ICE Global Council

Stephen Hockman QC – Chairman

Stephen was born in Manchester in 1947. He was educated at Eltham College and Jesus College, Cambridge and called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1970. He took Silk in 1990, became Head of Chambers at 6 Pump Court in 1997, and was the Chairman of the Bar Council of Great Britain in 2006. He is also a Deputy High Court Judge and a Master of the Bench of the Middle Temple. The focus of his practice is regulatory, environmental and health and safety law.

In the voluntary sector, he is immediate past Chairman of the Environmental Law Foundation, and a trustee of Client Earth and of Advocates for International Development. He is a former member of the Council of English Nature, now Natural England, the statutory body charged with nature conservation. Stephen led the challenge in the House of Lords, based on the European Convention on Human Rights, against the role of the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions in determining planning cases.

Stuart A. Bruce

Stuart is a Senior Associate in the international disputes practice of a major international law firm, focusing on investment treaty arbitration, public international law and international commercial arbitration for commercial and government clients. He has particular interests in international dispute settlement, sustainable energy, natural resources, climate change and environmental law and policy. 

Stuart is a member of the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) Commission on Energy and Environment (and the ICC’s UK Committee on Energy and Environment), advisor to the Stockholm Treaty Lab project, member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law, Research Fellow at the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law and Fellow of the Platform on International Energy Governance. Stuart teaches and publishes on various topics in international law and policy, with a particular focus on clean energy technology and governance, climate change, the environment and international disputes. 

Previously, Stuart worked at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge, with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, where he contributed to early design thinking for the Paris Agreement. Stuart holds an LLM (International Law) with Distinction (UCL), Graduate Diploma in Energy & Natural Resources Law (Melb) and LLB (Monash).

Murray Carroll

Murray was born in Canada, studied politics at the University of Manitoba, law at the London School of Economics, dispute resolution at QMUL and Harvard Law School, and is currently pursuing graduate work in international relations and international law at Harvard University and the University of London. He brings to the ICE Coalition a broad knowledge of international environmental, natural resources, trade and investment law. Murray’s graduate thesis examines the geopolitics of multilateral treaty and treaty regime negotiation, and how collective goods are supplied (or why they are not supplied) during transitions between bi-polar, uni-polar, and/or multi-polar world orders.

In addition to his ongoing work with the ICE Coalition in the United States, Murray has held positions with the Global Environmental Governance Project, Six Pump Court Chambers, DLA Piper, the International Maritime Organization, Sustainable Future Consulting, the Environmental Law Foundation, the Government of Canada, and ScotiaCapital.

Philippa Drew CB

Philippa Drew became a Trustee in 2009 and then in 2011 a Vice-Chairman of the Coalition for the International Court for the Environment. She retired from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 2006 as Director, Global Issues with responsibility among other issues for human rights, climate change, sustainable development, the UN and the Commonwealth after a 34 year career in the Home Office, FCO and the Department for Culture Media and Sport. She was a Trustee of the Oxford Research Group, an NGO which works with others to promote a more sustainable approach to security for the UK and the world, from 2007-10 and Board member of the Stakeholder Forum, an international environmental NGO from 2011 to 2014. She is currently a Trustee of the Human Dignity Trust and of the Kaleidoscope Trust which, in different ways, seek to counter the persecution of LGBT people. Philippa also volunteers at Cancerkin, a breast cancer charity.

Nick Flynn

Nick Flynn is the campaign and legal director at Avaaz.org. He is an environmental lawyer who previously worked at Weil Gotshal & Manges as head of the firm's London pro bono and CSR program. He is a founder and chair of the Legal Response Initiative, a charity providing legal support to developing countries participating in the U.N. climate change negotiations; and a founder and trustee of Advocates for International Development, a charity providing legal advice in support of the achievement of the MDGs/SDGs.

Frances Lawson

Frances has particular expertise and interest in environmental and planning law from her Masters degree and involvement in the UK Environmental Law Association (UKELA). She is currently on a secondment in Paris, funded by a Pegasus Scholarship, working on the UN international climate change negotiations. Since 2011, she has acted as co-convener of the UKELA Planning and Sustainable Development Working Party.

Frances worked in the Directorate of Legislative Quality at the European Parliament in 2006/7 and as an MEP assistant at the European Parliament in 1999/2000. She has a particular interest in, and knowledge of, EU law as a result and is keen to extend her practice into this area.

