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Election 2024: What's at Stake for the Climate

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Katie Surma

Reporter, Pittsburgh

Katie Surma is a reporter at Inside Climate News focusing on international environmental law and justice. Before joining ICN, she practiced law, specializing in commercial litigation. She also wrote for a number of publications and her stories have appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times and The Associated Press, among others. Katie has a master’s degree in investigative journalism from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, an LLM in international rule of law and security from ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, a J.D. from Duquesne University, and was a History of Art and Architecture major at the University of Pittsburgh. Katie lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her husband, Jim Crowell.
  • @Katie_Surma
  • [email protected]
Honduras Próspera built a 14-story mixed-use tower perched at the bottom of a once-forested hillside near Crawfish Rock, a fishing village of a few hundred people on the island of Roatán. Credit: Nicholas Kusnetz/Inside Climate News

In Honduras, Libertarians and Legal Claims Threaten to Bankrupt a Nation

By Nicholas Kusnetz, Katie Surma

People attend the burial of 14-year-old Colombian environmental activist Breiner David Cucuname, who was shot dead during a rural security patrol on Jan. 14, 2022 in the indigenous community of Las Delicias in Colombia’s Cauca Department. Credit: STR/AFP via Getty Images

‘Appalling Figures’: At Least Three Environmental Defenders Killed Per Week in 2023

By Katie Surma

Pedestrians cover their faces as smoke from wildfires in Canada has trigger air quality alerts in New York City on June 7, 2023. Credit: Michael Nagle/Xinhua via Getty Images

The Deteriorating Environment Is a Public Concern, but Americans Misunderstand Their Contribution to the Problem

By Katie Surma

Waorani Indigenous people protest in front of Ecuador's Energy Ministry on Aug. 20 to demand that the government respect the results of a referendum requiring an end to oil drilling in the Yasuni National Park. Credit: Rodrigo Buendia/AFP via Getty Images

This Country Voted to Keep Oil in the Ground. Will It Happen?

By Katie Surma

Hugo Loss is an analyst with Brazil’s elite environmental enforcement agency IBAMA. Credit: Richard Ladkani/Amazônia Latitude

Lessons for Democracy From the Brazilian Amazon 

By Marcos Colón, Amazônia Latitude and Katie Surma, Inside Climate News

A ranger from Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo walks through an area of the park devastated by logging on Sept. 30, 2019. Credit: Alexis Huguet/AFP via Getty Images

International Human Rights Commission Condemns ‘Fortress Conservation’

By Katie Surma

Native Americans, farmers and ranchers gather in front of the U.S. Capitol as the Cowboy and Indian Alliance protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline on April 22, 2014. Credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

Should Companies Get Paid When Governments Phase Out Fossil Fuels? They Already Are

By Katie Surma, Nicholas Kusnetz

A jaguar rescued from animal trafficking is seen at the Santa Cruz Foundation in Cundinamarca, Colombia. Credit: Juancho Torres/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Jaguars, Macaws and Tropical Dry Forest Have a Right To Exist, a Colombian Court Is Told

By Katie Surma

UN Expert on Climate Change and Human Rights Sees ‘Crucial and Urgent Demand’ to Clarify Governments’ Obligations

By Katie Surma

Young people from Amazonian communities march during the Pan-Amazon Social Forum in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia on June 12. Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

To Save the Amazon, What if We Listened to Those Living Within It?

By Katie Surma

An aerial view of kids playing at a school near the metallurgical complex in La Oroya, Peru. Credit: Ernesto Benavides/AFP via Getty Images

Q&A: The U.N.’s New Special Rapporteur for Human Rights and Environment Previously Won a Landmark Case in Peru

By Katie Surma

Aymara activists opposed to mining operations in Peru's southeastern Puno region organized on May 31, 2011 for a wave of protests against the Canada-based Bear Creek Mining Corporation plans to open a silver mine in the area. Credit: Aizar Raldes/AFP via Getty Images

The International System That Pits Foreign Investors Against Indigenous Communities

By Katie Surma, Nicholas Kusnetz

Payam Akhavan (center), lawyer and chairman of the Commission of Small Island States, speaks at a press conference on Tuesday in Hamburg, Germany after the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea issued a legal opinion on measures to protect the oceans from climate change. Credit: Christian Charisius/Picture Alliance via Getty Images

‘Historic’ Advisory Opinion on Climate Change Says Countries Must Prevent Greenhouse Gases From Harming Oceans

By Katie Surma

Turkiye’s State Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, along with the teams from Russia, Spain, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and UAE conduct search and rescue operations in the aftermath of severe flooding caused by Storm Daniel in Derna, Libya on Sept. 19, 2023. Credit: Halil Fidan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Significant Environmental and Climate Impacts Are Impinging on Human Rights in Every Country, a New Report Finds

By Katie Surma

Natalia Greene, an Ecuadorian environmentalist and judge with the International Rights of Nature Tribunal, walks through the Chocó Andino cloud forest with her family in Mindo, Ecuador. Credit: Katie Surma

How the Drug War and Energy Transition Are Changing Ecuadorians’ Fight For The Rights of Nature

By Katie Surma

A view of the Barker Meadow Reservoir in Nederland, Colo. Currently, Nederland relies on water from the City of Boulder’s reservoir. Credit: Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post

A Town Board in Colorado Repeals Rights of Nature Resolutions

By Katie Surma

A worker sweeps around a furnace at a coke plant in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine on April 11. Credit: Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Mining ‘Critical Minerals’ in Eastern Europe and Central Asia Rife With Rights Abuses

By Katie Surma

Tish O'Dell, next to artist Andrea Bowers' "We Must Rise Above the Tides," in the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MoCa). Credit: Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

‘Truth, Reckoning and Right Relationship’: A Rights of Nature Epiphany

By Katie Surma

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