AN IN-PERSON EVENT IN STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN.
A STOCKHOLM +50 ASSOCIATED EVENT
A recording of this event will be available shortly after and distributed across our usual platforms.
IN CONVERSATION WITH SPECIAL GUESTS:
Ralph Chami, Lynne Twist, Steven Donziger & Jojo Mehta, with Katie Surma, Inside Climate News
In-person at:
The Victory Hotel, Lilla Nygatan 5,
Gamla Stan, 111 28 Stockholm.
time:
10:00 - 11:30 (CEST, Stockholm)
Registration essential.
An in-depth conversation, with Financial economist Ralph Chami, visionary thought-leader Lynne Twist, human rights lawyer Steven Donziger and global advocate Jojo Mehta around legal and financial solutions to protect the Earth’s keystone species and vital ecosystems and the local and indigenous guardianship of these.
With filmed intervention from Chief Raoni Metuktire (Kayapo people, Brazil), Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Introduced by Gert Bruch, Alliance of Mother Nature's Guardians / Planete Amazone.
Founder of Planète Amazone
Co-Founder, Blue Green Future & Rebalance Earth, Asst Director, IMF
is co-founder of The Pachamama Alliance, and founder of The Soul of Money Institute.
Environment & human rights lawyer
Co-Founder and Executive Director, Stop Ecocide International
Moderator:
Journalist, Inside Climate News
Partner event in association with:
Speaker biographies:
Gert Bruch - Founder of Planète Amazone
Gert Bruch is a director, journalist, photographer and author. He is the founder of Planète Amazone, an organization dedicated to supporting Indigenous peoples and their work to protect the Amazon rainforest. Gert has worked closely with renowned Chief Raoni Metuktire of the Kayapo people to raise awareness about the need to preserve the rainforest. His organization Planète Amazone is part of the Alliance of Mother Nature’s Guardians, a movement that aims to promote peace, unite Indigenous peoples and protect future generations and all living beings.
Ralph Chami - Co-Founder, Blue Green Future & Rebalance Earth, Asst Director, IMF
Dr. Ralph Chami is currently on sabbatical from the IMF, where he is Assistant Director in the Institute for Capacity Development. Expert on fragile and low income states, he is co-founder of Rebalance Earth and on the Advisory Boards of the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association (EMEA) and the EU-Mediterranean and African Network for Economic Studies (EMANES, formerly EMNES), as well as Senior Finance Advisor at Biodiversity Initiative, F4B.
Lynne Twist is co-founder of The Pachamama Alliance, and founder of The Soul of Money Institute.
In 1995, a group of people, including John Perkins, and Bill and Lynne Twist, answered a call from the Amazon rainforest and Mother Earth herself. At the invitation of leaders of the Achuar Indigenous people of Ecuador, they traveled to their Amazon home to learn more about this imminent call their hearts yearned for an answer. The Achuar shared with them the urgent threat to their lands and culture, their vision for self-determination, and a request for allies from the North who would “change the dream of the modern world” by shifting its culture of over-consumption to a culture that honors and sustains life.
This group committed to a partnership with the Achuar, and, upon their return to the United States, co-founded The Pachamama Alliance to carry this commitment out.
To date, Lynne is a Pachamama Alliance board member and fundraiser. She also leads journeys into the Amazon rainforest through the organization’s Pachamama Journeys program.
Steven Donziger - Environment & human rights lawyer
Steven Donziger is an American Human Rights Lawyer known for his legal battles with Chevron, particularly the Lago Agrio oil field case in which he represented over 30,000 farmers and indigenous Ecuadorans in a class action case against Chevron related to environmental damage and health effects caused by oil drilling. The Ecuadoran courts awarded the plaintiffs $9.5 billion (equivalent to $11.4 billion in 2021) in damages, which led Chevron to withdraw its assets from Ecuador and launch legal action against Donziger in the US.
Donziger was put under house arrest in August 2019 as a result of this legal persecution, which has been severely condemned by Nobel laureates, human rights campaigners, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and also the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Having served the six month sentence Donzinger was finally released on 25 April 2022.
Jojo Mehta , Co-Founder and Executive Director, Stop Ecocide International.
Jojo co-founded Stop Ecocide in 2017, alongside barrister and legal pioneer the late Polly Higgins, to support the establishment of ecocide as a crime at the International Criminal Court. As Co-Founder, Executive Director and key spokesperson of Stop Ecocide International, Jojo has overseen the remarkable growth of the movement (teams in 15 countries, websites in 9 languages) while coordinating between legal developments, diplomatic traction and public narrative. She is Chair of the charitable Stop Ecocide Foundation and convenor of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide chaired by Philippe Sands QC and Dior Fall Sow.
Jojo has a natural ability to connect and inspire, coupled with an unshakeable faith in the human imagination and capacity for positive change. She has contributed to law conferences, diplomatic events, environmental summits and climate rallies as well as podcasts, interviews and articles for publications and broadcasters ranging from TIME Magazine to the New York Times and from The Guardian to the BBC.
This rapidly growing conversation means that recognition of ecocide as a crime is now emerging as a key potential solution to address the climate and ecological crisis.
Moderator: Katie Surma, Journalist, Inside Climate News
Katie Surma is a reporter at Inside Climate News focusing on international environmental law and justice. Before joining ICN, she practiced law, specializing in commercial litigation. She also wrote for a number of publications and her stories have appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times and The Associated Press, among others.