Christine Bakker to deliver two new EIEL keynote lectures on international and European climate change law

The academic staff of the EIEL Jean Monnet module is proud to once again welcome Professor Christine Bakker for two keynote lectures on international and European climate change law, which will be included in the module’s teaching programme for the 2022-2023 academic year.

Prof Christine Bakker, a renowned scholar of international environmental and climate change law, is currently an affiliated researcher at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy, and a visiting research fellow at the British Institute for International and Comparative Law (BIICL) in London, United Kingdom. She participates in the teaching activities of the EIEL Jean Monnet module for the second year in a row, having already delivered two keynote lectures on the topic of international and European climate change law during the 2021-2022 academic year.

This year, both of her lectures will take place in person at the Department of Law of the University of Siena, Italy. The first lecture will take place on 12 May 2022 at 10.45 CEST, and it will focus on the international context of climate change negotiations, with an emphasis on the recent evolution of climate change law from the Paris Agreement to the outcomes of the COP-27 that was held in Sharm El-Sheik. The second lecture, on 15 May 2022 (at 15.45 CEST) will instead discuss the role played by the European Union on the international stage, the main EU instruments and legal acts relating to climate change, and the evolution of climate litigation before European courts.

Christine Bakker holds a PhD in public international law from the European University Institute (EUI), Florence, and her main areas of research are human rights law including children’s rights, international environmental law, and climate change. She has published widely in these fields and has recently co-edited, with Ivano Alogna and Jean-Pierre Gauci, the volume Climate Change Litigation: Global Perspectives (Brill Publ., 2021). She previously worked at the European Commission (DG Development), as a Research Fellow at the EUI in Florence, as an Adjunct Professor at LUISS University, Rome, and as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Rome-3, and at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa.

EIEL staff announces 2022-2023 calendar of EIEL core teaching activities

With the start of the 2022-2023 spring semester approaching, the staff of the Jean Monnet Module in European and International Law (EIEL) is now able to announce the academic calendar for its core teaching activities.

The EIEL Module, now in its third year of implementation, has recently hosted the first webinar of its 2022-2023 series, featuring Dr Marie-Catherine Petersmann (Senior Researcher at the Tilburg Law School) for a presentation on regional courts and the adjudication of conflicts between environmental protection and human rights.

The core teaching activities of the EIEL Module will start on 20 February, with a series of lectures taught by EIEL Academic Coordinator Prof Riccardo Pavoni as part of the general course in European Union law offered by the Department of Law of the University of Siena, which will run from 20 February to 14 April. On 17 April, Prof Pavoni will introduce a series of fundamental notions of European environmental law. He will discuss the historical and legal evolution of this field of EU law, as well as its legal basis, objectives, sources, and key principles.

On 5 and 8 May, Prof Elisa Morgera (Director of the One Ocean Hub and Professor of Global Environmental Law at the University of Strathclyde) will dedicate two lectures to the origins and main features of international environmental law. On 12 and 15 May, the module will then feature two consecutive keynote lectures by Prof Christine Bakker (Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies), who will return to the University of Siena after her initial involvement in the project in the previous academic year, on EU law and climate change. Lastly, on 19 May, Dr Dario Piselli will conclude the course with a lecture exploring the most recent normative developments in the European regulation of biodiversity and chemicals.

In due course, additional webinars and dissemination activities may also be announced by the EIEL staff, in order to complement the teaching activities of the module.

New EIEL webinar on conflicts between environmental protection and human rights in regional courts

The EIEL Jean Monnet staff is proud to announce a new EIEL webinar, which will focus on how conflicts between environmental protection and human rights are framed and adjudicated by regional courts. Our guest will be Dr Marie-Catherine Petersmann, Senior Researcher at Tilburg Law School (Tilburg University).

The webinar will take place on 26 January 2023 at 14:30 / 2:30pm CET on the YouTube channel of the EIEL Jean Monnet module. Dr Petersmann will retrace how legal frameworks for environmental protection evolved over time and progressively merged with human rights concerns. She will problematise how this relationship was construed and argue that the conflicts that underpin it mainly remained unseen. More specifically, Dr Petersmann will critically evaluate the argumentative tropes and strategies used in the environmental case-law of regional courts to understand how conflicts between environmental protection and human rights are judicially mediated.

