NGOs need resources to promote gender equality in the context of climate change. Our panel addresses the important role that pro bono lawyers play in assisting change agents worldwide to combat climate injustice, including the often gendered effects of climate change and Covid-19. We discuss this ongoing struggle, exacerbated by the pandemic, and consider tools and best practices that will lessen climate injustices and their disproportionate impact on women.
Watch the discussion in full below!
Our Panelists
Rebecca Iwerks
Learning and Policy Advisor for the Global Environmental Justice Corps, Namati
As the Learning and Policy Advisor for the Global Environmental Justice Corps at Namati, Rebecca supports land and environmental justice warriors find new ways to scale and sustain the impact of their work. Before joining Namati, Rebecca fostered movements for change and capacity development on access to justice issues ranging from natural resource revenue management to land tenure. Rebecca also has roots advocating for gender justice, drawing from experience directly representing survivors of trafficking and gender-based violence in New York. Her career began working alongside the Burmese democracy movement in Thailand and India. Rebecca earned a Juris Doctorate from Fordham University and a B.S. in astronomy from the University of Massachusetts. She has three children who she tries to convince to enjoy recipes that she collects from her travels.
Dina Lupin Townsend
Director, Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE)
Dina Lupin is the Director of the GNHRE and a lecturer at Southampton Law School. Her research focuses on environmental law, Indigenous peoples’ rights, gender and legal theory. Dina‘s current research is on silencing and epistemic injustice in the context of consultation processes with Indigenous peoples.
Prior to becoming an academic, Dina worked as a Senior Attorney at the Centre for Environmental Rights in Cape Town. At the Centre, Dina represented a range of communities and activists in their battles for more transparent, accountable environmental and water management in the mining sector. She worked on the legal aspects of acid mine drainage, hydraulic fracturing and was instrumental in the facilitation of a community activist network in the field of mining and environmental justice. Dina also led the Centre’s work on improving transparency in environmental governance.
Maria Antonia Tigre
Global Climate Litigation Fellow, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University
Maria Antonia joined the Sabin Center in September 2021 as the Global Climate Litigation Fellow. Prior to the Sabin Center, she was a senior attorney at the Environment Program of the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice, where she provided pro bono legal services to NGOs across the globe, especially in issues related to protected areas and the interface between human rights and the environment. Maria Antonia serves as the Deputy Director of the Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE), where she works with scholars and practitioners in the region to study the interface between human rights and the environment. In addition, Maria Antonia is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law.
Alison Torbitt
Environmental Practice Partner, Nixon Peabody LLP
Alison Torbitt is in the Energy and Environmental practice group and is also active in Maritime matters and the co-leader of the Food, Beverage & Agribusiness team. She focuses on environmental transactional due diligence and compliance and renewable energy, counseling a large range of manufacturers, developers and financing parties to find solutions, mitigate and allocate risk associated with all aspects of environmental laws. Alison serves as the Regional Lead for California for Nixon Peabody’s Women Resource Group and as the Chair of Nixon Peabody’s Legally Green Sustainability Initiative, which is committed to contribute annually $1M or more worth of pro bono assistance to U.S.-based entrepreneurs and non-profits taking on key sustainability challenges.
Eileen Wakesho Mwagae
Advisor, Community Land Protection Program, Nairobi, Kenya
Eileen is a land and property rights practitioner with keen interest in women’s land rights. She currently serves as Namati’s advisor for the Community Land Protection Programme, a programme that seeks to strengthen land tenure rights for indigenous communities. Eileen previously served as Oxfam International women’s land rights Advisor, has worked with Kenya Land Alliance, Development Policy Management Forum (DPMF) and Kenya Institute for Public Policy, Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) focusing on women land rights, land governance and land and conflicts.
Natalia Urzola Gutiérrez, Moderator
IANGEL Board Member
Natalia is a Colombian lawyer now living in San Mateo, California. After working for the largest Colombian boutique firm specializing in environmental law, she worked as a law clerk for a Justice of one of Colombia’s Supreme Courts. She holds a Bachelor of Laws LL.B from Universidad de Cartagena, Colombia, and an L.L.M from Universidad Externado de Colombia, Bogotá. She also holds an LL.M from UC Berkeley, where she earned the opportunity to serve as a Coblentz fellow with the Othering and Belonging Institute. Her dissertation provides an analysis on whether the recognition of rights of nature could serve as a path towards an effective environmental peacebuilding process in Colombia. Natalia also served as a Legal Intern for IANGEL from 2020 to 2021, conducting research for the Girls’ Rights Project, which analyzes human rights issues related to the rights of girls from both a domestic and international perspective.