Executive Director
United States
Mari Margil is the Executive Director of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER).
She works with civil society, governments, as well as Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities in the U.S., Ecuador, the Philippines, Nepal, and elsewhere, to advance Rights of Nature frameworks. She consulted with Ecuador’s Constituent Assembly, helping to draft the world’s first Rights of Nature constitutional provisions in 2008.
Margil received her Master’s degree from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and is a co-author of The Bottom Line or Public Health (Oxford University Press 2010), Exploring Wild Law: The Philosophy of Earth Jurisprudence (Wakefield Press 2011), Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change (Oregon State University Press 2021), Global Legal Pluralism and Rights of Nature (Mohr Siebeck 2026), and Waves Lost at Sea (Spector Books 2026).
Her writing has also been featured in publications including The Guardian, YES! Magazine, Earth Island Journal, Mongabay, Democracy Journal, World Policy Journal, and Common Dreams, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and elsewhere.