Peter Luff

Peter Luff is Chief Executive Officer of Action for a Global Climate Community, a non-governmental organization created in 2003 to promote the creation of a north-south climate community willing to tackle climate destabilization within the context of sustainable development. Previously, Peter Luff has been director-general of the Royal Commonwealth Society, director of the European Movement UK, marketing director of the Social Democratic Party and assistant director of Amnesty International UK. He also worked briefly as an advisor to a health project in the Punjab, and as an assistant producer in BBC television and co-founded the All-Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group.

He has written two books: Maastricht – A Simple Guide and A Brilliant Conspiracy – the future of European federalism. He is chairman of the European Movement UK, a trustee of Responding to Conflict and the European Multi-Cultural Foundation and a council member of the World Federalist Movement. Peter Luff is an FRSA and FRSG and a Member of the Royal Institute for International Affairs.

Nicola Peart

Nicola has a particular interest in international law and has experience working in international arbitration and dispute resolution in Paris, The Hague and London. Nicola is a Steering Committee Member for the Legal Response Initiative – an international NGO that provides pro bono legal support to developing country delegates at the United Nations climate change negotiations.  She has contributed to the work of the International Bar Association’s Arbitration Working Group, as well as the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL).  Nicola has an LLM (UCL) MSc (Imperial College), and an MA (Cantab).

Philip Riches

Philip Riches is a barrister practising in international commercial dispute resolution. He has extensive advocacy experience in international tribunals and in the London courts. Prior to being called to the Bar, Philip was based in China and Japan working in the commodities trade and in London and Brussels in European policy. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1996 with a First in History and was called to the Bar in 2001. Philip is a consultant and European Director for Asociación Civil Los Algarrobos, an educational and environmental charity operating in South America, which works to promote the rights of and build capacity in isolated communities and in communities affected by mining.

His work as a barrister often concerns jurisdiction and conflicts of law issues in trans-national disputes and he advises victims of corporate wrongs in the developing world (including climate change and pollution victims) on bringing claims in the English courts. Philip also works in the field of governance, including on rule of law programmes (with, amongst others, the UNDP and British Council) in China, Pakistan, Laos and Rwanda. He has lived and worked in both China (on the mainland and in Hong Kong) and South America (Argentina) and speaks French and Spanish, and conversational Mandarin.

Kirsty Schneeberger MBE

Kirsty is presently in Bonn, Germany, working as an advisor in the Office of the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This position is a secondment from the company she founded in London called Beautiful Corporations - which specializes in working with business and organisations to refine their environmental and sustainability communications and engagement strategies. Kirsty has worked at R & R Urquhart and was the UN liaison Officer for the Stakeholder Forum in London and New York. She has been a youth delegate to the UNFCCC, coordinating the youth stakeholder engagement programme for DECC.

Dr. Kenneth L. Smith

Founding partner and director of the Virginia management and fundraising consulting firm Craver Mathews Smith, and the San Francisco firm Dodd Smith Dann. Among his more than 100 nonprofit clients were Greenpeace International, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Earth Justice, the Democratic National Committee, several senatorial campaigns, and the Social Democratic Party in the UK. As a founding staff member of John Gardner’s Common Cause, he managed the initiative ballot campaign that created California’s Fair Campaign Practices Commission and subsequent campaign finance reforms. He was a founder and board members of Continental Savings and Loan Association in San Francisco. He holds a doctorate in public administration from the University of Southern California, where he was a NASA Fellow, and has taught graduate seminars at several universities. He lives in San Rafael, CA.

Elina Vaananen

Elina is a Programme Officer with the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre where she contributes to a range of projects relating for REDD+, with a particular focus on REDD+ safeguards and the costs and benefits of REDD+ implementation. As part of an interagency working group, she has been developing version 2 of the UN-REDD Programme’s Benefits and Risks Tool (BeRT) for the gap analysis of countries’ policies, laws and regulations. With an interest in ecosystem accounting, Elina also supports the Centre’s work on natural capital.

Elina has a BSc in Environmental Policy from the London School of Economics and an MPhil in Environmental Law and Economics from the University of Cambridge, where her thesis examined synergies and effectiveness in the cluster of biodiversity-related environmental agreements. Elina’s past experiences include: research on climate change adaptation at the Tata Group in India; work on regulatory safety assessment of nanomaterials at the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency; and research on the regulation of converging technologies at the Finnish Environment Institute.

Link to our International Supporters page.