Degrees and Honours
PhD (Cantab); DPhil (Oxon); MEM (Yale); BCL and LLB (McGill); BA Honours Interdisciplinary Studies (University of Victoria / Carleton University); WIJA; FRSC; FRSA
Profile
Professor Dr Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, PhD (Cantab ad eundem) DPhil (Oxon), MEM (Yale), BCL & LLB (McGill), BA Hons (Carl/UVic) FRSC FRSA WIJA is a world-leading scholar and jurist in the field of sustainable development law and governance. She serves as chair in sustainable development law and policy at the University of Cambridge where she is law fellow, director of studies and programme director in Lucy Cavendish College, and also as senior director of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law based at McGill University, Canada, where she is executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Climate Law and Governance Initiative, and chair of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Biodiversity Law and Governance Initiative. She lectures and leads global collaborations on law and governance related to climate change, biodiversity and natural resources stewardship, trade and investment, also indigenous peoples and other human and future generations rights, particularly how international treaties and principles can advance the global Sustainable Development Goals.
She has published over 24 books and over 160 papers in five languages, edits a series of volumes on international treaty regimes for sustainable development with Cambridge University Press, and serves on editorial/review boards of five international law journals, having co-founded three. She serves as Vice-President of the International Law Association of Canada, chair of the bit.bio Ethics and Sustainability Board, chair and arbitrator of trade and sustainable development accords, councillor of the World Future Council, and chair of several award and scholarship juries, and is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law, also a fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, the Centre for Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Governance and the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge; a fellow of the Balsillie School for International Affairs and the Waterloo Climate Initiative, as well as adjunct professor of international law to the Faculty of Law in the University of Victoria and to the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED) in the University of Waterloo, Canada, among other commitments. She also holds over 20 years of international treaty negotiations, executive and capacity-building experience spanning over 80 countries as senior advisor to UN treaty negotiations, international organizations and countries. For instance, she has served as Senior Legal Counsel to the UNFCCC Presidency and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, Senior Legal Expert to the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) during the drafting of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals, and a senior official in the Canada’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, and she helped found the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) of Canada. In 2022, she was elected Fellow of Royal Society of Canada in the Academy of Social Sciences. She is also a Fellow of Royal Society of the Arts in the UK and laureate of the prestigious HE Judge CG Weeramantry International Justice Award, the Justitia Fundamentum Regnorum and the Leverhulme Trust Professorship of the University of Cambridge (2020-22), among other international honours.
