Pierre-Henri Guignard served as the Secretary General of COP 21 in Paris in 2015, the COP edition that resulted in the Paris Agreement. He was also France's Special Envoy for the Alliance for the Conservation of Rainforests (2019-2023). His diplomatic career includes positions as French ambassador to Panama and Argentina, as well as France's permanent observer to the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington. In Paris, he was Adviser and Chief of Staff to two Ministers of Foreign Affairs – Mr Dominique de Villepin and Mr Michel Barnier. Throughout his career, he has strongly advocated for rainforest conservation, highlighting their vital role in climate regulation and biodiversity, and has actively participated in international forums, including the United Nations, to advance this mission. Now a board member of the French Association for the UN, he is also locally elected in Southwestern France. A writer, he recently published a short biography of naturalist Aimé Bonpland who, alongside Alexander von Humboldt, chartered the wild forests of South America.
Alan Watson Featherstone is based in the Findhorn Community in the northeast of Scotland. In 1986, he founded the award-winning conservation charity, Trees for Life, which works to restore the Caledonian Forest in the Scottish Highlands, and was its executive director for almost 30 years. During that time it became the leading organisation working to restore the Caledonian Forest in Scotland and took on ownership of the 10,000 acre Dundreggan Estate in Glenmoriston as its flagship project for native woodland recovery. Through his work with Trees for Life, he has helped to provide the inspiration for other ecological restoration projects in the Scottish Borders, on Dartmoor in England and for the creation of the Yendegaia National Park in Tierra del Fuego, Chile. He has also founded the Restoring the Earth project, to promote the restoration of the planet’s degraded ecosystems as the most important task for humanity in the 21st century.
In 2021, Stephanie Kiel joined Trees for Life as the Team Leader for the Affric Highlands rewilding area. Her experience of working in the Scottish Highlands with local landowners and her passion and enthusiasm for nature and ecology will be invaluable as she works to form new partnerships with communities, crofters, landowners, and other stakeholders within the Affric Highland area.
Camille Étienne is a French ecological activist, writer and director. She is a member of the "Avant l'Orage" duo with Solal Moisan, with which she has co-directed the short films "GENERATION", "DESOBEIR" and "GLACIER". After studying at Sciences Po Paris, she quickly became involved in many political battles, striving to popularize new and alternative ways of cohabiting with our world in the face of impending climate crisis. She has often intervened at the European Parliament along with fellow activists Greta Thunberg and Adelaïde Charlier for climate related questions, has made apparitions on national television calling for civil disobedience and a search for meaningful work in a slower society, and has written in left-wing newspapers such as Socialter or L'Humanité. Founder of the #LookDown action, she calls for the prohibition of deep sea mining across the globe. She is also an outspoken member of the #StopEACOP initiative, speaking out against French giant TotalEnergies' construction of a crude oil pipeline in East Africa. She is in Vanity Fair's list of the 50 most influential French women of 2020, alongside Adèle Haenel or Virginie Despentes.