During the event, we will also present Dr Petersmann’s new monograph, “When Environmental Protection and Human Rights Collide: The Politics of Conflict Management by Regional Courts” (Cambridge University Press 2022). The volume has been defined “terrific and essential”, “well-argued and thought-provoking”, with an “original and compelling legal analysis” by reviewers.

Besides her role as a Senior Researcher at Tilburg University’s Law School, Dr Petersmann is currently a Resident Fellow at Istituto Svizzero in Rome for the period 2022-2023. At Tilburg University, she works as part of the ‘Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene’ project Prior to that, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow (SNF) at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development (Utrecht) and Teaching Associate at the Strathclyde Center for Environmental Law and Governance (Glasgow).

She earned a PhD and LLM in International Law from the European University Institute (Florence) and an MA in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva). In 2022, she was awarded a Veni grant from the Dutch NWO for her project on ‘Anthropocene Legalities: Reconfiguring Relations with/in More-than-human Worlds’.

New EIEL webinar on armed conflicts and the environment with Anne Dienelt

The academic staff of the EIEL Jean Monnet module is pleased to announce that on 29 September it will host Dr Anne Dienelt for a new webinar on the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts. The event will be the first EIEL webinar of the 2022/2023 academic year.

Dr Anne Dienelt works as a senior research fellow and lecturer at the University of Hamburg. She currently researches questions of resilience in terms of law in light of crises, such as climate change or pandemics. During the webinar, which will take place on 29 September 2022 at 15.30 CEST on the YouTube channel of the EIEL Jean Monnet Module, Dr Dienelt will present her recently-published monograph on Armed Conflicts and the Environment – Complementing the Laws of Armed Conflict with Human Rights Law and International Environmental Law (Springer 2022).

More specifically, Dr Dienelt will discuss how the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts can be enhanced within the existing framework of international law, through the complementary application of three fields of international law, namely the law of armed conflicts, international human rights law, and international environmental law. The webinar will also represent an additional opportunity to discuss the working paper published in January 2022 by EIEL project members Riccardo Pavoni and Dario Piselli, which assesses the history and significance of Principle 24 of the Rio Declaration and calls for the development of a comprehensive multilateral convention on armed conflicts and the environment.

The webinar will be open to all interested participants, and will be available at this link.

New keynote lectures announced: Christine Bakker on international and European climate change law

The academic staff of the EIEL Jean Monnet module is proud to welcome Professor Christine Bakker for two keynote lectures on international and European climate change law, which will be included in the module’s teaching programme for the 2021-2022 academic year.

Prof Christine Bakker, a renowned scholar of international environmental and climate change law, is currently an affiliated researcher at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy, and a visiting research fellow at the British Institute for International and Comparative Law (BIICL) in London, United Kingdom. Both of her lectures will take place in person at the Department of Law of the University of Siena, Italy. The first lecture will take place on 6 May 2022 at 10.45 CEST, and it will focus on the international context of climate change negotiations, with an emphasis on the recent evolution of climate change law from the Paris Agreement to the Glasgow Pact adopted during COP-26. The second lecture, on 9 May 2022 (at 15.45 CEST) will instead discuss the role played by the European Union on the international stage, the main EU instruments and legal acts relating to climate change, and the evolution of climate litigation before European courts.

Christine Bakker holds a PhD in public international law from the European University Institute (EUI), Florence, and her main areas of research are human rights law including children’s rights, international environmental law, and climate change. She has published widely in these fields and has recently co-edited, with Ivano Alogna and Jean-Pierre Gauci, the volume Climate Change Litigation: Global Perspectives (Brill Publ., 2021). She previously worked at the European Commission (DG Development), as a Research Fellow at the EUI in Florence, as an Adjunct Professor at LUISS University, Rome, and as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Rome-3, and at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa.

New EIEL Working Paper on armed conflicts and the environment

The staff of the Jean Monnet Module in European and International Environmental Law (EIEL) is happy to announce the publication of a new EIEL Working Paper focusing on the topic of armed conflicts and the environment on SSRN‘s eLibrary.

