Antonia Juhasz is an award-winning investigative journalist and founder of, (Un)Covering Oil. She brings more than two decades of experience working at the intersection of fossil fuels, climate and environmental justice, and human rights. She has written for outlets including Rolling Stone, National Geographic, The New York Times, and The Star-Johannesburg. She is the author of three books: Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill, The Tyranny of Oil: the World’s Most Powerful Industry and What We Must Do To Stop It, and The Bush Agenda. Essays and interviews include,“Defeating the Fossil Fuel Industry,” in Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua’s Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, She developed the course, “Fossil Fuels and the Climate Crisis” at Tulane University and will be reprising it at Johns Hopkins University. Antonia serves on the Board of Directors of Amazon Watch. 

Dr. Crystal A. Cavalier is a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation and lives in Mebane, North Carolina. She is an Adjunct Professor and co-founder of 7 Directions of Service. Crystal formerly worked as a Counterintelligence Analyst with the Department of Defense and a Senior Analyst with the Department of Homeland Security.  Crystal completed her Doctorate in Organizational Leadership at the University of Dayton. Crystal’s current pursuit of a Master of Legal Studies in the Indigenous Peoples Law program at the University of Oklahoma, College of Law, further solidifies her academic prowess and expertise. Crystal is dedicated to defending her homeland against the Mountain Valley Pipeline.  Crystal co-authored NC House Bills 795 and 923, the Rights of Nature/Rights of the Haw River.

Alissa Ganser is a PhD candidate in Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. She began her work with freshwater mussels in the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, and continued her work in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. She specializes in mussel thermal tolerances and physiology. She is currently serving as President of the Virginia Scientist-Community Interface, a group of early career scientists who provide expertise on community-led advocacy issues, and has been active in the fight against oil pipelines for nearly two years.

Olivia Bisa Tirko is descendant of Chapra, Wampís and Achuar families. She is currently president of the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Chapra Nation (GTANCH) in Peru. At 34 years of age, she has a degree in Sociology at the Simón Bolívar Andean University of Ecuador and received a scholarship to study a master’s degree in Human Rights, Indigenous Populations and International Cooperation at the Carlos III University of Spain. This training process has been crucial for her to assume leadership as one of the first women leaders of a Peruvian Amazonian Indigenous organization. Olivia is currently studying Law and Political Science at the Technological University of Peru in Lima, to strengthen her skills in the path of governance of her nation, one of the first Amazonian governments. Olivia is a member of the board of directors of the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance. Her nation has been actively organizing to address health and environmental impacts of existing oil drilling on her people as well as to stop a new oil project that affects her people (oil block 64).

Daniel Ribeiro has been an activist for over 25 years, since he was a teenager. He has a deep-rooted sense of justice. In 1998, Daniel along with other citizens formed a grassroots movement to oppose a Danish-funded toxic waste incinerator project that was planned in their neighbourhood in Matola, Mozambique. They were eventually successful in stopping this incinerator! Through this process, Daniel was instrumental in the founding of Livaningo, Mozambique’s first environmental justice organisation. In 2004, he was also instrumental in the creation of Justiça Ambiental (JA!) meaning ‘environmental justice’ in Portuguese. Daniel continues to be central to JA! where he is currently the technical and research officer. JA! is one of the leading civil society non-profit organisations in Mozambique. Daniel has a Masters in Biology from the University of Cape Town.

Delme Cupido is the Southern Africa Regional Director for Natural Justice, a pan-African NGO of lawyers and environmental activists dedicated to standing with, affirming and defending the rights of communities impacted by Climate Change, biodiversity loss, dispossession of land and the impacts of fossil fuel extractives on their land, culture and livelihoods.

Delme is a human rights lawyer who’s previous positions include 7 years at the Legal Assistance Centre, a public interest law firm in Namibia, and12 years at the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA)- where he initiated and managed the Indigenous Rights Programme –  before joining Natural Justice in his current capacity in 2021. 

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger is a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN)  and Executive Director/Founder of Indigenous Climate Action (ICA). Deranger is active in international Indigenous rights advocacy movements participating in various boards and UN bodies. Deranger’s work focuses on Indigenous rights, climate justice  and intersectional movements. She is recognized for her role as spokespersons for her community  in the international Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign.  Prior to this she was a Specific Land Claims and Treaty Land Entitlement Researcher for the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations.  

