do governments and various stakeholders pay and otherwise take action to develop climate policy solutions in a manner that is equitable?

Sunday, December 4, 2022

Kelly Sims Gallagher is academic dean and professor of energy and environmental policy at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. She directs the Climate Policy Lab and the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Fletcher. Gallagher served in the second term of the Obama administration as a senior policy advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and as senior China advisor in the Special Envoy for Climate Change Office in the U.S. State Department. 

Gallagher is a board member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University; serves on the board of the Energy and Environmental Systems of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine; and also serves on the board of Energy Foundation China. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her focus includes energy innovation and climate policy, with a specialization in how policy spurs the development and deployment of cleaner and more efficient energy technologies, domestically and internationally. She is the author of (2018), The Global Diffusion of Clean Energy Technologies: Lessons from China (2014), China Shifts Gears: Automakers, Oil, Pollution, and Development (2006), among other articles and chapters.

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United States

Expertise:
Law & Policy

Chief Legal Officer and SVP Business Affairs

Day 2: Obligations

Panel:
The Responsibility of Business and Industry to Respect Human Rights in the Context of Climate Change: Good Practices and What More Needs to be Done

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Stacy Carter is chief legal officer and senior vice president of business affairs at Techstars. She oversees the company's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) program, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) matters, as well as worldwide legal affairs, including securities and capital investments, contracting, employee relations, general corporate matters, governance and compliance. Before joining Techstars, Stacy served as general counsel and head of people at Sphero, a robotics and education company, and as associate general counsel with Rally Software. Stacy began her legal career at Cooley LLP, and before law school, she worked at KPMG as a tax accountant.

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Australia

Expertise:
Climate Change & Environment
Law & Policy

Founder & Director

Day 2: Obligations

Panel:
Climate Justice Activism: Litigation and other strategies to hold governments accountable in the context of climate change

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Tessa Khan is the director and founder of Uplift, a United Kingdom-based NGO that supports the transition to a just and fossil fuel-free U.K. She is an international climate change and human rights lawyer, campaigner and strategist.

Before founding Uplift, she was co-founder and co-director of the Climate Litigation Network, a project of the Urgenda Foundation, which supports groundbreaking strategic climate litigation around the world. She has spent more than 15 years supporting grassroots, regional and international movements for justice and has served as an expert advisor to United Nations Human Rights bodies and national governments while working in Thailand, Egypt, India, the United States, the Netherlands and Australia.

Khan is a trustee of Global Greengrants Fund UK and a member of the steering committee of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. Her writing has been published in international media outlets and academic publications, and she has been invited to speak at the United Nations and events convened by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and TEDx. She holds a BCL degree from the University of Oxford, and LLB and BA degrees from the University of Western Australia. In 2019, Khan was named by Time magazine as one of 15 women leading the fight against climate change. She is also an awardee of the Climate Breakthrough Project.

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