PROFILE AND STATEMENT OF
CARROLL MUFFETT
(PRESIDENT AND CEO
OF THE CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW [CIEL])
Preliminary Matters1
Carroll Muffett is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for
International Environmental Law (CIEL), a nonprofit organization that uses the
power of law to protect the environment, promote human rights, and ensure a just
and sustainable society.
Prior to joining CIEL, Carroll served as Executive Director of the Climate
Law & Policy Project and Deputy Campaigns Director at Greenpeace USA, where
he was instrumental in the organization’s campaigns on global warming, forests, and
other issues. From 2000 to 2006, he was international counsel and Senior Director
for International Conservation at Defenders of Wildlife. Before joining Defenders,
he was an attorney with Covington & Burling, and served as a legal fellow at CIEL.
Carroll has authored numerous articles and textbook chapters on national and
international environmental policy. He is a recognized expert on international
environmental law and a leader in the emerging field of international legal responses
to climate change. He is co-editor, with Carl Bruch and Sandra Nichols, of
Governance, Natural Resources and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding (Routledge 2016)
for the Environmental Law Institute and the United Nations Environment
Programme.
Carroll is a member of the Commission on Environmental Law of the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a founding member of the
Environmental Peacebuilding Association, and a member of the Board of Trustees
of the Climate Accountability Institute.
Carroll is executing this Statement upon the invitation of Greenpeace
Southeast Asia (Philippines), one of the petitioners in the human rights and climate
change case filed before the Commission on Human Rights, to be a witness and
resource person for the petitioners. This testimony will provide additional detail on
CIEL’s recent report released on 16 November 2017, entitled “Smoke and Fumes:
The Legal and Evidentiary Basis for Holding Big Oil Accountable for Climate
Crisis”2 and to discuss the liability or accountability of the Carbon Majors beginning
in 1957 up to the present and CIEL’s opinion on Oil Industry Conduct and
1
Available at https://www.ciel.org/about-us/ciel-staff/carroll-muffett-president-and-ceo/; last
accessed on 13 July 2018.
2 A copy of which was attached to petitioners’ Manifestation dated 06 December 2017 and marked
as Exhibit “K” during the preliminary conference held on 11 December 2017. This is also
available at: http://www.ciel.org/reports/smoke-and-fumes/, last accessed on 13 July 2018.