The working paper, which was recently co-authored by EIEL academic coordinator Riccardo Pavoni and EIEL programme manager Dario Piselli, assesses the history and significance of Principle 24 of the Rio Declaration, which in 1992 called upon States to respect international law providing protection for the environment in times of armed conflict and to cooperate in its further development.

In particular, the paper explores how the key elements of the principle have influenced subsequent law- and policy-making processes led by institutions such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, the UN Environment Programme, and the International Law Commission. The paper argues that while Principle 24 does not contain specific normative prescriptions, it has translated over the years into a significant and vibrant international law standard.

However, in the light of the gaps and shortcomings that continue to characterize the protection afforded to the environment under international humanitarian law, the paper emphasizes the need to develop a comprehensive multilateral convention on armed conflict and the environment, with the aim of bringing the vision of Principle 24 into completion.

The paper is available for download at this link.

Calendar of 2021-2022 EIEL core teaching activities announced

With the start of the spring semester approaching, the staff of the Jean Monnet Module in European and International Law (EIEL) is now able to announce the academic calendar for its core teaching activities.

The upcoming start of a new semester at the University of Siena will be marked by a return to full in-person teaching for the EIEL Jean Monnet Module, after a 2020-2021 academic year that was heavily impacted by COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. The EIEL Module, now in its second year of implementation, has recently hosted the first webinar of its 2021-2022 series, featuring Dr Riccardo Luporini of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies for a presentation on human rights-based litigation on climate change.

The core teaching activities of the EIEL Module will start on 28 February, with a series of lectures taught by EIEL Academic Coordinator Prof Riccardo Pavoni as part of the general course in European Union law offered by the Department of Law of the University of Siena, which will run from 28 February to 11 April. On 22 April, after the Easter break, Prof Pavoni will introduce a series of fundamental notions of European environmental law. He will discuss the historical and legal evolution of this field of EU law, as well as its legal basis, objectives, sources, and key principles.

On 29 April and 2 May, Prof Elisa Morgera (Director of the One Ocean Hub and Professor of Global Environmental Law at the University of Strathclyde) will dedicate two lectures to the origins and main features of international environmental law. On 6 and 9 May, the module will then feature two consecutive keynote lectures by Prof Christine Bakker (Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies), who is involved for the first time in the project, on EU law and climate change. Lastly, on 13 and 16 May, Dr Dario Piselli will conclude the course with two lectures exploring the most recent normative developments in the European regulation of biodiversity and chemicals.

In due course, additional webinars and dissemination activities may also be announced by the EIEL staff, in order to complement the teaching activities of the module.

New EIEL Webinar: Riccardo Luporini to Discuss Human Rights-based Climate Litigation

Photo credit: Michael Adams, Gardi Sugdub, Panama, 2019 (Creative Commons Licence CC BY-NC 2.0)

We are proud to announce the next EIEL webinar of the 2021/2022 academic year, which will take place on 20 January 2022 at 15.00 CET. For the lecture, which will be live-streamed online through YouTube Live, we will welcome Dr Riccardo Luporini, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in International Law at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy.

Dr Luporini’s presentation will explore the growing phenomenon of human rights-based climate change litigation. The relationship between human rights and climate change is today widely recognised by civil society, states and international organisations – and litigants around the world are increasingly putting forward human rights arguments before different judicial and quasi-judicial bodies with the aim of filling the existing accountability gap in climate change law. In the webinar, Dr Luporini will try to offer a typology of this assorted set of complaints, discussing examples of failed, successful and pending cases while devoting special attention to the first Italian climate case (A Sud et al v Italy, also known as “Giudizio universale”). In addition, he will analyse the specific legal hurdles and most controversial points raised by human rights-based climate change litigation, as well as the possible future developments in this field.

Dr Luporini obtained his PhD from the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna with a dissertation concerning the relationships between climate change, disasters and human rights under international law. He has been Visiting PhD Fellow at the Centre for International Law and Governance, University of Copenhagen. In addition, he has served as assistant to the Special Rapporteur on the topic “Protection of persons in the event of disasters” at the 68th session of the UN International Law Commission and as blue book trainee at the European Commission Directorate-General for Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations.

