Cormac Cullinan is a practising environmental attorney and author based in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a director of the leading South African environmental law firm, Cullinan & Associates Inc, and director of the Wild Law Institute, a non-profit organisation that advocates for Rights of Nature. A former commercial lawyer, he has practiced, taught and written about environmental law and policy since 1992, and has worked in more than 20 countries.
In the academic field he has lectured and written widely on governance issues related to human interactions with the environment and is notable for authoring a book, Wild Law, as well as several works commissioned and published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He is a graduate of the University of Natal and King's College London and is an honorary research associate of the University of Cape Town.
His work includes drafting: the Integrated Coastal Management Bill now before Parliament, the agreement between South Africa, Namibia and Angola that established the Benguela Current Commission; waste legislation for KwaZulu Natal and legislation for sustainable land use in the Western Cape.
In 2008 he was listed among the world's most extraordinary environmental champions in Planet Savers: 301 Extraordinary Environmentalists, which lists 301 people in history to be commended for their important role in saving and conserving the environment and promoting sustainable governance, including the likes of Buddha, St Francis of Assisi and Henry Thoreau.
In 2016, Cullinan was included in Warrior Lawyers: From Manila to Manhattan, Attorneys for the Earth. In 2021 he won the Nicke Steele award for the South African environmentalist of the year and in 2018 received the Enviropaedia Ecologic lifetime achievement award.