Joyeeta Gupta is Distinguished Professor of Climate Justice, Sustainability and Global Justice (University of Amsterdam), and is also Professor of Environment and Development in the Global South and holds a water professorship at IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education. She is the co-chair (2024-2025) of the UN Secretary General Appointed Group of Ten High-level Representatives of Civil Society, Private Sector and Scientific Community to Promote Science, Technology and Innovation for the SDGs (10-Member-Group) – a component of the UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism. She is a Commissioner in the Global Commission on the Economics of Water and was Co-chair of the first phase of the Earth Commission (2019-2024), convened by Future Earth and the Global Commons Alliance during which time 22 publications were achieved with a top publication in Nature and in Lancet Planetary Health. She was awarded the 2023 Spinoza Prize - the highest distinction in Dutch science and also called the 'Dutch Nobel Prize'and was lead author of the Nobel Peace Prize winning report on climate change of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

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Where do you see the most exciting research or debates happening in your field today?

One of the most exciting developments in my field is the surge in climate litigation, spurred by academic work highlighting its potential. As legislatures and executives remain slow to act on pressing environmental issues, be it climate change, plastic pollution, harmful chemicals, biodiversity loss, or the decline of ocean fisheries, our only hope is that science, social movements, and the judiciary form an interesting coalition to ensure that we prevent the most dangerous changes that threaten human life and health and, at worst, could render the planet uninhabitable. 

We have witnessed some groundbreaking rulings, such as the cases brought against the Dutch government and Shell. At the same time, we’re witnessing the troubling rise of SLAPP cases (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation). Earlier this year, for instance, Greenpeace was ordered to pay $660 million to Energy Transfer Company in the US. 

You’ve been a leading voice in climate justice for decades. How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?

In the early days, focusing on equity and justice was often seen as ‘normative’ rather than ‘scientific’. I was advised to frame my work around empirical data, making justice issues visible through evidence, without necessarily labelling them as such. That approach has served me well. It allowed me to center justice in my work while meeting traditional scientific expectations. Still, funding for justice-oriented research has always been limited. I’ve often had to fit these themes into broader calls for proposals that weren’t explicitly about justice. If I’m not mistaken, the EU only recently released its first dedicated call for climate justice research. The number of social movements and court cases on climate, environmental, and water justice have increased over the years. Moreover, the organizations that invite me to talk about justice issues more recently are more mainstream than alternative. I’m now discussing issues like the rights of rivers or environmental justice at places like the World Economic Forum and the UN, rather than only at alternative or activist venues. This marks a real shift in how central justice has become over the past 35 years.

At the same time, the backlash has grown stronger. Populist governments that dismiss environmental issues are gaining ground. Companies are using SLAPP lawsuits to intimidate and silence NGOs. And perhaps most worryingly, we’re seeing the rise of misinformation and disinformation, which some have identified as the top global security threat today.

Your early work, such as The Climate Change Convention and Developing Countries, examined equity in climate law from the outset of your career. How has your understanding of equity in international climate governance evolved since then?

In my first article, I wrote about the North-South aspects of the Global Environment Facility; I remember that the reviewers rejected the paper as being biased towards the Global South, but the editor encouraged me to ignore the reviews and to instead frame the writing better. That decision proved valuable, and the paper........

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