Deranger has written for various magazines and publications; featured in documentary films including Elemental (2012); and is regularly interviewed for national and international media outlets.

Yolanda R. Esguerra is a seasoned activist from the Philippines and has been championing causes of the marginalized sectors in Philippine society since her student days.  She is the National Coordinator of Philippine Misereor Partnership Inc. (PMPI) one of the country’s biggest and most significant social development and advocacy networks in their country. It has 230-plus members spread across the country and initiates various community-based projects on sustainable agriculture and fisheries, environmental protection, climate change mitigation and disaster risk reduction management. It supports the struggles of mining-affected communities and those affected by development aggression.She is a pioneering advocate of the Rights of Nature campaign in the Philippines. She is instrumental in the effort to file a national bill, local ordinances, and environmental codes that would legally recognize the rights of nature or ecosystems in the Philippine justice system.  She is a sociologist and community development worker and is currently taking up her Master’s Degree in environmental studies and management.

Edwin A. Gariguez is a Filipino religious leader and environmentalist. He was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize  in 2012, for his voicing of protests on behalf of indigenous communities against large scale mining projects in the Philippines. Fr Gariguez finished his doctorate in Anthropology from Asian Social Institute in 2008. From 2010 to 2020 he worked as the Executive Director of Caritas Philippines, the development, humanitarian and advocacy arm of the Catholic Church in the Philippines. Fr. Gariguez is one of the founding board members of the Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development (CEED), dedicated to advocating for clean energy and environmental justice. CEED focuses on promoting policies that advance renewable energy, resisting harmful energy projects, and addressing the urgent climate and environmental challenges. Fr. Gariguez is also the Lead Convenor of the Protect Verde Island Passage (VIP) Movement, a coalition focused on defending the Verde Island Passage, a globally recognized center of marine biodiversity, from threats like fossil fuel projects proliferation and  expansion. Protect VIP Movement plays a pivotal role in coordinating efforts to preserve this vital ecological corridor, which sustains both marine life ecosystems and the livelihoods of coastal communities.

Joe Athialy is the Executive Director of the Centre for Financial Accountability in India. With over three decades of experience, he has collaborated with grassroots movements, national CSOs, and international organizations to design and implement impactful strategies. He has previously worked with the Bank Information Centre, Amnesty International, Narmada Bachao Andolan, and various other human rights and accountability institutions in leading positions. He is a key organiser on issues of accountability of international and national financial institutions with regard to the impact of their activities on human rights and environment.

Madhuresh Kumar is an Indian researcher and climate justice campaigner based in Paris. He is a Facilitation Team Member of Global Tapestry of Alternatives, and Senior Advisor to the Commission Project preparing for launch of a World Commission on Fossil Fuel Phase Out in early 2025. For more than a decade, between 2009-19, he was National Coordinator/Convener of one of the biggest grassroots networks of India, National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) at the forefront of organising around social and economic justice issues. 

GONZALO VERGEZ, is Argentine, and is a lawyer specialized in Environmental Law, coordinator of the Legal Team of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers and the Action Collective for Ecosocial Justice, an NGO with 20 years of socio-environmental work, addressing problems such as deforestation. Megamining, agribusiness, and oil advancement on land and at sea.   He is an Environmental Risk and Damage Analyst. He is also a professor of Environmental Law and an external researcher at the Public University. Gonzalo is a socio-environmental activist and integrates multiple territorial organizations, mainly providing legal advice, pursuing ecosocial justice.

In September 2019, Sharon Lavigne, a special education teacher turned environmental justice advocate, successfully stopped the construction of a US$1.25 billion plastics manufacturing plant alongside the Mississippi River in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Lavigne mobilized grassroots opposition to the project, educated community members, and organized peaceful protests to defend her predominantly African American community. The plant would have generated one million pounds of liquid hazardous waste annually, in a region already contending with known carcinogens and toxic air pollution.

