Bio

My name is Natalie Jones and I’m a climate policy advocate hailing from Ōtautahi/Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand, currently based in London, UK. My background is in public international law, climate activism, and research. Currently I advise on energy policy for the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), a research-led think tank headquartered in Canada. At the moment my work has a particular focus on a managed, equitable phase-out of oil and gas production in line with Paris Agreement goals.

My PhD research at Trinity College, Cambridge, focused on the self-determination of peoples and the right to participate in global governance. My book, Self-Determination as Voice, is under contract with Cambridge University Press. After my PhD I did a postdoc at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge, working on global justice and global catastrophic risk. I have published widely in both academic and popular media, and taught public international law, human rights law, international environmental law, and EU environmental law at the University of Cambridge, and given guest lectures at the Victoria University of Wellington and Strathmore University. I am a member of the Academic Review Board of the Cambridge International Law Journal.

Alongside my usual work, I occasionally write and team lead for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), writing the de facto history of global environmental negotiations. In this capacity, I have attended more than 20 UN meetings, including on climate change, the Sustainable Development Goals, biodiversity, oceans, and wetlands. I have a passion for making oft-arcane intergovernmental talks understandable to a broad public.

Before moving to the UK in 2015, I studied law and physics at the University of Canterbury, and then worked as a judges’ clerk at the High Court of New Zealand. I then did a LLM in international law from the University of Cambridge, focusing on climate litigation. I have completed shorter stints at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Urgenda’s Climate Litigation Network, the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defence (AIDA), and the New Zealand Parliamentary Counsel Office.

Before I got to be paid full-time to work on climate (dream!), I was involved in many volunteer climate campaigns across the years, such as New Zealand youth campaign group Generation Zero, successive New Zealand Youth Delegations to UN Climate COPs, Positive Investment Cambridge, the Trinity Responsible Investment Society organising towards fossil fuel divestment at Trinity College……and several other groups. I also co-founded and co-coordinated the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Future Generations, a cross-party group of UK Parliamentarians aiming to better represent future generations in policymaking.

I love playing violin, singing, learning languages, reading, writing, spending time outdoors, and tending my balcony garden.