GP Columnists
Author - David Ritter
David Ritter is a commentator, academic and campaigner currently living in London.
David is the Head of Biodiversity Campaigns at Greenpeace UK in London, working specifically on issues related to destructive and over-fishing, deforestation in the world's rainforests and climate change.
Previously David was one of Australia's leading Indigenous land rights lawyers, working as Principal Legal Officer of the Yamatji Marlpa Land Council, Aboriginal representative body for the Pilbara, Murchison and Gascoyne regions of Western Australia, between 1999 and 2005. Prior to that, David worked as a commercial lawyer.
He is the author of numerous essays, articles and reviews in law, history, politics and current affairs. His first solely-authored books, The Native Title Market (UWA Press) and Contesting Native Title (Allen & Unwin) were published in 2009.
David has lectured in Australian history, legal history, constitutional law, jurisprudence and Indigenous legal issues at various Australian universities and remains a Visiting Fellow to the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Australia. He is also retained on an honorary basis as a consultant by Chalk & Fitzgerald Lawyers and Consultants, based in Sydney.
More about David can be found on his website.
This blog represents David's personal views, which are not necessarily shared by any of the organisations with which he is associated.
Latest Posts:
A Promethean Revisiting of Copenhagen: Man-Made World: Choosing between Progress and Planet
More than two years since the failure of the COP15 Copenhagen climate summit, the meanings of that debacle continue to be both politically and intellectually contested. A recent contribution has come from Andrew Charlton, who was the...
National Interests and International Environmental Politics: Spain and Overfishing
It should never be assumed that representatives of nation states within international institutions can somehow escape the gravity of domestic concerns. In the context of the global politics of the environment, from climate change...
Treasure Islands and CSR
For anyone concerned about unfairness and inequity in the global economic system, Nicholas Shaxson’s 2011 book Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World, was one of the...
The Paradigm is Broken: The End of the Supply Side Fantasy and the failure of the Liberal Environmental Compromise
With the legitimacy of the dominant ideology of the last thirty years already in tatters, two new studies released this week have further shredded the authority of the existing global order.
First, we now know that one of the fundamental...
Reconciling Globalization and Social Democracy: The Strange Case of the Purple Book
Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things just don't seem the same
Actin' funny, but I don't know why
Excuse me while I kiss the sky
How do centre left governments achieve domestic objectives in an...
Occupy to the Cityboys: Time to Grow Up
When I was a child I spake as a child
I understood as a child, I thought as a child
but when I became a man I put away childish things
It is Neoliberalism not Occupy that is the Utopian Fantasy
It was inevitable that the global Occupy movement would be denounced as utopian by any number of detractors, but such criticism is a stark and wilful misreading of the real nature of...
Fish in a G-String? In Praise of... The End of the Line
‘We need to put the Common Fisheries Policy in a G-String.’
This rather surprising assertion was made to me earlier this year by a colleague working for the iconic London Department Store Selfridges. At the time, the...
