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 Ã…hrén 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. Ã…hrén 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, Ã…hrén 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. Ã…hrén 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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Chile

Expertise:
Youth Activist
Education
Climate Change & Environment

Founder

Day 3: Solutions

Panel:
Developing Climate Solutions With the Human Rights of Future Generations in Mind: What do youth have to say about that?

Sunday, December 4, 2022

Julieta Martinez is a climate justice and gender equity youth activist. Her work focuses on girls’ education as a climate solution, since the climate crisis is not gender neutral. She founded Tremendas, a global action that connects, empowers, educates and amplifies the voices of young women and adolescents who seek to become changemakers in local and global processes and decision-making. Tremendas is present in 18 countries around the world. Martinez has also co-founded Latinas For Climate and the education academy Climáticas. She knows first-hand that an educated girl can change the world.

Martinez is a member of the Youth Task Force for the Beijing+25 for Generation Equality of UN Women. In July 2021, she participated in the Generation Equality Forum held in Paris. At the meeting, the young activist shared the stage with figures such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, businesswoman Melinda Gates, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with whom she shared an intergenerational dialogue on the role of girls and adolescents for gender equality and intersectionality.  

In November 2021, Martinez participated in COP26 as a panelist and speaker, sharing the stage with Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Together they discussed the role of intersectionality in developing ambitious and effective solutions to the climate crisis.

Martinez is also a Girl Rising Fellow and advocates for girls' access to education. With Girl Rising, Martinez is directing her first documentary focusing on girls as part of developing climate solutions, as well as calls to action from the Global South.

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Hopi Tribe, Arizona

Expertise:
Environmental Governance
Human Rights
Education

Assistant Specialist and Indigenous Resilience Affiliate

Day 3: Solutions

Panel:
Traditional Knowledge and Climate Solutions

Sunday, December 4, 2022

Michael Kotutwa Johnson is a member of the Hopi Tribe in northern Arizona. Johnson is an assistant specialist from the University of Arizona within the School of Natural »Æ¹ÏÊÓƵ and the Environment, and is also affiliated with the University of Arizona’s Indigenous Resilience Center and Cooperative Extension.

Johnson holds a PhD in natural resources from the University of Arizona, a Master of Public Policy from Pepperdine University and a BS in agriculture from Cornell University. Johnson is also a co-author on the Indigenous chapter in the Fifth National Climate Assessment. His newest initiative is the call for the restoration of the American Indian food system based on the stewardship principles of Indigenous conservation and land use management schemes. Johnson continues to practice Hopi dry farming, a practice of his people for millennia, and has published in academic journals on topics including Indigenous conservation and land stewardship. 

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United Kingdom

Expertise:
Climate Change & Environment
Business & Industry
Education

Director

Day 3: Solutions

Panel:
Adaptation, Mitigation, Disaster Response: How should governments, acting individually and through international cooperation, address the impact of climate change for the most vulnerable, whose voices are often unheard?

Sunday, December 4, 2022

Elizabeth Robinson joined the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment as its director in September 2021. She is an environmental economist with more than 30 years of research experience, particularly in lower-income countries, including six years living in Tanzania and Ghana. Her research addresses the design of policies and institutions to reduce climate change emissions, protect the environment and improve the livelihoods of resource-dependent communities. Her recent focus includes climate change and systemic risk, and tracking the co-benefits of climate change mitigation and health, particularly around food security and food systems. 

From 2004 to 2009, she was coordinating lead author for the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, sub-Saharan Africa and a member of the global and sub-Saharan Africa design teams. She was on the UK Defra Economic Advisory Panel for five years. In 2019–20, she served as a specialist advisor to the UK House of Lords Select Committee on Food, Poverty, Health and Environment. She leads Working Group 1 for The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, an organization that addresses climate change impacts, exposures and vulnerability.

Before joining the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2021, Robinson worked at the University of Reading for 10 years. She also has worked at the Boston Consulting Group, the World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation, Natural »Æ¹ÏÊÓƵ Institute and the University of Oxford as a tutorial fellow in economics. She has a degree in engineering, economics and management from Oxford University, and a PhD in applied economics from Stanford University. 

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United States

Expertise:
Education

Executive Director

Day 2: Obligations

Panel:
The Role of Education in Building a Global Culture of Knowledge and Inquiry About Climate Change, Its Human Rights Impacts and Solutions

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Jono Anzalone is the executive director of The Climate Initiative (TCI), a nonpartisan organization that aims to inspire, educate and empower 10 million youth around climate action by 2025. He joined TCI after a long tenure at the Red Cross, where he started as a youth volunteer in 1994 in Omaha, Nebraska.

Most recently, Anzalone served as the head of disaster and crisis preparedness, response, and recovery for the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) and Red Crescent Societies for the Americas and Caribbean region, based in Panama. He also served as the vice president of international services at the American Red Cross based out of Washington, D.C. Anzalone’s hundreds of national and international disaster assignments with the American Red Cross, IFRC and International Committee of the Red Cross have led him to serve in places such as Mexico, Belize, Suriname, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Liberia (for the Ebola crisis) and Haiti, to aid the United States Agency on International Development (USAID) after the 2010 Haiti earthquake and lead donation management activity. Anzalone served as the advocacy committee chair for the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (National VOAD) from 2012 to 2015 and is the vice chair of the Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF+).

Anzalone graduated from Creighton University with a BA in political science; the University of Nebraska with an MS in economics and a doctorate in educational leadership and higher education; and completed the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative program at Harvard University. He has earned the International Association of Emergency Management Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) credential and, in 2017, was named the Meta-Leader of the Year by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Kennedy School of Government National Preparedness Leadership Initiative. Since 2003, Anzalone has held teaching appointments in economics, disaster management and leadership at colleges and universities across the country.

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