The Fight for Climate Justice

Consul General Darion Akins is a career Foreign Service Officer, and the Ambassador’s representative to the German states of Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Before his assignment to Germany, Darion was in the Executive Office for the Bureaus of European and Eurasian Affairs and International Organization Affairs, where he oversaw the staffing of U.S. diplomatic missions in Europe and multilateral organizations, such as the U.S. Mission to the United Nations (USUN) in New York, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), U.S. Mission to the European Union (USEU), and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).  Prior to his Washington assignment, he served in Malaysia, India, Afghanistan, Australia, and Indonesia.

Dr. Anita Engels is a Professor for Sociology at the Universität Hamburg. She is a member of the Center for Sustainable Society Research (CSS) and Co-Chair of the cluster of excellence CLICCS: Climate, Climatic Change, and Society. Dr. Engels also acts as a Board Member of the German Climate Consortium and is Co-Director at Klimapolis Laboratory in São Paulo, as well as serving as  a member of several advisory boards on climate governance. Dr. Engels’ research focuses on corporate responses to climate change, climate governance, and transdisciplinary research on urban transformation.

Reynaldo Morales is an Assistant Professor of Northwestern University with a joint faculty appointment with the Medill School for Journalism and Media and the Buffett institute for Global Affairs, being affiliated to the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR). His research inquiries about shifts in science and environmental research related to knowledge integration between science and Indigenous Knowledge Systems, as well as to global biodiversity governance with emphasis on World Indigenous Peoples. Morales became part of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) at the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021, attending both as observer of the Buffett Institute of Global Affairs, and representing the Peruvian Amazonian Tribal Council Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo at the negotiations for Article 6 of the Paris Agreement at COP26.

Kimberly R. Marion Suiseeya is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Environmental Policy and Culture program at Northwestern University. Trained as an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist, Suiseeya’s research examines complex questions around how the politics of justice and representation in different approaches to addressing global environmental challenges are negotiated and experienced from global to local scales, with particular attention to Indigenous Peoples and environmental justice communities. She co-leads the Presence to Influence project that examines how Indigenous Peoples influence international climate change and biodiversity policies and the Disproportionate Impacts of Environmental Change working group that is co-developing transdisciplinary resilience research initiatives with tribal Nations and Indigenous communities in the US and Southeast Asia. Suiseeya is Faculty Affiliate with the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research, the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy, the Institute for Policy Research, and the Northwestern-Argonne Institute for Science and Engineering.