Johanna Gusman

Senior Attorney, Legal Pathways to Fossil Fuel Phaseout

Johanna Gusman (she/her) is a senior attorney for in CIEL’s Climate & Energy Program, based out of Fiji and working with the Washington, DC office. Her work focuses primarily on eliminating legal barriers and developing legal pathways to phase out fossil fuels, holding States and corporations accountable for climate harm, and protecting human rights. 

Prior to joining CIEL, Johanna worked as the Regional Adviser for Human Rights and Social Development at the Pacific Community (SPC) based in Suva, Fiji. Over the course of 2023 to 2024, she worked closely with Pacific governments on their submissions to the International Court of Justice advisory opinion on States’ obligations to address climate change. She also advised SPC on its written and oral submissions to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea’s advisory opinion. She sits on the Pacific Islands Forum Officials Committee’s Specialist Subcommittee on Sea Level-Rise in relation to International Law. She has also worked around the globe with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the WHO FCTC Secretariat as a focal point on the cross-section of trade, human rights, and corporate accountability, examining novel ways to facilitate access to justice where there is a perceived power imbalance in civil liability systems. She served as a Fulbright Public Policy Fellow to Samoa assisting the Ombudsman’s Office in its first ever State of Human Rights Report and was an AmeriCorps member at the Mattapan Community Health Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

Johanna completed her J.D. with a concentration in Public International Law at the University of Washington School of Law as a Gates Scholar, a M.Sc. in Biophysics and Physiology from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Microbiology from Virginia Tech. She has served as a Visiting Research Scholar at Oxford University (Mansfield College) hosted by the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Georgetown University Law Center, Australian National University, and the University of Melbourne Climate Futures Environmental Research Hub. She also an Adjunct Professor teaching Human Rights and Environmental Law at the Academy of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at American University Washington College of Law. 

She has been widely published on human rights issues related to climate change, non-economic loss and damage, feminist legal theories, and advancements in environmental law.

Johanna can be reached at [email protected]. 

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