Scott Sellwood

Since graduating from the University of Queensland in 2006 Scott has worked as an environmental lawyer in Australia. Specializing in public interest law and policy he has observed first-hand the advantages and limitations of working for social and environmental justice within formal legal systems. To overcome some of the limitations, he has advocated strongly for the wider use of non-adversarial approaches to resolving environmental disputes. Scott has advised large and small non-governmental agencies and individuals on legal issues relating to climate change, biodiversity conservation, oceans management, urban and regional planning, food and agriculture policy and litigation strategy. He has designed and delivered numerous community legal education programs and law reform campaigns. Outside the office Scott was a long-term volunteer market gardener at the Northey Street City Farm, Brisbane.

Scott has lived and worked in Ecuador, Mexico and Peru (where he interned with a regional NGO that was supporting the growth of urban agriculture within some of the most vulnerable and excluded communities in Lima). He has completed peacebuilding training in Mindanao, Philippines.

As a Rotary World Peace Fellow Scott studies the intersections between development, natural resource management and peacebuilding. He draws upon his experiences as a public interest lawyer and from his fieldwork in Ecuador and Peru and focuses on grassroots responses to environmental conflicts in Latin America. He firmly believes that we need to understand the complexities of socio-environmental conflicts and the political possibilities that emerge in response, in order to shape development and peacebuilding processes that are socially and environmentally just.