Professor Anna Maria Grear | |
---|---|
Born | 4 September 1959 |
Nationality | British |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Bristol (1979-1982) Oxford Brookes University (1995-1997) University of Oxford (1997–1999) |
Academic work | |
School or tradition | Jurisprudence,Political Theory,Philosophical Foundations of the Common Law (Contract and Tort),Comparative Public Law,Comparative Human Rights |
Institutions | Oxford Brookes University (2000–2006) University of the West of England (2006–2012) University of Waikato (2012–) Cardiff University (2013–) |
Main interests | Human Rights,Human Rights and the Environment,Climate Injustice,Legal Subjectivity,New Materialist Legal Theory Legal Theory |
Anna Maria Grear (born 4 September 1959) is an English academic,author,and political activist. Grear is the founder of several academic and activist organisations,including the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE) and the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment,where she is editor-in-chief. [1] Grear is Adjunct Professor of Law at The University of Waikato, [2] New Zealand and was Professor of Law and Theory at Cardiff University [3] until August 31,2023. She has written for such international newspapers as The Wire [4] and Süddeutsche Zeitung . [5] She also works as an integrative therapeutic coach,supporting people with complex fatigue towards healing. She specialises in health optimisation work,coaching the unconscious mind and working with people in spiritual emergence processes.
Grear graduated from the University of Bristol (LLB (Hons)),Oxford Brookes University (DLL) and First Class from St Hilda's College,Oxford,where she has a Bachelor of Civil Law degree. [6]
From May 2000 to January 2006,Grear was Senior Lecturer in Law at Oxford Brookes University;from February 2006 to January 2012,she was Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of the West of England. From February 2012 to June 2013,she was Associate Professor of Law at the University of Waikato,New Zealand. In 2013,she took up a post as Reader in Law at Cardiff University,where she later held a Personal Chair as Professor of Law and Theory until end of August 2023.
Grear holds professional memberships at several international institutions. She is an Invited Professor at the Westminster Centre for Law and Theory in London,a member of the Dahrendorf Network in Berlin,and a member of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Additionally,Grear is adjunct professor of law at the University of Waikato in New Zealand,an Associate Fellow of the New Economy Law Centre at Vermont Law School, [7] and a Global Affiliate to the Vulnerability and Human Condition Collaboration at Emory University. [6]
Grear's academic work focuses on a range of issues around law's dominant imaginary,the way it constructs the world,imagines the human and the more-than-human. Her work therefore embraces questions around legal subjectivity,the meaning of the human,the significance of materiality for law and theory,rights theory,human rights theory [8] and human rights and the environment. [9]
In March 2010,Grear founded the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment,a double-blind peer-reviewed scholarly journal. She has served as editor-in-chief ever since.
With Professor Tom Kerns,Grear co-initiated the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal on Climate Change,Fracking and Human Rights. The online tribunal hearings were streamed globally from 14 to 18 May 2018 in a first for the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal. The Advisory Opinion recommended a world-wide ban on fracking. Commenting on the tribunal,Grear said "the PPT will play a unique and vitally important role in presenting and rehearsing testimony,arguments and law to lay down an informal but highly expert precedent,with potential for future use in national and international courts of law. The PPT will also educate a wide range of parties and the general public about the human rights dimensions of fracking. This really is a Peoples' tribunal. It belongs to communities and individuals from all over the world and it aims to produce a highly influential,legally literate and serious judgement of the issues by some of the world’s finest legal minds as a trail blazing example for future legal actions,when and where appropriate." [10]
In 2018,Grear was one of 1,400 academics who wrote to The Sunday Times urging that Britain remain in the European Union. [11]
In January 2010,Grear founded the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE),an international network for scholars,policy-makers and activists "for the creation of change",where she is now former director. [12]
In 2014,she co-founded Incredible Edible Bristol,an urban food-growing movement,with horticulturist Sara Venn. [13]
In 2022,Grear hosted a summit on fatigue,linking fatigue to planetary and environmental exhaustion,toxicities of contemporary life and to shifts in human consciousness. Guests included leading health and recovery experts,as well as a couple of scholars working with environmental themes,posthumanism and critical theory. [14] Grear has since started a podcast,'The Fatigue Files',which continues the exploration of the summit themes. [15]
Grear works as a therapeutic coach and has an independent online programme for people suffering from longterm,complex and chronic fatigue conditions. [16]
In 2007,Grear was awarded one of six Visiting Scholarships at St John's College,Oxford,which involved a competitive application process,alongside Benedict Read and Henrike Lähnemann. Similarly competitive,she was awarded an International Seminar by the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Oñati,Spain,in 2011. In the intervening years,she was appointed to several fellowships and professorships internationally,and in 2018 she was shortlisted for an IUCN Academy of Environmental Law Senior Scholarship Award. [6]
Social justice is justice in relation to the distribution of wealth,opportunities,and privileges within a society where individuals' rights are recognized and protected. In Western and Asian cultures,the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive their due from society. In the current movements for social justice,the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility,the creation of safety nets,and economic justice. Social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society,which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation. The relevant institutions often include taxation,social insurance,public health,public school,public services,labor law and regulation of markets,to ensure distribution of wealth,and equal opportunity.
