INECE - Secretariat Resume

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 former President and founder of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).

Mr. Zaelke's substantive research focuses on 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 continues to serve on TEPAC under President Bush. Mr. Zaelke also serves on the INECE Executive Planning Committee.

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.