David Whyte
David Whyte is the Director of the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice at Queen Mary University of London, where he joined in 2022 from the University of Liverpool. His research explores the relationship between law and corporate power, with a focus on business regulation, corporate accountability, and legal responses to climate change.
His books include Corporate Human Rights Violations: Global Prospects for Legal Action (Routledge, 2017 with Stefanie Khoury) and Ecocide: kill the corporation before it kills us (Manchester University Press, 2000). He has published articles in the Guardian, the Independent, the Age and the Herald. David also teaches modules on Climate Justice and Researching Powerful Organisations.
Czarina Golda S. Musni
Czarina Golda S. Musni is a committed human rights lawyer from Mindanao, the Philippines, and is a member of the Union of Peoples’ Lawyers in Mindanao (UPLM) and the National Union of Peoples’Lawyers. As a peoples’ lawyer, Czarina provides pro bono legal services to the marginalized and oppressed sectors of the Filipino society.
She focuses her work on the defence of the land rights of the peasants and indigenous communities in Mindanao against extractive industry companies and the government policies that allow them which results in the displacement of communities, destruction of livelihood, environmental plunder and even killings and enforced fdisappearances of community leaders and members. Czarina is also active in the campaigns for peace talks between the Government of Philippines and the Communist Party of the Philippines – National Democratic Front to resolve the ongoing and decades-long armed conflict in the country that traces its roots to landlessness, poverty and lack of respect of the basic human rights of the people. For her actions, Czarina has been a victim of the red-tagging phenomenon that criminalises, stigmatizes and threatens those who defend human rights, those who criticise the government and even those who call for a just and lasting peace in the Philippines. Due to the intensified persecution against her, Czarina had to flee from her country for her safety and security, but always carrying with her the hope of going back home to continue to serve the Filipino people.
Mariana Walter
Mariana Walter is a Ramon y Cajal researcher and assistant professor at the IBEI (Institut Barcelona Estudis Internacionals) and member of the direction and coordination group of the Environmental Justice Atlas. She works in the fields of political ecology and ecological economics. Her research addresses environmental justice struggles related to large-scale material extraction in the Global South, currently, in the context of green growth agendas and their energy and digital transitions.
In her research she has explored the use of litigation strategies in the context of Environmental Justice struggles, publishing with colleagues the paper: “Slow justice and other unexpected consequences of litigation in environmental conflicts” (Global Environmental Change, 2023). In the context of her research on the role of environmental justice movements and conflicts in societal transformations she has co-edited the book: “Just transformations: grassroots struggles for alternative futures” (Rodriguez I., Walter, M and Temper, L., Pluto Press, 2024). Her latest publication “The politics of “green” extraction frontiers. Mapping metals and mineral mining conflicts related to the energy transition in the Americas” (Critical Sociology, 2024), examines the expansion of environmental justice struggles in the Americas driven by green growth extractivist agendas.
Shadows of Strife: The role of Environmental Law in Safeguarding People and the Environment in Times of Conflict 