Jérémie Gilbert is Professor of Human Rights at the University of Roehampton (United Kingdom). He is a legal scholar and engaged academic activist whose main area of research is on the relationship between human rights law, natural resources, and environmental issues. His work particularly focuses on supporting the rights of indigenous peoples and nomadic communities to land and natural resources. Jérémie has worked with several indigenous communities across the globe, as a legal expert, he has been involved in providing legal briefs, expert opinions, witness statements, and carrying out evidence gathering in several cases involving indigenous peoples’ land rights.
Jérémie regularly serves as a consultant for several international organisations, notably the United Nations. He also works with several non-governmental organisations, he is an associate expert member of the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) a human rights organisation working with forest peoples across the globe to secure their rights; he is a board member of the Peoples Planet Project an organisation assisting indigenous communities in their battle against deforestation through documentaries and participatory films; and a strategic advisor for the Clean Trade, an organisation working to support peoples’ rights over their natural resources against blood Oil and conflict minerals.
Jérémie is particularly interested to explore how the idea of recognising the rights of nature could provide a transformative approach to the way humanity has engaged with the natural world, and if this could provide a new approach to address the ecological crisis faced by the Earth. For this, he has developed an interdisciplinary network of researchers from law, philosophy, environmental sciences, geography and anthropology to explore how the rights of nature could become a reality, you can watch a short animated video explaining the project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5O-Awcx3Ic