University of Oregon COP26 Experts

Adrian Parr Adrian Parr has served as a UNESCO Water Chair since 2013. Her 2016 documentary, “The Intimate Realities of Water,” won more than a dozen awards, including Best Documentary at the 2016 United International Independent Film Festival. Her Watershed Urbanism exhibition runs through Nov. 21 in Venice, Italy, hosted by the European Cultural Centre. Parr has authored eight books, the latest three of which focused on environmental politics and sustainability culture.

Quote on COP26:

“The U.S. not only has to agree to meet its Paris Accord commitments, it needs to make bolder commitments and stick to them. And we need an internationally binding agreement. A point of significance and great concern is that neither Russian nor Brazilian presidents will be attending the conference. Russia is amongst the top five of the world’s highest emitting countries alongside China, the US, India, and Japan. Meanwhile, Brazil is cutting down the Amazon rainforest at an alarming rate, which has resulted in one of the world’s greatest carbon sinks now releasing more CO2 than it absorbs.”

Adrian Parr,
University of Oregon Planning, Public Policy and Management
History of Art and Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Email: [email protected]
Mary Wood
Mary Christina Wood is the Faculty Director of the University of Oregon’s nationally acclaimed Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center. She is an award-winning professor and the co-author of leading textbooks on public trust law and natural resources law. She originated the legal approach called Atmospheric Trust Litigation, now being used in cases brought on behalf of youth throughout the world, seeking to hold governments accountable to reduce carbon pollution within their jurisdictions. She has developed a corresponding approach called Atmospheric Recovery Litigation, which would hold fossil fuel companies responsible for funding an Atmospheric Recovery Plan to draw down excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere using natural climate solutions. Her book, Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age (Cambridge University Press), sets forth a new paradigm of global ecological responsibility. 

Mary Wood,
University of Oregon Philip H. Knight Professor Faculty Director, Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center
Email: [email protected] Phone: 541-346-3842

Craig M. Kauffman
Craig M. Kauffman is an associate professor of political science and member of the United Nations Expert Network on Harmony with Nature. Kauffman’s book, Grassroots Global Governance, shows how when international agreements fail to solve global problems such as climate change, transnational networks attempt to address them by implementing “global ideas”—policies and best practices negotiated at the global level—locally around the world. Grassroots Global Governance explains why some efforts succeed while others fail. Kauffman can speak on decisions, actions and movements of local governments, private organizations and citizens in the face of inaction by national governments. Kauffman’s research has been supported by the Inter-American Foundation, the Rotary Foundation, Sony Corporation, the University of Oregon, and the Latin American School of Social Sciences-Ecuador (FLACSO-Ecuador). In his current book project, Kauffman analyzes new global governance structures created to institutionalize Earth Law (Rights of Nature) to alter the way we practice sustainable development and address climate change.

Craig M. Kauffman,
University of Oregon Associate Professor of Political Science Director of Graduate Studies Participating Faculty in Environmental Studies and Latin American Studies
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 541-346-4974