Skip to content
  • Science
  • Politics & Policy
  • Justice
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Clean Energy
  • Today’s Climate
  • Projects
  • Climate 101
  • About Us
Inside Climate News
Pulitzer Prize-winning, nonpartisan reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet.
Donate

Search

  • Science
  • Politics & Policy
  • Justice
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Clean Energy
  • Today’s Climate
  • Projects
  • Climate 101
  • About Us
  • Newsletters
  • Medill Washington

Topics

  • Activism
  • Arctic
  • Business & Finance
  • Climate Law & Liability
  • Climate Treaties
  • Denial & Misinformation
  • Environment & Health
  • Extreme Weather
  • Food & Agriculture
  • Fracking
  • Nuclear
  • Pipelines
  • Regulation
  • Super-Pollutants
  • Wildfires

Information

  • About
  • Jobs & Freelance
  • Reporting Network
  • Impact Statement
  • Contact
  • Whistleblowers
  • Memberships
  • Ways to Give
  • Fellows & Fellowships

Publications

  • E-Books
  • Documents

Katie Surma

Reporter, Pittsburgh

Katie Surma is a reporter at Inside Climate News focusing on international environmental law and justice. Before joining ICN, she practiced law, specializing in commercial litigation. She also wrote for a number of publications and her stories have appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times and The Associated Press, among others. Katie has a master’s degree in investigative journalism from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, an LLM in international rule of law and security from ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, a J.D. from Duquesne University, and was a History of Art and Architecture major at the University of Pittsburgh. Katie lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her husband, Jim Crowell.
Maasai elders in Tanzania.

In an Attempt to Wrestle Away Land for Game Hunters, Tanzanian Government Fires on Maasai Farmers, Killing Two

By Katie Surma

Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate uses a megaphone while marching with environmental demonstrators through central Stockholm during a protest organized by Fridays for Future against perceived inaction by governments towards climate change last week in Stockholm. Climate activist organizations, including Fridays For Future, protested on the side-lines of the Stockholm 50+ climate summit, and the youth-led Aurora movement announced details of their legal action against the Swedish state in relation to their climate policies. Credit: Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images.

Fifty Years After the UN’s Stockholm Environment Conference, Leaders Struggle to Realize its Vision of ‘a Healthy Planet’

By Katie Surma

The woodland at dawn in Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary on Nov. 19, 2009 in Kerala, India. Credit: Phil Clarke Hill/In Pictures via Getty Images

Indian Court Rules That Nature Has Legal Status on Par With Humans—and That Humans Are Required to Protect It

By Katie Surma

A person stands on a dock on Lake Virginia in Orlando. Credit: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Florida Judge Asked to Recognize the Legal Rights of Five Waterways Outside Orlando

By Katie Surma

Rangers from Kahuzi-Biega National Park visit the devastated areas of the park on September 30, 2019. Credit: Alexis Huguet/AFP via Getty Images

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Unintended Consequences of ‘Fortress Conservation’

By Katie Surma

Aerial view of a tailings dam-enbankment used to store byproducts of mining copper for the Minera Valle Central mining company, in Rancagua, Chile on May 31, 2019. Credit: Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images

Environmentalists in Chile Are Hoping to Replace the Country’s Pinochet-Era Legal Framework With an ‘Ecological Constitution’

By Katie Surma

Indigenous Land Rights Are Critical to Realizing Goals of the Paris Climate Accord, a New Study Finds

By Katie Surma

Woolly monkey. Credit: Evgenia Kononova

Ecuador’s High Court Rules That Wild Animals Have Legal Rights

By Katie Surma

People run for cover in front of a burning house during shelling in the city of Irpin, outside Kyiv, on March 4, 2022. Credit: Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images

Activists Deplore the Human Toll and Environmental Devastation from Russia’s Unprovoked War of Aggression in Ukraine

By Katie Surma

Tourists snorkel at a coral reef in Portobelo, Colon province, Panama in 2021. Reefs there have been damaged by climate change and pollution. Credit: Luis ACOSTA / AFP via Getty Images.

Panama Enacts a Rights of Nature Law, Guaranteeing the Natural World’s ‘Right to Exist, Persist and Regenerate’

By Katie Surma

Aerial view of Brazilian mining multinational Vale at the Corrego do Feijao mine in Brumadinho, Belo Horizonte's metropolitan region, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, on Dec. 17, 2019. Credit: Douglas Magno/AFP via Getty Images

Backed by International Investors, Mining Companies Line Up to Expand in or Near the Amazon’s Indigenous Territories

By Katie Surma

Toreadora lake in Cajas National Park in the highlands of Ecuador. Credit: Martha Barreno /VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Can Rights of Nature Laws Make a Difference? In Ecuador, They Already Are

By Katie Surma

Maasai homes in in Tanzania. Credit: Roger de la Harpe/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Conservation has a Human Rights Problem. Can the New UN Biodiversity Plan Solve it? 

By Katie Surma

A young fingerling Chinook salmon leaps out of the water on May 16, 2018 in Half Moon Bay, California. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In the Latest Rights of Nature Case, a Tribe Is Suing Seattle on Behalf of Salmon in the Skagit River

By Katie Surma

Human rights lawyer Philippe Sands speaks at AOL Studios In New York on Nov. 6, 2015 in New York City. Credit: John Lamparski/WireImage

The Essential Advocate, Philippe Sands Makes the Case for a New International Crime Called Ecocide

By Katie Surma

A Plea to Make Widespread Environmental Damage an International Crime Takes Center Stage at The Hague

By Katie Surma

View from the observation tower of rising mist from the rain forest canopy in the rain forest near La Selva Lodge near Coca, Ecuador. Credit: Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images

Ecuador’s High Court Affirms Constitutional Protections for the Rights of Nature in a Landmark Decision

By Katie Surma

Aerial scenes from the Northern Amazon from the town of Iqitos to the Amazon oil town of Trompederos, Peru, June 11, 2007. Credit: Brent Stirton/Getty Images

Indigenous Women in Peru Seek to Turn the Tables on Big Oil, Asserting ‘Rights of Nature’ to Fight Epic Spills

By Katie Surma

Posts navigation

1 2 Next

Newsletters

We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every day or once a week, our original stories and digest of the web's top headlines deliver the full story, for free.

Keep Environmental Journalism Alive

ICN provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going.

Donate Now
Inside Climate News
  • Science
  • Politics & Policy
  • Justice
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Clean Energy
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Whistleblowers
  • Privacy Policy
Inside Climate News uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept this policy. Learn More