Iona is a legal analyst at the Climate Change Litigation Initiative and a PhD candidate at the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance (SCELG) in receipt of the Strathclyde Excellent Award scholarship. Her research appraises the role of domestic courts in promoting climate justice from a global law perspective. In particular, she investigates the extent to which a transnational inter-judicial dialogue between domestic courts in the Global North and Global South can contribute to legal ecumenism and climate justice. Iona joined the University of Strathclyde in 2015, where she completed her LLB (Hons) in Scots and English Law, and the LLM in Global Environmental Law and Governance in 2019. During her LLM, she contributed to a written submission to the Scottish Government Parliamentary Petitions, urging legal protections for Scotland’s remaining fragments of ancient and native woodlands before COP26, by focusing on the link between biodiversity and the infringement of human rights. This research was published as a SCELG policy brief. Furthermore, she is currently working on a consultancy for the Ozone Secretariat.
Esmeralda is legal analyst at the Climate Change Litigation Initiative, after contributing to the book “Comparative Climate Change Litigation: Beyond the Usual Suspects” as the rapporteur for Norway. She is an expert in international and comparative law and has academic and practical experience in climate change, energy, sustainable finance and entrepreneurship, sustainable development, and access to justice matters. She is admitted to the bar in Italy and New York State. Esmeralda is fluent in Italian (mother tongue), English, Spanish, French, and Norwegian. Besides Europe, she has worked in North America, Southern Africa, and Asia (India and Cambodia) for intergovernmental, private, and academic organizations. In addition to C2LI, Esmeralda is Research Fellow at the Centre on Climate and Energy Transformation (University of Bergen, Norway) and Legal Fellow at the Centre on International Sustainable Development Law (Montreal, Canada).
Gastón began his role with C2LI in 2019 during a research stay at the University of Strathclyde as part of SCELG’s Visiting Researchers Programme. He is an Argentinian lawyer specialized in environmental law and has academic and practical experience in climate change, access to justice, and environmental democracy issues. As a way of channelling his academic work directly to society, Gastón has provided legal advice to public interest non-governmental organizations in Latin America and Spain and has developed climate education activities. He is fluent in Spanish (mother tongue) and English and has elementary proficiency in Portuguese, German and Catalan. He has worked in Latin America and Europe, both as an academic and a legal advisor. In addition to C2LI, Gastón is finalizing his PhD in Law on climate change litigation while working as a research fellow at the Tarragona Centre for Environmental Law Studies (CEDAT) in Spain.
Lennart has joined the Climate Change Litigation Initiative in March 2019 and has since collaborated in the design and implementation of the Initiative. As Legal Analyst he is currently responsible for the preparation of several country reports and coordination with National Rapporteurs. Beyond his collaboration with C2LI, Lennart is a legal trainee at the Landgericht Wiesbaden, and finalizes his PhD project on interactions between the Paris Agreement and other instruments such as domestic litigation concerning mitigation targets. He has been an NGO observer at international climate change conferences in 2013-15, and has published on the topic of climate change litigation. Lennart is also Associate Editor of Carbon & Climate Law Review (CCLR), and speaks fluently German (mother tongue), English and Spanish.
Juan Auz is an Ecuadorian lawyer, a legal analyst with the Climate Change Litigation Initiative (C2LI) and a PhD candidate at the Hertie School’s Centre for Fundamental Rights in Berlin. Before this, he was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). His research lies at the junction of human rights and climate change law with a focus on Latin America. Juan has previously worked for several years in Ecuador on indigenous peoples’ rights in Amazonia as the co-founder of Terra Mater and Executive Director of Fundación Pachamama. He holds an LL.B. from Universidad de las Americas in Quito and an LL.M. in Global Environmental Law from the University of Edinburgh. Juan is a member of CIVICUS, the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law, the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment and the European Society of International Law (ESIL).
Lydia is a Legal Analyst and the National Rapporteur for Kenya at the Climate Change Litigation Initiative (C2LI). She contributed the chapter on Climate Litigation in Kenya in the book “Comparative Climate Change Litigation: Beyond the Usual Suspects” that led to C2LI. She is an Attorney admitted to the Kenyan bar with both research and practical experience in litigation and in climate change law and policy. As a litigation counsel, she has represented government and non-governmental entities in national and regional courts within East Africa on constitutional law, judicial review, and environmental law cases. She also has expertise in climate policy formulation and has been advising subnational governments in Kenya on mainstreaming climate change considerations into sectoral legislations and policies and formulating climate related policies for them. She has worked in Africa and Europe and speaks English, Swahili, German and other local languages in Kenya (Luo and Luhyia). In addition to C2LI, Lydia is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Law and Political Science at University of Graz where she is part of ClimLaw: Graz – a research centre for Climate Law. She is also a doctoral candidate within the Doctoral Programme Climate Change at the same University.
Pau de Vílchez Moragues is a Legal Advisor to the Climate Change Litigation Initiative (C2LI). He holds a PhD in International Environmental Law (University if the Balearic Islands), a Masters degree in International Relations (Sciences-Po Paris) and a bachelor’s degree in Law (University of Salamanca). He has working experience at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague and at the UNHCR in Cairo as well as in several development projects in Ivory Coast and Niger and at the Development Agency of the Balearic Islands. He is currently an assistant research Lecturer in International Law at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) and focuses his research on the intersection of climate change, environmental law and human rights, devoting special attention to climate litigation. He is the Deputy Director of the Interdisciplinary Lab on Climate Change (LINCC) of the University of the Balearic Islands, has been the Project officer for the Clean Energy for EU Islands Initiative in Spain and is the Focal point of the UIB at the UNFCCC.