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Click on a day to view: Meeting Agenda - Environmental Law/Climate ChangeWednesday, April 15
Environmental Law/Climate Change
8:45 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.International Environmental Law Committee Within the past year, support has emerged for cap-and-trade as the most politically viable technique for reducing or eliminating the emission of heat-trapping gases. Yet we live in a world in which markets have rather spectacularly failed with the dot.com bubble, the California energy fiasco, and the current financial meltdown. Would a carbon market, or markets for other greenhouse gases, really solve the problems for which they are proposed? Markets could harness private capital and ingenuity to address the most serious crisis currently facing humanity, but carbon trading is so fraught with uncertainties and contingencies that perhaps no amount of regulation can manage adequately the potential for gaming the system. Between these positions are a range of views about how to frame measures to create and maintain a properly functioning carbon market. After Michael Gerrard lays out the current legal and regulatory landscape and introduces the proposals currently being considered in the White House and Congress, Jeff Gracer and Jeff Smith will debate the virtues and defects of the several possible responses, with particular attention to the opportunities for lawyers in private practice in the implementation of whatever approaches are finally enacted. Program Chair: Moderator: Speakers: Saving the Planet - From Kyoto to Copenhagen and Beyond: Part 1
Environmental Law/Climate Change, Public International Law/Rule of Law
Canada Committee Climate change is at the forefront on all political, social, commercial and business agendas and stategies. It will affect everyone’s lives, no matter where we live. It affects weather, food, housing, health, use of natural resources and energy, and promises to change everything we have been used to. Where our world will be heading is of utmost importance for future generations. However, not all governments perceive the problems or issues in the same way. Ambassadors and government representatives will address the issue from their perspectives in an attempt to find common ground on basic issues. Program Chairs: Moderator: Speakers:
Environmental Law/Climate Change, Public International Law/Rule of Law
Europe Committee Environment is the word. The road from the Kyoto Protocol to Bali to Poznan leads to the Copenhagen Agreement and beyond 2012. Travel metaphors abound regarding the Bali roadmap. Our world is melting at both ends. The speakers’ backdrop is the failure of the U.S. to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the failure of the EU to meet their ambitious plans to fight climate change, the fast paced changes in the developing countries since Kyoto, the renewed interest of the U.S. in climate change, and let us not forget THE CRISIS and the enormous investments needed to fight climate change. The panel will put all the issues in perspective and provide a glimpse of how the Copenhagen agreement may turn out and how it may affect our clients and their activities. They will also answer questions such as how will businesses need to adjust, how long will they have to adjust and what happens if they don’t. Program Chairs: Moderator:
Speakers: Thursday, April 168:45 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.
SHOWCASE PROGRAM
Environmental Law/Climate Change Canada Committee Representatives of Canada, Mexico and the US will discuss each country's most recent individual and multi-lateral responses to global warming. The experts will also discuss what's ahead for North America as "post-Kyoto" approaches. Program Chairs: Moderators: Speakers:
Environmental Law/Climate Change, Dispute Resolution/Litigation, International Trade/Customs
International Environment Law Committee When does government action purporting to protect and preserve natural resources become a compensatory expropriation under an investment treaty? The issue of takings and environmental protection has long been discussed as a matter of domestic constitutional jurisprudence, with fascinating parallels and differences when the subject of a dispute under international law. In this program, experts from different sectors will examine recent developments in free trade agreements, trade policy and international arbitrations, including the recent ICSID case Biwater Gauff v. Tanzania, involving the privatization of a water concession, and the ongoing NAFTA Chapter 11 case, Glamis Gold v. United States, in which a Canadian mining conglomerate, Glamis Gold, Ltd., has brought a $50 million claim against the U.S. arising out of a dispute over a proposed gold mine in northern California. The panel of experts will explore the development of regulatory expropriation law in the hotly-contested and high-stakes arena of environment and natural resource protection. Program Chairs: Moderator: Speakers: 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Environmental Law/Climate Change, Regulatory/Regional
International Environmental Law Committee Scientists have issued dire predictions that illegal, underreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and environmental degradation could destroy the world’s existing commercial fishing stocks by 2050. Moreover, climate change threatens to permanently remake the world’s oceans. When the stakes could not be higher, why has it been so difficult to develop successful strategies to address these challenges to our greatest shared resource? What is working and what is not? What explains the apparent disconnect between science and policy, including catch quotas that consistently exceed the recommendations of scientists? Are Regional Fisheries Management Organizations playing an effective role? And have the U.S. and EU been leaders or laggards on these issues? This program brings together leading experts to consider the extent to which legal solutions can preserve our oceans and promote sustainable fisheries for the collective benefit. Program Chairs: Moderator: Speakers: 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Environmental Law/Climate Change, Corporate Counsel/Transactional
International Environmental Law Committee Investors are facing new and unexpected scenarios of regulations that were not in place in the last decade which has impacted their investments. Many emerging countries have passed strict environmental laws that are conditioning the structure of a deal. What has been the effect of environmental laws on M&A and corporate compliance? Do these laws represent an obstacle to investments? What guidance for corporate governance and environmental management can be derived from recent trends and decisions in litigation? In this program a lively discussion will examine how these development’s impact on the business community, including the roles of local governments, NGOs and lenders, and management liability and parent company liability issues, among other topics. A comparison of the way these laws are addressed in different jurisdictions and how to manage environmental risks in corporate transactions will also be addressed. The audience will leave with a practical knowledge that will help in structuring and negotiating an investment. Program Chair: Moderator: Speakers: Environmental Law/Climate Change, Corporate Counsel/Transactional International Energy and Natural Resources Committee Over the past several years, a dramatic divergence of views has emerged on how developing countries with natural resources should best develop those resources in a socially and environmentally sustainable way; most effectively use those resources to promote long-term growth and development; and involve the private sector and foreign investment, if at all. The program will explore this broad and complex array of issues challenging policy makers, investors, lenders and the lawyers who advise them, through a mock meeting of a panel of advisors representing the views of a potential foreign investor, a host country and a multilateral development bank, who are advising a fictional U.S. government official (moderator) seeking to support a hypothetical oil and gas export project in a fictional country. Key topics will include an examination of the differing views of the panel (and resulting tensions) on public-private partnerships, the role of international organizations like the World Bank, environmental and social concerns and FDI. Program Chairs: Moderator: Speakers: |