Environmental racism,ecological racism,or ecological apartheid is a form of racism leading to negative environmental outcomes such as landfills,incinerators,and hazardous waste disposal disproportionately impacting communities of color,violating substantive equality. Internationally,it is also associated with extractivism,which places the environmental burdens of mining,oil extraction,and industrial agriculture upon indigenous peoples and poorer nations largely inhabited by people of color.
Legality,in respect of an act,agreement,or contract is the state of being consistent with the law or of being lawful or unlawful in a given jurisdiction,and the construct of power.
Environmental justice or eco-justice,is a social movement to address environmental injustice,which occurs when poor or marginalized communities are harmed by hazardous waste,resource extraction,and other land uses from which they do not benefit. The movement has generated hundreds of studies showing that exposure to environmental harm is inequitably distributed.
Climate justice is a type of environmental justice that focuses on the unequal impacts of climate change on marginalized or otherwise vulnerable populations. Climate justice seeks to achieve an equitable distribution of both the burdens of climate change and the efforts to mitigate climate change. The economic burden of climate change mitigation is estimated by some at around 1% to 2% of GDP. Climate justice examines concepts such as equality,human rights,collective rights,justice and the historical responsibilities for climate change.
César Rodríguez-Garavito is an international human rights and environmental law scholar and practitioner. He is a Professor of Clinical Law and Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law. Rodríguez-Garavito is the founding director of the Earth Rights Advocacy Clinic,the Climate Litigation Accelerator,and the Future of Human Rights Practicum at NYU Law. He is also the editor-in-chief of Open Global Rights,a leading online opinion portal in the human rights field.
Martha Albertson Fineman is an American jurist,legal theorist and political philosopher. She is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. Fineman was previously the first holder of the Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Feminist Jurisprudence at Cornell Law School. She held the Maurice T. Moore Professorship at Columbia Law School.
Environmental politics designate both the politics about the environment and an academic field of study focused on three core components:
Environmental issues are disruptions in the usual function of ecosystems. Further,these issues can be caused by humans or they can be natural. These issues are considered serious when the ecosystem cannot recover in the present situation,and catastrophic if the ecosystem is projected to certainly collapse.
Earth system governance is a broad area of scholarly inquiry that builds on earlier notions of environmental policy and nature conservation,but puts these into the broader context of human-induced transformations of the entire earth system. The integrative paradigm of earth system governance has evolved into an active research area that brings together a variety of disciplines including political science,sociology,economics,ecology,policy studies,geography,sustainability science,and law.
Human rights and climate change is a conceptual and legal framework under which international human rights and their relationship to global warming are studied,analyzed,and addressed. The framework has been employed by governments,United Nations organizations,intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations,human rights and environmental advocates,and academics to guide national and international policy on climate change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the core international human rights instruments. In 2022 Working Group II of the IPCC suggested that "climate justice comprises justice that links development and human rights to achieve a rights-based approach to addressing climate change".
