Dr Klaus Bosselmann, born in Germany, is Professor of Law and Founding Director of the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law at the University of Auckland. Previously, he taught at the Freie Universität in Berlin and in 1987 co-founded Germany's first Institute for Environmental Law in Bremen. He was a visiting professor at leading universities in the United States, Brazil, Italy, Sweden and Germany and provided consultancy for the OECD, UNEP, EU, and the governments of Germany and New Zealand. He was a legal adviser to the Drafting Committee for the Earth Charter and is a member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law, currently co-chairing its Ethics Specialist Group. Klaus has a special interest in conceptual issues of environmental law and governance; in this area he has published fifteen books and over eighty book chapters and journal articles. His latest books are Reconciling Human Existence and Ecological Integrity: Science, Ethics, Economics and Law (co-edited with L. and R. Westra, Earthscan, 2008) and The Principle of Sustainability: Transforming Law and Governance (Ashgate, 2008).
Ron Engel is Professor Emeritus at Meadville/Lombard Theological School and Senior Research Consultant at the Center for Humans and Nature (New York and Chicago). As a member of the faculty of the Divinity School and College of the University of Chicago (1970–2000), and co-director of the MacArthur Foundation Program on Ecology, Justice, and Faith in the Chicago Association of Theological Schools, he helped pioneer the new academic fields of environmental ethics, history, and theology. In the course of his research on the symbolic dimensions of the UNESCO MAB program he was invited in 1984 to form an Ethics Working Group for IUCN. In this capacity he led the consultative process that resulted in the adoption of a ‘world ethic for living sustainably’ as the foundation of the second world conservation strategy, Caring for the Earth, and served as ethics consultant for the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development. He was a core member of the drafting committee for the Earth Charter. Ron's publications include Sacred Sands: The Struggle for Community in the Indiana Dunes, which won the Meltzer National Book Award; Voluntary Associations: Socio-cultural Analyses and Theological Interpretation; Ethics of Environment and Development: Global Challenge, International Response; and Justice, Ecology, and Christian Faith: A Critical Guide to the Literature, in addition to numerous journal and chapter essays.
Prue Taylor LLB, LLM (Hons), LLM (Envt'l &Energy) received her legal qualifications from Victoria University, New Zealand and Tulane University, USA. She has been teaching law at the University of Auckland, since 1995. She currently teaches environmental and planning law to graduate and undergraduate students. She became the Deputy Director of the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law in 2003, and has been a long standing member of the IUCN Commission of Environmental Law and its Ethics Specialist Group. Prue's specialist interests are in the areas of climate change, human rights, biotechnology, environmental governance, ocean law and policy, and environmental ethics. She has authored numerous books and articles in all of these areas. Her book, An Ecological Approach to International Law (Routledge), won a NZ Legal Research Foundation Prize. In 2007 Prue received an outstanding achievement award from IUCN in recognition of her contribution, as a world pioneer on law, ethics and climate change.