The Legal Path to Sustainable Development: Module 7  

Developing the law to protect biodiversity and the environment 

  Live Session: 19th June 2021, 13.00 - 16.15 (BST)

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  • Pre-reading study time
    2 hours
  • Live session 
    3.5 hours
  • Community of Practice
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Session 1: How can the law protect biodiversity?

Humankind is experiencing a technological revolution, some call it the fourth industrial revolution, which is fundamentally altering the way we live, work, and relate to one another.
This transformation is unlike anything humankind has experienced before in its scale, scope, and complexity. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear, it is unfolding at expediential rather than linear pace, and it is deeply disruptive, affecting almost every industry in every country.

There are growing expectations as well as concerns arising with those technologies in the life sciences, otherwise known as biotechnologies, that are most relevant to biodiversity such as gene sequencing and editing, synthetic biology and engineered gene drives. The scale at which entire industries are being transformed by these emerging biotechnologies cannot be understated, and neither can the sheer commercial size and global reach of these industries.

This presentation/lecture on international biodiversity law and biotechnology will focus on the interface of emerging biotechnologies and the international legal framework governing biodiversity as established, primarily, by the Convention on Biological Diversity and its Protocols, namely the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization. We briefly examine whether and how international law in these areas remain relevant and effective in the face of such rapid advance in biotechnology.
MEET THE INSTRUCTOR

Worku Damena Yifru
Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, UNEP

Mr. Yifru is the Senior Legal Adviser at the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity which is administered by the United Nations Environment Programme. He is the Head of the Legal and Intergovernmental Affairs Unit. He is environmental lawyer with over three decades of experience working on environment and development issues, both at the national and international levels.

Prior to starting his international career, Mr. Yifru was in charge of the Policy and Legislation Department of the Environmental Protection Agency of his native country, Ethiopia, where he led important processes, such as the preparation and adoption of Environmental Policy (1997), and the drafting of the basic environmental laws of the country. He was the Director of Ethiopian Conservation Strategy Initiative through which the Environmental Policy, the first ever for the country, was developed along with implementation strategies. He was also a part-time lecturer on Environment and Natural Resources Law at the Civil Service University of Ethiopia.

After joining the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2001, Mr. Yifru contributed, among other things, to the rapid entry into force and the launching of the implementation of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. He served as the secretary of the Compliance Committee under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety for eight years. He was also the secretary of the Working Group which negotiated the Nagoya – Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress, a treaty that provides liability rules for damage caused by the transboundary movement of genetically modified organisms.

Mr. Yifru has LL.B. from the Law Faculty of Addis Ababa University (1988), and LL.M. in Environmental Law, from the London School of Economics and Political Science (1995).
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Session 2: Towards a Circular Economy: Legal Opportunities

The aim of this session is to familiarise participants with the concept of a circular economy, what this may mean in practice in term of policies including regulatory policy, and outline the current legal framework. It will cover the legal principles that are applied, the challenges that arise from trade law, as well as the challenges in devising an impactful legal framework touching on topics such as the right to repair and planned obsolescence.
MEET THE INSTRUCTOR

Maya De-Souza,
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), UK

Maya de Souza is Head of Resource Efficiency & Waste Prevention Policy in Defra’s Resources & Waste Division, playing a lead role in circular economy policy. She has over 12 years of experience as a policy official in government covering a range of policy areas: soil protection policy, flood risk management, greening government (procurement and operations) and circular economy. She also has over 3 years’ experience working with the business community on the environment in Hong Kong.

 Prior to her career in environmental policy, Maya was a lawyer in government and before that in private practice. She also has a wealth of experience of policy and implementation issues that arise at a local level from her time as a local councillor in the London Borough of Camden. She studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, and has an LLM from the University of London, as well as being a qualified solicitor.
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