The award recognizes organizations, programs or individuals who have distinguished themselves in environmental law and policy by contributing significant leadership in improving the substance, process or understanding of environmental protection and sustainable development.
Kravchenko, who devoted 35 years of her career to academia, taught environmental law for more than 25 years at the National University of L'viv in Ukraine before moving to the United States. She taught at the University of Oregon, where her courses included Human Rights and the Environment, International Environmental Law, and Climate Change in International Law.
Kravchenko's dedication to scholarly research resulted in 12 books, as well as 190 articles and book chapters. Among her books was Human Rights and the Environment: Cases, Law and Policy - co-authored with John Bonine - which was the first law-school casebook to combine the fields of human rights law and environmental law.
In addition to her passion for teaching and scholarly research, Kravchenko was deeply involved in public policy reform and spoke widely on environmental and climate law. She served for 10 years as the elected vice chair of the Compliance Committee of the Aarhus Convention, a quasi-adjudicative international body.
Kravchenko was founder and president of Environment-People-Law, the first public-interest environmental law firm in Ukraine; co-founder and co-director of the Association of Environmental Law of Central and Eastern Europe; and elected regional governor of the International Council of Environmental Law.
She served as a vice chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Commission on Environmental Law and an adviser for the Ministry of Environment and the Parliament of Ukraine. She also worked as a "citizen diplomat" in the international negotiation of the Aarhus Convention.
The ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources is the premier forum for strategies and information for environmental, energy and resource lawyers. Representing more than 11,000 members with a wide range of professional interests, the section keeps its members abreast of development trends, current court decisions, legislative initiatives and statutes concerning environmental, natural resources and energy law.
With nearly 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.
