Romina Picolotti

Romina Picolotti is Senior Policy Analyst at IGSD and the President and founder of the Center for Human Rights and Environment (CEDHA).

Previously Ms. Picolotti was Argentina’s Environment Minister (2006 – 2008) during which time she crafted and introduced numerous compliance and enforcement initiatives to uphold environmental laws and regulations. She was instrumental in achieving the passage of the world’s first Glacier and Perigalcial Environment Protection Law, as well as the passage of the 2007 adjustment to the Montreal Protocol to accelerate the phase-out of HCFCs to achieve climate mitigation equivalent to 10 to 15 billion tons of CO₂. She also has promoted environmental and human rights protection in Nicaragua, Cambodia, Peru, Cuba, Haiti, Argentina, and other places around the world.

Ms. Picolotti is the author of numerous articles and books, including Human Rights and Environment in Argentina: A Proposal for a National Agenda (Ordoba, 2005), The Human Cost of Defending the Planet: Human Rights Violations of Environmental Defenders in the Americas (CEDHA, 2004), Linking Human Rights and the Environment (Arizona Press, 2002), now in its third edition, as well as several Amicus Curiae briefs offering new legal reasoning that changed the way the Inter-American Court on Human Rights understood the inseparable links between environmental protection and human rights.

She is a law graduate of the National University at Cordoba, Argentina, and holds a Master’s Degree in International Public Interest Law from the Washington College of Law at American University, Washington, DC. Her achievements in climate protection have earned the Sophie Prize for outstanding contribution to sustainable development in 2006, the Sierra Club’s Earth Care Award in 2007 presented to CEDHA, and the US EPA Climate Protection Award in 2008.

Ms. Picolotti currently assists IGSD’s efforts to reduce short-lived climate pollutants (black carbon, ground-level ozone, HFCs, and methane), including strengthening the Montreal Protocol to protect the climate by phasing out production and consumption of HFCs through the Kigali amendment, while improving the energy efficiency of air conditioning and other appliances during the switch from HFCs to climate-friendly refrigerants.