Anja Mihr is a German political scientist and human rights researcher. She works in the areas of Transitology,Transitional Justice,Cyber Justice,Climate Justice,Governance and Human Rights Regimes. She has taught in universities in Germany,the United States,Italy,China and the Netherlands and at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek,Kyrgyzstan. Her main work focuses on human rights,governance,and transitional justice,looking at the interlinkage between institutions,and organizations and the way human rights realization can be leveraged.
In 2008,Martha Albertson Fineman established ‘The Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative’(VHC) as an interdisciplinary theme of Emory University’s Laney Graduate School. The Initiative was initially supported by joint contributions from Emory's Race and Difference Initiative and the Feminism and Legal Theory Project. The VHC initiative first public session took the form of a roundtable discussion with Bryan S. Turner and Peadar Kirby. It was at this event that Fineman distributed her 2008 paper,‘The Vulnerable Subject’for early discussion. Various workshops,programs and publications have followed. Vulnerability:Reflections on a New Ethical Foundation for Law and Politics includes chapters by many workshop participants situating vulnerability in various philosophical traditions,on topics ranging from assisted reproductive technology,animals and economics.
Dale Jamieson is Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy at New York University,a scholar of environmental ethics and animal rights,and an analyst of climate change discourse. He also serves as a faculty affiliate for the NYU School of Law and as director of NYU's Animal Studies Initiative,which was funded by Brad Goldberg with a $1 million donation in 2010. In addition to his affiliation with the NYU Departments of Environmental Studies and Philosophy,Jamieson also holds positions at The Dickson Poon School of Law and at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.
The contributions of women in climate change have received increasing attention in the early 21st century. Feedback from women and the issues faced by women have been described as "imperative" by the United Nations and "critical" by the Population Reference Bureau. A report by the World Health Organization concluded that incorporating gender-based analysis would "provide more effective climate change mitigation and adaptation."
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is a Chinese American anthropologist. She is a professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of California,Santa Cruz. In 2018,she was awarded the Huxley Memorial Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Political Animals and Animal Politics is a 2014 edited collection published by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by the green political theorists Marcel Wissenburg and David Schlosberg. The work addresses the emergence of academic animal ethics informed by political philosophy as opposed to moral philosophy. It was the first edited collection to be published on the topic,and the first book-length attempt to explore the breadth and boundaries of the literature. As well as a substantial introduction by the editors,it features ten sole-authored chapters split over three parts,respectively concerning institutional change for animals,the relationship between animal ethics and ecologism,and real-world laws made for the benefit of animals. The book's contributors were Wissenburg,Schlosberg,Manuel Arias-Maldonado,Chad Flanders,Christie Smith,Clemens Driessen,Simon Otjes,Kurtis Boyer,Per-Anders Svärd,and Mihnea Tanasescu. The focus of their individual chapters varies,but recurring features include discussions of human exceptionalism,exploration of ways that animal issues are or could be present in political discourse,and reflections on the relationship between theory and practice in politics.
Rights of nature or Earth rights is a legal and jurisprudential theory that describes inherent rights as associated with ecosystems and species,similar to the concept of fundamental human rights. The rights of nature concept challenges twentieth-century laws as generally grounded in a flawed frame of nature as "resource" to be owned,used,and degraded. Proponents argue that laws grounded in rights of nature direct humanity to act appropriately and in a way consistent with modern,system-based science,which demonstrates that humans and the natural world are fundamentally interconnected.
Jacqueline Margarete Jones is a Welsh politician,barrister,and academic. She served as the Labour Party Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Wales from 2019 to 2020. She taught law at Cardiff Law School,Cardiff University,and then at Bristol Law School,University of the West of England,where she was Professor of Feminist Legal Studies.
Deborah B. McGregor (Anishinaabe) is a Canadian academic and environmentalist. She is an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Justice at Osgoode Hall Law School. In 2023,the University of Calgary announced that McGregor had been awarded a Canada Excellence Research Chair at their institution. The start date remains to be announced.