Working Group on Environmental Law and Policy
Contact: Jerneja Penca
The field of environmental law is rapidly evolving, continuously becoming increasingly complex and impacting on different levels and different areas of national, European and international law and policy.
Given the interest in this area of a significant number of researchers and professors at the EUI, access to information on environmental law seems key to keep the debate alive and informed within the Institute.
The Environmental Law Working Group (ELWG) was formed in 2004 and has met regularly since then, with the aim of:
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providing updates on the developments of environmental law at the national, European and international level
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information sharing on research sources, publication opportunities, and conferences/events concerning environmental law
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keeping environmental law on the agenda of the EUI
In the past Environmental Law Newsletters had been prepared by the ELWG after each meeting of the working group, with updates on the group's activities and discussions, and information on other environment-related news.
The Working Group published two Working Papers. The first one collected presentations and contributions by members, visiting professors and fellows in the period 2004-2005, titled "The Future of Environmental Law: International and European Perspectives." The second Working Paper collected the presentations made by EUI and guest researchers during a Roundtable dedicated to recent developments in the field of Sustainable Development Law. It is now available as a EUI Law WP (n°27/2004) under the title “Sustainable Development and International Law: The way forward".
Life after the EUI - some former WGEL researchers in the world:
Patrycja Dabrowska
After obtaining her Ph.D. at the EUI in 2006 (EU regulation on GMOs in the context of new governance) Patrycja Dabrowska has returned to Poland to continue her academic and professional career. She is currently teaching at the University of Warsaw but also practicing as a private legal consultant in many areas. In the past her research interests conduced her to focus on EU law and governance, in particular, risk regulation, food and environmental law, judicial protection and preliminary ruling procedure.
Hanne Birgitte Jensen
Hanne Birgitte Jensen gained her Ph.D. from the EUI in 2005, writing her research on the concept of law from the perspective of sustainable development and under conditions of globalization, shifts toward multilateral accountability, informational regulation and participation). For a paper based on her Ph.D., the International Society for the Systems Sciences awarded Hanne Birgitte The Sir Geoffrey Vickers Memorial Award in July 2006 in Sonoma, California. The paper is available online under Systems Philosophy & Ethics. Currently, Hanne Birgitte is back on environmental consultancy in Denmark.
Elisa Morgera
Elisa Morgera defended her PhD thesis in 2007, and published it with Oxford University Press in 2009 ("Corporate Accountability in International Environmental Law"). From 2006-2009 she worked as an associate legal officer of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, where she advised over 50 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the South Pacific on improving domestic legislation on natural resources. In October 2009 she joined the University of Edinburgh, UK, as lecturer in European environmental law.
Emanuela Orlando gained her Ph.D. in International and European Environmental Law at the European University Institute in Florence, under the supervision of Prof. Francesco Francioni.
Her Ph.D. thesis was on liability for environmental harm in International and European Community law. Her main areas of interest were related to international and European environmental law, cultural heritage and landscape protection, human rights law, environmental governance.
Graduated in law at the University of Siena in 2001, and after obtaining the Magister Iuris in European and Comparative Law at the University of Oxford.
Emanuela is also a lawyer admitted to practice in Italy and in Spain (since 2003) and a member of the Rome Bar Association (Ordine degli Avvocati di Roma). She practiced corporate and commercial law for two years for a major Italian and US firm in Rome.
Laura Zanotti collaborated with the WGEL during the year 2005-2006, when she was visiting the EUI as a Jean Monnet Fellow, after receiving her Ph.D. in 2004 from Florida International University. She is now Associate Professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Her research and teaching include crucial political and international theory, as well as international organization, security, peacekeeping and democratization.
Laura is currently preparing a book that explores, through a Foucaultian framework, United Nations peacekeeping in the context of the post-cold war international security regime. Other aspects of Dr. Zanotti’s research regard the reform of the UN, the changing understandings of the role of the UN as a collective security organization and their implication for state sovereignty, as well as the UN’s new “human security” based approaches to crisis management and prevention.
Zanotti has published articles in Alternatives, International Peacekeeping, as well as in the European University Working Papers Series. She has also contributed a chapter on risk management and natural disaster prevention to the Annuario IAI/ISPI, 2006 Edition. This intense academic life is nourished by a long experience of working at the UN, where she has served both in administration and as a political advisor for Peacekeeping Operations, working also in the field (Haiti, in 1995 and 1999). From 2001 to 2003 she was in Croatia where she performed the function of Deputy to the Head of the United Nations Liaison Office in Zagreb.
Valentina Vadi is lecturer in international law at the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University. She joined Maastricht University in October 2009 from the EUI where she defended her Ph.D. on the interplay between public health and investors' rights in international investment law. She holds a PhD from the European University Institute, degrees in international law and political science from the University of Siena, a Master of Legal Research from the EUI and a Magister Juris (LL.M.) in European and Comparative Law from the University of Oxford. She is a member of the Florence Bar. Prior to coming to Maastricht, she was an adjunct lecturer in international economic law at the Faculty of Law, University of Rome III, lecturer in international law at Hasselt University (Belgium) and worked as research assistant at the Academy of European Law, the EUI and the University of Oxford.
Valentina's main research interest are public international law and international economic law with a particular focus on the law of foreign investments and international dispute settlement as well as regulatory policy, intellectual property regulation and cultural heritage law. At Maastricht, she teaches international law and international trade law.
Some of the past sessions of WGELP
23/03/2011: Human Rights and International Environmental Law: Some Current Problems with prof. Alan Boyle, University of Edinburgh.
11/11/2009: Pre-Copenhagen perspective: present and future of climate change law with prof. Massimilano Montini, University of Siena.
25/06/2009: Symposium on Sustainability Governance, organized by the Global Ecological Integrity Group (GEIG) in collaboration with Prof. Francesco Francioni and the Law Department
13/11/2008: Joint and open session between the WGELP and the WG on cultural heritage on Land use, Global change and its different implications (Human Rights, environmental issues, tangible and intangible cultural heritage)
Presentation by Patricia Quillacq: The project of EU directive for soil protection and new trends in European spatial planning.
8/11/2008: Open session with Prof. James Salzman (Professor of Law and Professor of environmental policy, Duke University, Durham, NC), on Climate Change Beyond Kyoto: What Role for International Law?
28/04/008: 'The CPA Iron-Rhine Arbitration and the Principle of Sustainable Development' by I. Dubava; and 'The Erika Affair and the Notion of Ecological Damage' by P. Quillacq and E. Orlando.
07/02/2008: Access Rights, Procedural Questions and Public Participation in EU and National Environmental Law