Global Climate Legal Defense (CliDef)

Background

Global Climate Legal Defense (CliDef) is an initiative started by Equation Campaign in 2022 as a global legal organization focused on defending left-of-center climate activists. It was launched at COP27, a United Nations climate change conference held in Egypt in November 2022, to support the legal services that were made available to COP27 attendees. ¹

Equation Campaign is a grant making organization that provides funding to groups focused on activism to end fossil fuels including 350.org, Better Future Project, Climate Defense Project, Labor Network for Sustainability, and U.S. Climate Action Network. ² It is funded by several left-of-center philanthropies including Schmidt Family Foundation, David Rockefeller Fund, Growald Climate Fund, MacArthur Foundation, and Open Society Foundations, and climate advocacy groups such as The Sunrise Project and 2030 Fund. ¹

CliDef provides legal services to climate activists and connects them to local lawyers. ³ It claims that climate activists are threatened by an “increasingly desperate industry” with violence, digital surveillance, online harassment, arrests, and financial attacks. It recommends that donors invest in a strategy to support climate activists that includes ways to address these threats, such as supporting organizations that provide access to legal remedies. ⁴

Leadership

Alfred Brownell, a Liberian environmental activist and lawyer, is founding president and co-director of CliDef. Brownell was a climate activist in Liberia for more than twenty years. He co-founded environmental advocacy group Green Advocates International, solidarity movement Alliance for Rural Democracy, and Natural Resources Women Platform in Liberia. He fled Liberia in 2016 due to threats to him and his family and is living in exile in the United States. ⁵ From 2017 to 2019 he was a research professor at Northeastern University School of Law. In 2019, Brownell won the Goldman Environmental Prize for his environmental activism. He is a visiting human rights fellow at Yale Law School ⁶ and a Global Center for Climate Justice fellow. ⁵

Betsy Apple joined CliDef in January 2023 as executive director. She also teaches International Human Rights Law to masters’ degree students at Columbia University. ⁷ Apple earned a law degree from Boston College Law School. Previously she was a legal director of left-of-center litigation nonprofit EarthRights International, ⁸ a director at immigration activist group Human Rights First, a legal director at AIDS-Free World, and an advocacy director at Open Society Justice Initiative, ⁷ an operational program of Open Society Foundations that litigates and advocates for left-of-center causes. ⁹ She was part of the legal team that sued the Trump administration in Open Society Justice Initiative v. Trump, et al., ¹⁰ arguing that an executive order imposing sanctions on people assisting the International Criminal Court exceeded its legal authority. ¹¹