Roishetta Sibley Ozane is the founder, director and CEO of The Vessel Project of Louisiana and the co director of the Gulf Fossil Finance Hub. Roishetta is an award winning, internationally known environmental justice advocate and has spoken on many stages championing for Black, indigenous, and other people of color and their right for clean air, clean water and sustainable communities that aren’t overburdened by pollution.  Roishetta holds a Bachelor’s degree and Master of Science degree from McNeese State University and is currently a PhD student at Walden University. Roishetta is a member of several organizations and sits on several boards. Most importantly Roishetta is a mom of 6 and a grandmother of 1. Her children are who she’s trying to make the world a better place for. Roishetta truly believes that no one is good until we are all good and she proves that daily through her giving heart and philanthropy.

Julia Horinek, a citizen of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma, has worked extensively alongside her family in both the Rights of Nature and Human Rights Movements for the entirety of her life. A seasoned “activist”, organizer, and administrator, Julia holds tight to the traditional knowledge passed to her from her Mother and Grandmother. Through her work Julia supports the continuation of Indigenous traditions, values, and Cosmology. Julia is the Global North Organizer for GARN’s Indigenous Council, and the Plains Organizer for Movement Rights.

Juan Bay, a  Ecuadorian Waorani leader and president of the Waorani Nation in Ecuador. He is  a certified Business Administrator and former political lieutenant of the Inés Arango parish in Orellana province. Currently, he leads the Waorani Nation of Ecuador (NAWE), representing over 5,000 people across 62 communities in the provinces of Pastaza, Orellana, and Napo, which encompass 678,220 hectares of legally recognized ancestral lands and an additional 1,321,780 hectares under the process of recognition. Part of this territory lies within Yasuní National Park, established in 1979. Juan tirelessly defends the Waorani people’s cultural heritage and their rights to environmental justice, after more than five decades of oil exploitation in their land.

has over twenty years of organizing experience from local issues to international campaigns. Heather was a founding member of Native Youth Movement-that empowered youth politically and socially to make change in their communities; based in Winnipeg, MB in 1995. She helped found Winnipeg’s first Native youth organization called Aboriginal Youth with Initiative, Inc. in 1998 through her position as Associate Director. Heather then went on to found and build a national Native youth network that supported Native youth organizing across the US and Canada with the Indigenous Environmental Network. She was a former member of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Youth Advisory and has extensive experience in lobbying internationally through the United Nations and other International arenas on Indigenous Peoples issues. Heather’s work since then has been to build capacity and find resources that help local Indigenous communities. From funding board participation on the Funding Exchange Saguaro Fund, Honor the Earth and currently at the Cloudberry Collective; to founding the Indigenous People’s Power Project (IP3) to train Indigenous peoples on non-violent direct action tools. Heather’s work includes movement building through her former position as National Native Organizer for both US Social Forums in Atlanta and Detroit. She is a former organizing member of the Second People of Colour Environmental Justice Leadership Summit. She was formally the Director & Co-Director of the Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign, working to support frontline impacted Indigenous communities. She was a founding member of Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) who is the only Indigenous climate organization in Canada. Heather is currently consulting with many different organizations doing training, facilitating and support work for Indigenous communities while working on finishing a Masters Degree at York University in Toronto, on Indigenous Just Transition.

Ms Makoma Lekalakala is the Director of Earthlife Africa, a civil society environmental justice and anti-nuclear organisation. She has been active in social movements tackling issues from gender and women’s rights issues, economic and environmental justice issues.  In recent years, Lekalakala has focused in targeting environmental corruption. Her commitment to climate justice in South Africa has led civil society to win the first South African climate change legal case against the government and the reversal of the nuclear deal by SA and the Russian government of which she received the Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa 2018 and SAB Environmentalist of the year 2018. Ms Lekalakala is a Climate Commissioner serving in the South African Climate Commission from 2021.

Dr. Kartha is a Senior Scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute and Director of its Equitable Transitions program. His work focuses on the economic, political, and ethical dimensions of an equitable and ambitious response to the climate challenge, working at both the level of the international climate regime and national climate policy. His work has helped inform civil society organizations, policy makers, and multilateral organizations, and he led work on Equity and Sustainable Development in the two most recent IPCC Assessment Reports.