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Virtual Book Launch: The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development.

Please join us for the virtual launch of Sumudu A. Atapattu, Carmen G. Gonzalez and Sara L. Seck’s new edited volume, The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development, on 18 May 2021 at 9am PDT/12noon EDT/5pm BST/6pm CAT &CEST. You can register in advance for the launch here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the launch.

About the Handbook:

Despite the global endorsement of the Sustainable Development Goals, environmental justice struggles are growing all over the world. These struggles are not isolated injustices, but symptoms of interlocking forms of oppression that privilege a few while inflicting misery on the many and threatening ecological collapse. This handbook offers critical perspectives on the multidimensional, intersectional nature of environmental injustice and the cross-cutting forms of oppression that unite and divide these struggles, including gender, race, poverty, and indigeneity.

The work sheds new light on the often-neglected social dimension of sustainability and its relationship to human rights and environmental justice. Using a variety of legal frameworks and case studies from around the world, this volume illustrates the importance of overcoming the fragmentation of these legal frameworks and social movements in order to develop holistic solutions that promote justice and protect the planet’s ecosystems at a time of intensifying economic and ecological crisis. (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

About the Editors:

Sumudu A. Atapattu is Director of Research Centers and International Programs at University of Wisconsin Law School, and Executive Director of the Human Rights Program. She is affiliated faculty with Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights, Sweden, and lead counsel for human rights at Centre for International Sustainable Development Law, Canada.

Carmen G. Gonzalez is the Morris I. Leibman Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. She has published widely on international environmental law, human rights and the environment, and environmental justice. Professor Gonzalez has chaired the Environmental Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, and served as member and deputy chair of the Governing Board of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law. She is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of Earthjustice, the largest public interest environmental law firm in the United States.

Sara L. Seck is an associate professor with the Schulich School of Law and Marine & Environmental Law Institute, Dalhousie University. In 2015, she received the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law’s Emerging Scholarship Award. She is a regional director with the Global Network for the study of Human Rights and the Environment.

Astrid Milena Bernal

By Astrid Milena Bernal

Astrid Milena Bernal Rubio is a Colombian environmental lawyer and a PhD-Law student at the University of Melbourne - Climate Futures Center. Formerly LL.M student at Pennsylvania State University (concentrations in International Law and Energy and Environmental Law). She is also a lawyer from the Universidad Católica de Colombia, a Magister in Environmental Law from the Complutense University of Madrid and a Specialist in human rights and critical legal studies from the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) Latin American School of Public Policy- ELAP.

As part of the technical team of GFLAC (climate finance group for Latin America and the Caribbean), she supported the creation of the MRV system (monitoring, reporting and verification) for climate finance in Colombia. In addition, she has been a consultant for the WRI (World Resources Institute) and The Access Initiative (TAI), working as the National researcher for the Environmental Democracy Index (EDI). Also, she has worked as a consultant for AVINA Foundation, The Bogotá’s drainage and sewerage company (EAAB), Green Faith (NY based NGO), Brighter Green (NY based NGO) and worked as Campaign coordinator against unsustainable livestock production at the Global Forest Coalition. Astrid has worked as a lawyer and researcher on issues associated with public participation, access to information, forests, carbon markets, Just Energy transition and rights of indigenous peoples and rural communities in Colombia.

Astrid was a volunteer for the Network for Environmental Justice in Colombia and promoted the creation and growth of the climate justice division at the Environment and Society Association (AAS) of Colombia. Astrid was a senior research coordinator in a joint research project with UNICEF to contribute to the fulfilment of the SDGs (6), focusing its work on guaranteeing the rights of access to sanitation for rural, indigenous and Afro-descendant populations in Colombia. She is also part of the founders of the Colombian NGO- CAMBIUM (Climate, Environment and Research-Action Uniting Worlds). This organization aims to, directly and indirectly, influence processes carried out by civil society and decision-makers related to climate change.

Astrid also supported the work of Pivot Point and the CLARA group (Climate, Land, Ambition and Rights Alliance), promoting the understanding and participation of CSOs to ensure higher ambition of NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions) in Spanish speakers countries through the website Ndcdemipueblo.org.

Astrid was a research assistant at Penn State University identifying how different kinds of transboundary river basin organizations have written and used dispute resolution mechanisms in both the bilateral agreements between the US, Mexico and Canada (NAFTA-USMCA) and the Autonomous Binational Authority of the Basin of Lake Titicaca (Bolivia, Peru).

Astrid was one of the members of the core team in the Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE), and she is part of the global network of environmental lawyers (ELAW). In her free time, she collaborates as a volunteer for The Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition- CAIR coalition.