Regional facilitators
Friends of the Earth International has regional structures in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe. The regional facilitators support each region, coordinating decision-making and activities - except for the European region, which has a coordinating office in Brussels.
Meet the Friends of the Earth International regional facilitation team:
Nerisha Baldevu
Friends of the Earth Africa
Nerisha Baldevu is the Regional Facilitator for Friends of the Earth Africa, working from Johannesburg, South Africa, based at groundWork. Nerisha is a long-standing human rights and social justice activist, with fierce commitment to feminist movement building. With over 25 years’ experience in organising at local, national and regional levels, Nerisha has worked with diverse groups and organisations within the labour, social justice, women’s rights, LGBTQ, youth and environmental sectors, to build and grow solidarity and alliances for change. Her work experience includes programme coordination and management; strategic development and implementation of projects and campaigns; contextual analysis, communications, research and writing for organisations such as the Africa Climate Justice Group (through WoMin), Just Associates, Earthlife Africa and Khanya College. Nerisha joined Friends of the Earth Africa in July 2020.
Bareesh H Chowdhury
Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific
Bareesh H Chowdhury has been working as a Research Lawyer at the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers' Association (BELA)/ Friends of the Earth Bangladesh since 2020, after finishing his LLM in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex in 2019. Prior to this, he worked for the UN Foundation in Washington, DC in their Energy Access and Climate programme, as well as short stints at Amnesty International and the Essex Human Rights Centre in the UK, and Naripokkho, an organisation for the prevention of violence against women, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has served as the Regional Facilitator for Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific since 2021. Bareesh regularly writes op-eds for The Daily Star in Bangladesh, and his main interests lie in the nexus of human rights, climate change and renewable energy.
Danilo Urrea
Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean
Danilo Urrea is a philosopher from the National University of Colombia. He has been linked to Friends of the Earth International since 2003, working on territorial research processes in Colombia and Latin America, with particular focus on the privatisation, commodification and financialisation of water and on the extractive mining-energy model. In his country and across the region, he has contributed to documenting environmental issues, running grassroots and environmental education, and strengthening grassroots and community-based communications. He has worked as an international correspondent for Real World Radio. Danilo has been the Regional Facilitator for ATALC (Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean) since 2016, and is one of two regional focal points for the Internationalist Solidarity System.
Jagoda Munic
Friends of the Earth Europe
Jagoda has been the Director of Friends of the Earth Europe since 2017. Previously, she served Friends of the Earth International as Chairperson (2012-2016), Treasurer (2007-2012), and ExCom Member (2004, 2007-2017). She holds degrees in Biology-Ecology (M.Sc.) and Library and Information Sciences (B.Sc.) from the University of Zagreb, Croatia and an M.Sc. in Pollution and Environmental Control from the University of Manchester, UK. Jagoda has been engaged with Zelena akcija/Friends of the Earth Croatia as a volunteer (1997-2000) and professionally (2000-2017), where she led a number of successful environmental advocacy campaigns (against coal and hydropower plants, GMOs, highway construction and land use change, and for nature protection and sustainable projects with local communities). From 2001-2007, she was President of Friends of the Earth Croatia and also led a number of regional projects in the Balkans and Turkey focused on building the capacity of environmental civil society organisations and regional networking.