The webinar will be open to all interested participants, and will be available at this link.

University of Siena to host the 30th Anniversary Workshop of the Italian Yearbook of International Law

Cover photo: Alexandria. Creator: zbruch | Credit: Getty Images | Copyright: zbruch

The academic staff of the Jean Monnet Module in European and International Environmental Law (EIEL) is proud to announce that it will co-organise IYIL@30, the 30th Anniversary Workshop of the Italian Yearbook of International Law. Originally founded in 1975, the Yearbook is one of the leading sources of Italian scholarship and practice in the field of international law, which it aims to disseminate among non-Italian speaking scholars and practitioners. Its latest volume has just been published, and is available online (for those with a subscription) at this link.

The IYIL@30 workshop, which will be hosted at the Department of Law of the University of Siena on 29-30 November 2021, will take place both in person and online. Each of the two days will be dedicated to one overarching topic. On 29 November, the participants will explore the theme The Mediterranean Sea and International Law, with a series of presentations addressing issues of maritime delimitation, maritime security, protection of underwater cultural heritage, criminal activities at sea, and conservation of biological diversity. On 30 November, the workshop will instead discuss the theme Cities and International Law. The contributions will focus on a broad range of key research questions, from the shifting status of cities in international law to the interface between cities and international normative frameworks in the areas of human rights, sustainable development, protection of cultural heritage, and climate change. For a full list of speakers, the PDF leaflet of the workshop is available here for download.

For those interested in attending in person, it is necessary to register by sending an email to italianyearbook@gmail.com. For those joining online, the event will be live-streamed here (on 29 November) and here (on 30 November).

New EIEL Guest Lecture: Sabrina Brizioli on Greening Agri-Food Systems Through Codes of Conduct and Environmental Product Declarations

We are proud to announce the first EIEL guest lecture of the 2021/2022 academic year, which will take place on 15 September 2021 at 14.00 CEST. For the lecture, which will be live-streamed online through YouTube Live, we will welcome Dr Sabrina Brizioli, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Law of the University of Perugia, Italy.

Her lecture will explore the role of Environmental Codes of Conduct and Environmental Product Declarations, which are increasingly used in the agri-food sector to enhance both business-to-business and business-to-consumer communication, and whose aim is to record the environmental impacts and performance of products, in achieving the objective of sustainable agri-food systems in both the European Union and at the international level.

The lecture will follow the perspective of some relevant international and EU environmental instruments, i.e. the Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals, the European Green Deal and its “From Farm to Fork” strategy, the Common Agricultural Policy and its eco-schemes. Moreover, it will scrutinise the commitment of local and regional entities to develop sustainable food policies and renew their strategies in order to put the food and farming at the heart of environmental matters and health emergencies as recently highlighted by the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration and the preparatory documents for COP26.

Dr Brizioli will articulate international environmental law issues into a regional dimension and discuss whether the improvement of sustainability of food processing, as requested by the global response to climate and biodiversity emergency, could effectively reduce the environmental footprint of agri-food systems, drive positive changes and ensure resilience to shocks at local and rural levels. Such an approach underlines that actions should be aligned vertically (between different levels of governance) and horizontally (across economic sectors and stakeholders) to accelerate an integrated/just transition to sustainable food systems.

Sabrizina Brizioli holds a Ph.D (cum laude) in Legal Sciences (2020) and a five-year law degree (cum laude-2012) from the Università degli Studi di Perugia where she is cultore della materia (expert in the field) in International Law, Advanced International Law and EU Law. She is also a qualified lawyer and expert in Legal Professions (“Scuola di Specializzazione L.Migliorini” Diploma – Università degli Studi di Perugia).

She is a member of the Scientific Board for Europe of the Review Diritto e Processo, Rights & Remedies-Derecho Y Proceso and she coordinates the Focus: Environmental Law and Policy. She has recently been selected for a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Historical Archives of the European Union, which are housed at the European University Institute (Florence). Sabrina’s research interests lie in international environmental law, climate change law, environmental justice and food law.

The lecture will be open to all interested participants, and will be available at this link.