Chair in Sustainable Development Law and Policy, University of Cambridge; Senior Director of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law; Executive Secretary, Climate Law & Governance Initiative, UNFCCC

Professor Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger is a leading scholar and jurist in the field of sustainable development law and governance. She holds the Chair in Sustainable Development Law and Policy at the University of Cambridge, where she serves as Law Fellow, Director of Studies, and DemEd Global Director at Lucy Cavendish College. Her research, lectures and partnerships focus on inter-actional principles and treaty regimes for sustainable development, including climate law and governance, biodiversity law and governance, natural resources stewardship, rights of indigenous peoples and future generations, and trade, investment and financial instruments advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

As Senior Director of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), founding President of the Sustainable Development Governance and Law Association (SDGLA), and Vice-President of the International Law Association (ILA) of Canada, she also serves as Executive Secretary of the Climate Law and Governance Initiative for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and as Chair of the Biodiversity Law and Governance Initiative for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), advancing and implementing treaty regimes for the global Sustainable Development Goals.

With PhDs from both Oxford and Cambridge, Professor Cordonier Segger has published over 30 books and more than 180 papers in six languages, edits a series on implementing treaties for sustainable development with Cambridge University Press, and serves on editorial/academic boards of several law journals. 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 organisations and countries on implementing the Sustainable Development Goals.

In 2022, she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in the Academy of Social Sciences, one of the country’s highest academic honours. She is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts in the UK, laureate of the prestigious HE Judge CG Weeramantry International Justice Award (WIJA), the Global Sustainability Leadership Award in the UK House of Lords, and the Justitia Fundamentum Regnorum, among other international honours.