Centre for Environmental Rights – Advancing Environmental Rights in South Africa

Michelle Koyama

Attorney

Miche joined the Pollution and Climate Change Programme in 2017. She is originally from Japan and now lives in South Africa. She holds a BA LLB from Rhodes University, and is passionate about environmental justice and human rights causes. Whilst at the ACB (an NGO), she worked with communities and traditional herbalists to prevent biopiracy; help protect their indigenous knowledge and intellectual property; and preserve the endemic medicinal plant species. She attended various international meetings of the United Nations Environmental Programme, and published in the area of biopiracy and bioprospecting. In the private sector, she worked for Bowman and Gilfillan and Adams & Adams in the commercial law, trademark law and litigation departments. Miche loves to travel, be immersed in nature (or a good book), and when the whim takes, she creates music and paints.

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