Mair-Toby, Caroline
lawyer and International Environmental Law Specialist
Caroline Mair-Toby is a lawyer and international environmental law specialist with over 15 years of experience and research working with public, private and civil society stakeholders, specialising in climate change, climate diplomacy, climate justice, public international environmental and business and human rights law. She has 20 years research experience on Caribbean, African, Indian subcontinent and Pacific Island colonialism, empire, and postcolonial relations, and 5 years’ experience on Indigenous and Indigenous Maroons Peoples’ rights in biodiversity and climate/environmental justice. She has published and spoken widely on these issues.
Caroline is currently the Founder and Director of the Institute for Small Islands; an Executive Director at SHE Changes Climate, an international NGO focused on increasing female representation at all levels of climate decision; and an associate Attorney at Mair and Company, a Caribbean law firm. She has been a lawyer and liaison officer with various NGOs at the United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since 2011, advising and facilitating legal and technical advice to Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) at the climate negotiations. She was most recently a delegate at UNFCCC COP26 Glasgow, Scotland as a member of team of lawyers attending the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP26 with London-based Legal Response International (LRI).
Caroline is a former staff lawyer at the Foundation of International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD), advising small islands and developing countries on multilateral UN climate change negotiations, and a special advising consultant on a Commonwealth Secretariat climate change project at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. For the 2009 National Secretariat for the Fifth Summit of the Americas and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Caroline supported, advised the Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and the Summit National Coordinator on matters of multilateral negotiations, international law and climate change.
Caroline holds a BA with distinction from the University of Pennsylvania; an LLB (Upper Second Hons) from Queen Mary, University of London, and an LLM from the Inns of Court School of Law, now City Law School, where her thesis addressed the human right to a clean environment under international environmental law. She was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2010 and Trinidad and Tobago in 2013. She is a member of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn and the Law Society of Trinidad and Tobago.