INECE - Director of the Secretariat

Durwood J. Zaelke is the President and founder of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, and serves as the Director of the INECE Secretariat. He also is the founder and Director of the Research Program on International and Comparative Environmental Law at American University Washington College of Law, where he serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law and Scholar-in-Residence, teaching International Environmental Law and related courses. He was appointed Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School in 1999, teaching International Environmental Law and Policy. He is also the founder and former President of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).

In May 2008, Mr. Zaelke was named a “Champion for Protection of Climate” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in recognition of his work on HCFC Phaseout Acceleration. Zaelke was among 39 individuals, organizations, and companies honored at the 10th annual EPA Climate and Ozone Layer Protection Awards, held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. For his work on international environmental governance, Mr. Zaelke was profiled in Duke Law Magazine and in the Environmental Law Institute's Environmental Law Forum.

Mr. Zaelke's substantive research focuses on fast action mitigation strategies to respond to climate change, resolving trade and environment conflicts, strengthening the implementation and enforcement of international environmental laws, and building capacity of local public interest movements in developing countries. He was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the White House Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee (TEPAC), and to serve on the U.S. delegation to the Seattle Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization. He continued to serve on TEPAC under President Bush.

From 1980 to 1989, Mr. Zaelke was with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, serving as the Director of the International Program, as well as the Director of the Washington, D.C. office and the Alaska office, where his litigation helped conserve important resources in the Tongass National Forest, as well as the Admiralty Island National Monument and Misty Fjords National Monument. From 1978 to 1980, Mr. Zaelke was a Special Litigation Attorney with the Department of Justice, where his responsibilities included designing the federal government's initial hazardous waste enforcement strategy; leading the initial investigation into the Love Canal hazardous waste case; designing an energy conservation litigation program; and leading the department's investigation into the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor. From 1975 to 1978, Mr. Zaelke was a staff attorney with the Environmental Law Institute. Prior to that he was in private practice in Los Angeles. He graduated from UCLA in 1969, and from Duke Law School in 1972, where he was an Editor of the Duke Law Journal.

Mr. Zaelke's publications include:

“How to Tackle Greenhouse Gases” a letter from Mr. Zaelke to The Washington Post
MEA Bulletin guest article: Start then Strengthen: The Importance of Immediate Action for Climate Mitigation, by K. Madhava Sarma & Durwood Zaelke
“Landmark Agreement to Strengthen Montreal Protocol Provides Powerful Climate Mitigation” by Donald Kaniaru, Rajendra Shende & Durwood Zaelke, in SDLP Climate Law Reporter
Zaelke, Kaniaru, and Kružíková , Making Law Work: Environmental Compliance & Sustainable Development (Cameron May Ltd, 2005).
Anderson & Zaelke, Industry Genius: Inventions and People Protecting the Climate and Fragile Ozone Layer (Greenleaf, 2003).
International Environmental Law & Policy (Foundation Press 2 ed. 2002) (1,547 pages), the leading textbook in its field (with Hunter & Salzman) The textbook is accompanied by a Treaty Supplement (380 pages) and a Teachers Manual (371 pages) (Foundation Press, 2002).
Van Dyke, Zaelke & Hewison, eds., Freedom for the Seas: A New Look at Ocean Governance (Island Press, 1993), which was the co-winner of the Sprout Award in 1994 for the best book on international environmental affairs.
Zaelke, Housman & Orbuch, eds., Trade and the Environment: Law, Economics, and Policy (Island Press, 1995), Spanish version: "Comercio Internacional y Medio Ambiente: Derecho, Economia y Politica" (Espacio Editorial, Buenos Aires, June 1995) (translation by Eugenia Bec), winner of a special at the Buenos Aires Book Fair in 1995.
Housman, Goldberg, Van Dyke & Zaelke, eds., The Use of Trade Measures in Select Multilateral Environmental (United Nations Environment Programme, 1995).
Housman & Zaelke, Making Trade and Environmental Policies Mutually Reinforcing: Forging Competitive Sustainability, 23 Envt’l. L. 545 (1993).
Housman & Zaelke, Trade, Environment, and Sustainable Development: A Primer, 15 Hastings Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 535 (1992).
Housman & Zaelke, The Collision of the Environment and Trade: The GATT Tuna/Dolphin Decision, 22 E.L.R. 10268 (1992).
Zaelke & Cameron, Global Warming and Climate Change An Overview of the International Legal Process, 5 Am. U. J. Int’l L. & Pol’y 249 (Winter 1990), selected as one of the best law review articles of the year and reprinted in 22 Land Use & Envt’l L. Rev. (1991); reprinted in Italian in Futuro Sostenible: Effetto Serra 36 (1990).