The Earth Trusteeship Working Group
The Earth Trusteeship Working Group (ETWG) is made up of people from around the world, who are dedicated to bringing the concept of Earth Trusteeship into international and national laws.
Klaus Bosselmann
Klaus has been the Director of the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law from its establishment in 1998 until 2022. He is currently Chair of the Ecological Law and Governance Association (ELGA), Chair of the Earth Trusteeship Initiative (ETI), Co-Chair of the Global Ecological Integrity Group (GEIG), executive member of several other professional networks including the IUCN World Commission on the Environment and the New Zealand Centre of Global Studies (NZCGS) and member of the UN General Assembly Knowledge Network on Harmony with Nature. Klaus has authored or edited over 30 books on environmental law and political ecology, a number of which have been translated into multiple languages; his articles appeared in many of the world’s leading law journals. For his pioneering work on ecological law, he has received numerous awards including the Inaugural Senior Scholarship Prize of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law and the 2021 Carlowitz Sustainability Award.
Klaus Bosselmann
Co-Chair, ETWG
Prue Taylor
Prue Taylor is the former deputy director of the New Zealand Centre of Environmental Law at the University of Auckland, member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law and author of numerous books and articles on ecological approaches to law and governance. She is an authority on the ‘common heritage’ concept, the most advanced example of international trusteeship to date.
Prue Taylor
Working Group
Justin Sobion
Justin is an international environmental lawyer from Trinidad and Tobago. After practising law for several years, he worked with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Trinidad and Tobago. On this assignment, he was posted to his country’s High Commission to the United Nations (UN) in Geneva, Switzerland. Subsequently, Justin served as an Associate Human Rights Officer at the Office of the President of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Justin obtained his PhD in Environmental Law from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Presently he teaches law at the Auckland Law School. In December 2024, Justin acted as Co-Counsel for Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines at the International Court of Justice’s advisory proceedings on climate change.
Justin is the Chair of the Earth Trusteeship Working Group.
Justin Sobion
Co-Chair, ETWG
Neshan Gunasekera
Neshan Gunasekera, WIJA, is a lawyer and educator and is currently a Co-Chair, Earth Trusteeship Working Group. Currently, he is Visiting Fellow, Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Sweden, and a Member of several organizations including, World Future Council, Advisor, Climate Rights International, International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms and a Lead Counsel, Centre for International Sustainable Development Law. In 2020, he was Awarded the prestigious HE Judge C.G. Weeramantry International Justice Award.
Neshan Gunasekera
Working Group
Michelle Maloney
Dr Michelle Maloney (BA/LLB(Hons, PhD) manages the strategic direction and governance of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance (AELA), including the extensive partnerships and networks AELA has with the legal, academic, indigenous and environmental advocacy communities. Michelle designs and manages AELA programs and events, and coordinates the work of staff, volunteers and collaborative networks. Michelle holds a Bachelor of Arts (political science and history) and Bachelor of Laws (Hons) from the Australian National University, and an PhD in environmental regulation, from the Griffith Law Futures Centre.
Michelle is also the Co-Founder and Director of the New Economy Network Australia (NENA); Co-Founder and Director of Future Dreaming Australia; Adjunct Fellow, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), and a member of the Advisory Council, Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature.
Michelle lives near Brisbane, Australia with her family and Ziggy the Wonderdog.
Michelle Maloney
Working Group
Rembrant Zegers
Rembrandt Zegers is an independent researcher and educator of human nature relations. He emphasises the dynamics of situational meaning making in context, while many (namely nature, animals) do not speak human language while also having their own culture. His background is in Biology, Business Studies, Psychotherapy and Social Change. He was awarded a PhD by the University of the West of England (Paul Hoggett) for his research into the lived experience of leaders of nature practices.
Previously he worked as an international organisational change consultant for Ernst & Young and Greenpeace (GP) International, where he was overseeing the cooperation between GP’s international office and several GP-country offices. He was instrumental to the launch of the Earth Trusteeship principles in the Hague and he is still a member of its working group. He is an expert with the UN Harmony with Nature program. He is a board member of Worldconnectors, affiliated with the Earth Charter. He is a member of the editing team of Explorations, the journal of the Climate Psychology Alliance. He is affiliated to the Global Network of Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE) and with Cross Cultural Bridges an organisation promoting Buen Viver.
