Events
Co-Sponsored
Breaking Through: Constitutional Solutions to the Environmental Crisis
January 21, 2026 @ 10:00 am – 11:15 am PST
As climate, health, and fundamental rights face attack, the question is not whether regulation matters, but how we develop innovative and collaborative tools that deliver lasting protection for people and the planet.
For decades, U.S. environmental protection has relied on a permit-based system to limit pollution. This approach delivered important gains but wasn’t designed to address today’s cumulative climate harms, intergenerational rights, or systemic inequity. Over time, this system has been corrupted by political and economic pressures favoring industry and short-term interests. The consequences? Limited power for those most affected, unequal burdens for poor communities and communities of color, and few meaningful protections for children and future generations.
Join two long-time leaders in constitutional environmental protection for storytelling, strategic insights, and dialogue about how these constitutional approaches deliver durable legal and societal change–and why this moment calls for expanding our collective approach.
Green Amendments For The Generations works through civic education and democratic processes to enshrine explicit environmental protections in state constitutions, and then helps communities enforce them through advocacy and legal action. Our Children’s Trust uses litigation to advance social and legal recognition that these rights already exist–implicit in constitutional guarantees like life, liberty, and equality. Together, these strategies reinforce one another, creating stronger legal infrastructure that benefits environmental, public health, and justice efforts.
This work transforms our system at a critical moment by breathing life into the human right to a healthy environment and stable climate system. When their collective work succeeds, we shift from corporation-profit-pollution frameworks to life-rights-health frameworks—fundamentally changing how agencies operate and becoming a resource for communities and advocates across environmental, health, and justice work.
This discussion is intended for folks in funding or funder-adjacent roles. The formal discussion will last 60 minutes, and speakers will be available an additional 15 minutes for questions.
This webinar is hosted by Health and Environmental Funders Network and co-sponsored by Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders.
Speakers
Maya K. van Rossum
Maya is the Founder of Green Amendments For the Generations and has also led the 4 state watershed-based advocacy organization, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, for over 30 years. In her role there, Maya was the lead and only environmental plaintiff in the landmark case that defeated pro fossil fuel fracking legislation, breathed new life into Pennsylvania’s long ignored environmental rights amendment and became the foundation for the 2014 founding of the national Green Amendment movement and organization. Since then, New York passed an amendment in 2021 and proposals are now advancing in over 20 additional states, with half a dozen more on the way, and there is increasing use of existing Green Amendments in Pennsylvania, New York and Montana.
Mat dos Santos
Mat dos Santos is the Co-Executive Director of Our Children’s Trust, where they lead organizational strategy advancing constitutional protections for a healthy environment and stable climate. They bring nearly two decades of experience in constitutional, civil rights, and complex litigation across public-interest and private-sector settings. Previously, Mat served as Legal Director of the ACLU of Oregon, practiced complex litigation at Morrison & Foerster, and managed global commercial litigation and risk for a multinational pharmaceutical company—experience that informs their systems-level approach to legal and institutional change.
