Meet Hannah White

From working on the landmark Living Wonders cases to helping young people impacted by climate change, Hannah is dedicated to supporting her clients.

Hannah works in EJA's climate team as a senior lawyer.

Before joining EJA, she worked as a senior prosecutor with the federal government, running criminal matters including environmental and white-collar crime prosecutions. She has also worked with the Net Zero Lawyer’s Alliance to help legal practitioners provide net zero-aligned advice.

Most recently, Hannah co-developed climate-focused short courses for the Democratising Education for Global Sustainability and Stewardship Programme at the University of Cambridge.

Why did you decide to become a lawyer?

I was inspired to become a lawyer after an international human rights lawyer gave a talk at my school about the ways that you could use legal avenues to raise awareness about human rights issues.

I graduated from a small school on the NSW South Coast and the idea of becoming a lawyer was something that I didn’t think would be possible for me. I was always really concerned about social justice issues but I didn’t really have a grasp on how my concern about those issues could translate into creating meaningful social change.

To have an international human rights lawyer (who, by the way, also went to my local high school!) come back home and talk about the ways she was fighting for justice in the highest courts in the world – it really drove home to me that getting a legal education could be a powerful tool to dismantle economic and social barriers and support social change.

With that inspiration, I applied to law school and feel very lucky now to be working as a lawyer at EJA.

I really love my clients – their persistent courage, optimism and passion in fighting for climate action and environmental protection gets me up in the morning and motivates me to keep doing this work.

What do you do at EJA?

I work as a lawyer in the climate team.

When I started at EJA, I had the opportunity to work on the landmark Living Wonders litigation, representing the legendary Environment Council of Central Queensland. These cases taught me a lot about the impact and importance of people power and community organisations in the protection of the environment. As Federal Court Chief Justice Mortimer noted in her decision on the Living Wonders court costs: ‘…the environment cannot speak for itself; someone must speak for it.’

Today, the focus of my legal work is centred on the climate impacts experienced by young people in Australia. It's well-known that climate change harms young people disproportionately, and that in the case of young First Nations people and young people with disability, the climate crisis is making social, health and economic inequalities worse.

Young people have already been extremely successful in bringing international and local attention to their experiences of climate damage, and the fears they hold for the future. I really enjoy this work – exploring the ways that young people can use legal avenues to protect their rights and share their stories about climate change.

Climate Week in New York City is the largest annual climate event held in partnership with the United Nations General Assembly. The week is full of events all about the amazing things people across the world are doing in the climate space.

I was really excited to go to New York Climate Week this year because there was a big focus on climate litigation and spotlighting the incredible leadership of young people.

Going into the week, I was slightly hesitant about whether a huge international event like this really achieves anything – it is, after all, so huge! But, blurry eyed on the last day of the week, I felt so grateful for the opportunity to be there.

From hearing about how the Attorney General of Vermont has passed a first of its kind law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay for climate change damage, to hearing about how young people are using the law to tell stories about how climate change is affecting them (see the youth-led climate justice case in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights), I found myself really energised to be able to connect with people and community organisations who are working so diligently across the world to push governments and corporations to take ambitious and meaningful action on climate change.

Climate Week was a really good reminder that there are so many people across the world who really care about climate change and fighting for climate justice.

Being in lots of different rooms across the week, it was amazing to hear all of the brilliant ideas and solutions that people and communities were putting into action. It was a good reminder to approach my legal work with ambition, hope and optimism and keep in mind that there are incredible people across the world also working towards the same goal.

I remember when I was a younger lawyer, I was told so many times that if you want to get into a particular area of law, you had to follow a very specific path – like go to a specific uni, work with a judge or start out in a particular firm.

Don’t just do things because you think they will look good on your resume or because you feel like you have to. My advice would be to pursue the things you enjoy doing and the rest will figure itself out later.

The other thing I would say is to connect with people who are working in jobs that you think you would also like to do.

Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask if they have time to sit down and chat about it. In my experience, people are really generous with their time and usually really excited to hear that other people are passionate about the work they do.

I love spending time with my friends and family, especially outdoors – hiking and camping – preferably at the beach.

Feature image child at sunset

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The challenges we face are vast. The time to push for large-scale system change is now.