He is the author of several book chapters and articles on relating to nature. His book Making Nature Social, Towards a Relationship with Nature was published by Lexington Books in 2024, demonstrating the value and need to add phenomenology to the study and understanding of relating to nature and make place for expressing and acknowledging ‘lived experience’ as key in social change.
Rembrant Zegers
Working Group
Hans van Willenswaard
Advisor at Right Livelihood College, Bangkok
Hans van Willenswaard
Working Group
Dasho Karma Ura, PhD
President, Centre for Bhutan & GNH Studies, Zhichenkhar, Thimphu, Bhutan
Latest book: Bhutan, The Unremembered Nation, Vol 1 & 2. Oxford University Press.
Dasho Karma Ura, PhD
Working Group
Paulo Magalhaes
Paulo Magalhães is a jurist and researcher at the CIJ – Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Justice of the Faculty of Law of the University of Porto. He graduated from the Catholic University of Porto, postgraduate at the University of Coimbra, got his PhD in Human Ecology at the New University of Lisbon, and got his post-doctorate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Porto with work on the legal status of climate.
He is the author of “The Earth Condominium – From the Climate Change to a New Juridic Conception of the Planet”, 2007, and editor of “SOS – Safe Operating Space Treaty: A new approach to manage our use of the Earth System”, 2016. He is the founder and Executive Director of Common Home of Humanity (Casa Comum da Humanidade) and coordinator of the Task Force for the recognition of Climate as Common Heritage of Humankind. He is Counsellor of CNADS – National Council for Sustainable Development, and at the Scientific Committee of the Portuguese Council for Health and Environment.
He received the Green Vision Inspiration Award in 2022, the Gold Medal of Merit by the city of Porto, and Inspiring Portugal Award in Social Economy in 2022.
Paulo Magalhaes
Working Group
Alyn Ware
Alyn Ware is a trained educator and began making peace education his own project in the early 1980s. He founded the Mobile Peace Van Society, educated on all aspects of peace education in New Zealand kindergartens, elementary schools and high schools, helped the New Zealand government to develop peace studies guidelines for the school curriculum and was active in the successful campaign to ban nuclear weapons from New Zealand.
In the early 1990s he shifted to New York to advance international peace and disarmament campaigns with a focus on the United Nations. This included action at the UN Security Council on the Gulf War, UN negotiations on the creation of an International Criminal Court (ICC), and leading the efforts at the United Nations to achieve an International Court of Justice decision on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons globally. For seven years (1992-1999) Alyn Ware was executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, the US section of the International Anti-Nuclear Lawyers (IALANA). In 1995 he co-founded the Global Network for the Abolition of All Nuclear Weapons. This network quickly grew to over 2000 organizations worldwide and has as its main objective the achievement of a global agreement including the nuclear armed states to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.
Alyn Ware
Working Group
Maja Groff
Maja is an international lawyer based in The Hague, where she teaches at the Hague Academy of International Law. She serves as Convenor of the Climate Governance Commission since late 2019, and is Co-Chair of the Coordinating Committee for the International Anti-Corruption Court (IACC), as well as The Canadian Task Force Against Global Corruption. She also is Senior Treaty Advisor to Integrity Initiatives International for the development of the IACC Statute. Maja has worked on a wide range of existing and potential global treaties addressing contemporary human rights issues and cross-border legal cooperation, including the pioneering International Hague Network of Judges. She has conducted extensive liaison work with international organizations, global professional associations, NGOs and has played a key role in the convening of international legal expert groups for the purpose of developing new international legal norms. She holds degrees from McGill, Oxford and Harvard Universities, and is an attorney admitted to practice in the state of New York.
Maja Groff
Working Group
Wallapa van Willenswaard
Wallapa van Willenswaard is the Head of the School for Wellbeing team. She is the Managing Director of INI Innovation Network International and used to lead Suan Nguen Mee Ma social enterprise for 15 years. Wallapa os also a member Board of Directors, Sathirakoses Nagapadipa Foundation (SNF).
Wallapa van Willenswaard
Working Group