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The second-ever Climate Law and Governance Global Leadership Awards were announced in a special awards ceremony at Climate Law and Governance Day 2021, held at the University of Glasgow during COP26.
Winners are listed below:
Award Winner – General Counsel: Green Climate Fund, accepted by Adv Douglas Leys, QC
Adv Douglas Leys, QC is the Green Climate Fund’s General Counsel. He has accumulated extensive experience in the public and private sectors, including several decades of service with the Solicitor-General’s Office in Jamaica. This culminated in his appointment as Jamaica’s Solicitor General, before moving to GCF. He holds the rank of Queen’s Counsel, a position reserved for persons who have distinguished themselves at the bar in the Commonwealth.
Award Winner – Civil Society: Adv Lucy Maxwell and colleagues from the Climate Litigation Network and Urgenda Foundation
Lucy Maxwell is a human rights lawyer and Senior Legal Associate at the Climate Litigation Network, a project of the Urgenda Foundation. Lucy provided support to the legal team for the claimants in the People v Arctic Oil case.
Award Winner – Private Law Firms: DLA Piper, accepted by Adv Steven Gray
Adv Steven Gray is a public international lawyer with 18 years of experience in climate change policy and regulation. He works with lawyers across a number of practice areas to provide advice on climate regulation, carbon pricing, climate risk integration and climate-related disclosure. He also supports clients develop strategies, identify and manage sustainability and ESG risks across project finance, asset and resource allocation, due diligence, governance, compliance, policies and processes.
DLA Piper is a global law firm with lawyers located in more than 40 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, positioning us to help clients with their legal needs around the world. For the eleventh consecutive year, DLA Piper earned the number one ranking globally for overall deal volume in 2020, according to Mergermarket’s league tables for legal advisors.
Award winner – Top University and Law Faculty: Autonomous University of Madrid, together with the University of Chile, and accepted by Prof Rosa Fernandez Egea (UAM)
Rosa M. Fernández Egea holds a PhD in Law from the Autonomous University of Madrid (2007) with a doctoral thesis: Free movement of goods and environmental protection in the WTO (published by Marcial Pons, 2008) and a Master in European Community Law from the same University (1999). He has researched in various foreign centres, including at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hamburg (2004-2005), at the WTO headquarters in Geneva (2002, 2003) and at the Centre for Studies and Research in International Law and International Relations of the Hague Academy of International Law (2008). Professor Fernández Egea has been the beneficiary of several competitive scholarships (FPU Fellow and Fellow of the Deutsche akademischen Austauschdienst (DAAD)/La Caixa program). She is currently an assistant professor of Public International Law at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
Award winner – Climate Negotiator: Adv Paul Watkinson, recent co-Chair of the UNFCCC SBSTA
Paul Watkinson has been working on climate change and sustainable development issues for more than 20 years, for much of that time as Chief Negotiator and Head of the Climate Negotiations Team for the French Ministry of Ecological and Solidary Transition. He currently occupies a post as Counsellor to the Director for International and European Affairs in the Ministry and is a member of the management board of the French interministerial climate team.
An experienced international negotiator, he has a detailed knowledge not just of the technical issues but also of the negotiating mechanics, the key actors, and the workings of the UN Climate Convention, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement. He has long experience of running teams in a project mode, drawn from different ministries or even countries. At the end of the UN Climate Conference in Bonn, in November 2017, he was elected Chair of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) for the coming year and a member of the bureau of COP23. Between 2014 and 2016 he was a member of the management group of the French interministerial team that prepared and ran COP21 in 2015 with responsibility for coordinating the negotiation of the Paris Agreement.
Warmest congratulations again to all award winners. Learn more about Climate Law & Governance Day 2021 here, or email us at climatelawgovernance@cisdl.org.