Clara Chavez-Ives is a research and policy associate at the Center for Earth Ethics, where she contributes policy notes, blog posts and news analysis, and supports the organization’s events in the U.S. and internationally. Her current research interests include the international environmental legal landscape, loss and damage, U.S. state and federal environmental policy, and fossil fuel geopolitics.

Clara holds a B.A. in environmental analysis from Washington University in St. Louis. She has an interdisciplinary background, including conducting ecological fieldwork in Missouri and following the loss and damage negotiations at COP28 in Dubai. Motivated by her grassroots activism and campaign efforts, Clara is dedicated to fostering stakeholder engagement and using community knowledge to inform policy. Through her studies of race, gender and sexuality, Clara has also explored how identity shapes our interactions with the environment.
 
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Clara is passionate about dismantling the false dichotomy between natural and urban spaces. She views this as critical for fostering human connection to the land and one another. Clara loves running in New York’s parks, hiking and learning new languages.