Atty. Gloria Estenzo Ramos

Atty. Gloria “Golly” Estenzo Ramos is the Country Leader of Oceana in the Philippines. She is the Vice President of Oceana Philippines and is a member of the Executive Committee of Oceana International. Oceana International was founded in 2001 and is the largest international advocacy organization focused solely on ocean conservation. Its offices around the world work together to win strategic and directed campaigns to achieve measurable outcomes to help make our oceans biodiverse and abundant.

Atty. Ramos and Oceana Philippines are now at the vanguard of efforts to protect and preserve Benham Rise. Oceana Philippines recently conducted a very successful Multisectoral Forum on Benham Rise or Philippine rise that called on the President to declare it Benham rise a Marine Protected Area. Oceana Philippines (http://ph.oceana.org/) seeks to restore the health, richness, and abundance of the fisheries and work for its sustainable management.

Before joining Oceana in 2014, Atty. Ramos was a lawyer-advocate for the environment, women and children’s rights and good governance. Atty. Ramos was a Southeast Asian representative to IUCN Academy of Environmental Law Governing Board. She was a faculty member of the University of Cebu College of Law in Cebu City. She co founded the Philippine Earth Justice Center, a non-profit organization which institutes environmental cases and uses accountability tools to promote good governance while assisting in stakeholders’ compliance with environmental laws.

Among the prominent environmental cases she was involved in the past years were stopping the offshore oil-drilling project in the largest marine protected area in the country, the Tañon Strait Protected Seascape, which oil drilling project the Supreme Court declared in 2015 as unconstitutional. Together with other NGOs and partners, she also helped halt the indiscriminate dumping of coal ash, plus a proposed destructive reclamation in Cebu.

Awarded the Globe Media Awards for Excellence in Journalism as the “Columnist of the Year” in 2017 and 2015, she maintains a weekly column about the environment and governance with Cebu Daily News.

As an educator, she inculcates the spirit of volunteerism among law students and integrates community partnership in the course requirements. Under the trail-blazing Popularizing the Law Program of UC College of Law, her students monitored the level of compliance of the Solid Waste Management Law, among barangays in the cities of Cebu and Mandaue and set up websites, among others, on anti-red tape, solid waste management to inform and guide stakeholders and decision-makers. In partnership with public schools and mountain barangays, the law students also shared their knowledge of the Law with the community.

Atty. Ramos is a regular resource speaker on environment, human rights and governance. She is an alumna of the University of the Philippines – Diliman, Quezon City, where she obtained her degrees in Master of Public Administration (2003), Bachelor of Laws (1979) and Bachelor of Arts, major in Political Science (1974). She is proudest in her role as a mother to four wonderful children. She is married to Dante, likewise a member of the Bar, also a co-founder of PEJC.