Our Team

The climate crisis is upon us. How we respond as nations, communities, and individuals will not only decide our futures but those of our children, grandchildren, and beyond. We have founded CLIMATE RIGHTS & JUSTICE INTERNATIONAL to leverage our decades of experience as human rights lawyers, doctors, advocates and researchers to fight for climate justice in the Caribbean, the United States, and abroad. As women of African, South Asian, East Indian and Indigenous descent, we have fought for human rights in our home countries of Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States, and abroad in Africa, India, China and beyond. With the leadership and support of the Global Community, we can make a lasting impact in the struggle to mitigate and adapt to our changing planet.

Nesha Abiraj, President & Co-Founder

Nesha Abiraj is an International Human Rights Lawyer. She is the Co-Founder & President of Climate Rights and Justice International, focused on the impact of the climate crisis on human rights. She previously served as an Ambassador to Island States and vulnerable coastal regions on climate justice and human rights. She also serves as an Ambassador to Stop Ecocide International, an organization seeking to make ecocide, which is broadly understood to mean large scale and systematic destruction of nature, the 5th International Crime against Peace. She previously worked with Human Rights Watch, Save the Children and continues to serve as a Lead Advocate for UNICEF USA on the international humanitarian response relating to key poverty focused issues impacting the lives of children living in humanitarian and developmental settings including conflict zones.

Stacey Alvarez de la Campa, Vice-President & Co-Founder

Stacey Alvarez de la Campa is a legal and educational consultant and environmental activist with a background in Literature & Linguistics, Law, Education, and Nordic Studies. Stacey left the corporate world to embrace her passion for the environment and human rights, and embraced career roles such as working as an educational consultant with the University of Strathclyde's Centre for Environmental Law and Governance. She is a member of the 2021-2022 cohort of the Anant Fellowship for Climate Action and has also successfully completed Climate Leadership Training with the Climate Reality Project. She is jointly certified in Climate Law and Governance by The University of Cambridge, The Centre for International Sustainable Development Law, and the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law. She has contributed her expertise to various panel discussions and webinars, including sessions held during COP26, COP28, the 2023 AIS Forum, and the 2022, 2023 and 2024 European Geosciences Union conferences, the 68th UN Commission on the Status of Women, and the 2024 SIDS4 Conference.

Susan T. Jackson, Research Strategy Advisor

Susan T Jackson (PhD, Political Science) advises the CRJI team on research strategy, data collection and processing, and research communication. Susan currently is a researcher with the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health (HIGH), focusing on climate change mitigation and adaptation, marginalized communities, ethical research and systems approaches. As principal investigator of the HEALth-oriented agri-food systems transformation network (HEAL) grant, she leads a four-university consortium focusing on networking and international grant writing activities. This two-year €791,000 grant is funded by the Ministry for Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg (MWK) through the state’s “Beteiligung in europäischen Großvorhaben und Initiativen” (BEGIN) program. Before joining HIGH, she was principal investigator of Militarization 2.0: militarization’s social media footprint through a gendered lens, a €2 million five-year multi-team research grant funded by the Swedish Research Council. Across her projects, Susan employs mixed methods approaches in collaborative projects including in political science, public health, media studies, history, political economy, sustainability, and computer and information systems. Outside of work, Susan experiments with integrating traditional and new approaches to sustainable urban gardening with a focus on regional and drought-/heat-resistant plants edible for humans and garden creatures big and small. She is married with two children and three cats.