Paulo Busse has over 25 years’ experience as a consultant and trial lawyer in all sorts of criminal cases, acting from the police enquiry all the way to the upper courts. He is also experienced at dealing with sensitive investigations involving the handling of issues of high complexity and at cases that expand beyond national borders.

He has over 20 years’ experience assisting human rights and environmental organisations and defenders in a wide range of cases and situations, representing them in court and in communications with authorities, rendering general legal advice and preventive assessments on all sorts of Brazilian and international law matters, submitting communications on crimes and other illegalities to relevant authorities, in Brazil and abroad, and others.

He has a longstanding experience in defending activists being criminally framed, threatened and attacked for their work in protection of the environment and human rights, and in planning and coordinating sensitive investigations aiming to identify and collect evidence on environmental crimes and other fundamental rights violations.

In more recent years, he has been devising and implementing cutting-edge strategic litigation on environmental, climate emergency and human rights related matters. In collaboration with other lawyers, he has spearheaded more than 30 high-profile legal actions to protect the environment before Brazilian courts (most of them are winning cases).

Along with other lawyers, he has helped drafting an Article 15 Communication to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on crimes against humanity perpetrated against traditional populations of the Amazon between 2011 and 2021, filed on behalf of Climate Counsel, Observatório do Clima and Greenpeace Brasil, supported by Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT), Greenpeace International, Global Witness and Instituto Zé Claudio e Maria (www.brazil-crimes.org).

Author of academic papers and speaker in conferences and seminaries in major universities (UCLA, Columbia, NYU, Central Saint Martins, Carlos III de Madrid and others), COPs side events and others. Often consulted by journalists, practitioners and academics on matters relating to environmental destruction, climate justice and human rights, in Brazil and abroad.

In 2024 in Colombia, he was one of the first guest speakers in a regional meeting of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) ever to address transitional justice and human rights related matters in contexts of environmental destruction.  

Coauthor of the Brazilian Ecocide Bill submitted to and currently under deliberation at the Brazilian Congress aiming to criminalise acts that knowingly cause significant, widespread or lasting harm to the environment (ecocide).

Paulo’s work on behalf of environmental defenders is the subject of a chapter of the 2025 book ‘Green Crime', a comprehensive investigation into the world of ‘green crime’ as told through a series of real-world cases by criminal psychologist, bestselling author, TV and audio shows presenter Dr Julia Shaw.