COP29 De-Brief: State-of-Play and Challenges

COP29 De-Brief – State-of-Play and Challenges 

About this Event 

In the wake of the 2024 US election and growing concerns about the climate agenda, COP29’s agenda comprised a set of crucial discussions about the future of climate finance and other topics. With key debates around themes such as the New Collective Quantified Goal on Finance, the operationalisation of the Loss & Damage Fund, and the role of Multilateral Development Banks, there are equal expectations about the outcomes of COP29 negotiations and what will be left for COP30 in Brazil.

The COP29 De-Brief, hosted by the UCL Centre for Law and Environment, will discuss some of these developments by bringing together theory, practice, and critique, with a panel featuring academics, public officials, practitioners, and NGOs. The event will also see the launch of the Executive Summary of an upcoming UCL Policy Brief by Monserrat Madariaga Gómez de Cuenca and Tejas Rao on Reforming UNFCCC COP Processes in view of these growing challenges.

One panel with two rounds of questions, followed by a Q&A with the audience. 

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Speakers' Biographies

Vesselina Haralampieva is an Associate Director and Senior Sustainability Counsel at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and an Honorary Professor at the UCL Faculty of Laws. She leads the energy and climate change practice area of the Office of the General Counsel’s Legal Transition Team. Vesselina is in charge of designing and implementing policy and legal reform projects in the EBRD region aimed at enabling green transition and sustainable development. She has supported national authorities in developing legislation on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and the broader energy reform. Vesselina is a member of the Working Group on Climate Change to the Law Society of England and Wales and is a frequent speaker on climate finance and climate law and governance. Before joining EBRD, Vesselina worked at United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization, at the Harvard University Berkman Klein Center, and in private practice in Sofia and Washington, D.C. Vesselina is admitted to practice as a solicitor in England & Wales and as a lawyer in Bulgaria. She holds law degrees from Harvard Law School (LL.M.) and Sofia University (MA and LL.B., summa cum laude).

Dr Carlos Portugal Gouvêa is a Professor of Corporate Law at the University of São Paulo Law School (USP) in Brazil and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He coordinates the Center for Applied Regulatory Innovation at the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (CRIA-CVM), responsible for researching and proposing possible new regulations on topics such as tokenization and green finance. He joined the faculty of USP in 2011 and holds an S.J.D.’08 from Harvard Law School and a LL.B.’01 and Livre-Docência’22 from the University of São Paulo. His scholarship focuses on corporate governance, ESG, human rights and distributive issues in private law. He has served as Counselor at the Brazilian Council of Appeals of the National Financial System (CRSFN) from 2015 to 2018, which is the appeals body of the Brazilian Securities Commission and Central Bank. As a practicing lawyer and consultant, he founded the first law firm in Brazil with focus on corporate governance matters, PGLaw, leading the implementation of the first human rights and business programs in Brazilian public companies and other large-scale consumer, anticorruption, and diversity compliance projects. He has served many times as a consultant to the Brazilian Federal Government, the World Bank, and the Interamerican Bank.  He was previously an associate at corporate department of Debevoise & Plimpton, with focus on corporate governance matters.

Lucia Williams is a Senior Associate in Clyde & Co’s Climate Risk and Resilience Practice and the firm’s ESG and Insurance and Reinsurance Disputes teams. Lucia advises clients on climate liability risk worldwide, with a focus on insurance coverage considerations; and she represents clients in international arbitration of complex, high-value insurance disputes involving environmental damage and mass torts. Lucia has co-authored several thought leadership pieces on climate change litigation and liability risks, including the 2021 Geneva Association report on Climate Change Litigation, and a chapter in the prize-winning textbook “The Global Insurance Market and Change: Emerging Technologies, Risks and Legal Challenges”. She regularly delivers presentations and workshops on climate litigation, greenwashing and climate and biodiversity reporting frameworks. She is part of the firm’s Gender Equality at Clyde & Co (GECCO) Committee and of the International Chamber of Commerce’s Sustainability Committee. She holds a Master of Laws (LLM) in International Commercial Law from UCL and a Master of Arts (MA) in International Relations and Russian from the University of St Andrews.

Monserrat Madariaga Gómez de Cuenca is a Lawyer at Legal Response International, a Climate Negotiations Advisor to the Chilean Government, and a PhD Candidate at UCL Faculty of Laws. Her research, which is supported by a scholarship from the Government of Chile, focuses on the relationship between Civil Society and Climate Change Law and Government. Monserrat holds an LLM on Environmental Law and Policy from University College of London and is a qualified lawyer in Chile. Additionally, she has professional experience working as a legal advisor for the Chilean Government and for Civil Society, and she has lectured in different Chilean universities. She currently works as research assistant for an interdisciplinary project at UCL Institute for Public Policy on Climate Change Loss and Damages, as well as human rights research with UCL Professor Philippe Sands QC.

Closing remarks: Dr Carolina Grottera is a Program Director at the Executive Secretariat of the Brazilian Ministry of Finance, where she coordinates the Ecological Transformation Plan. Previously, she worked in the Secretariat for Articulation and Monitoring (SAM) of the Civil House of the Presidency of the Republic. She is on secondment from the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA). She holds a Ph.D. in Energy Planning with a focus on Environmental Planning from the Energy Planning Program at COPPE/UFRJ (2018), a master’s degree from the same institution (2013), and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) (2009). She was a visiting researcher at the Centre International de Recherche sur l’Environnement et le Développement (CIRED) in France and at the European Institute for Economics and the Environment (EIEE) in Italy. Carolina was an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economics and the Graduate Program in Economics (PPGE/UFF) and a substitute professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the Polytechnic School (Poli/UFRJ). She worked as a researcher at the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) and the Center for Integrated Studies on Environment and Climate Change (CentroClima/COPPE/UFRJ). She has also served as a technical consultant for various institutions, including the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank, Instituto Escolhas, Resilient Cities Network (RCN), Instituto Clima e Sociedade (ICS), Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA), Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales (IDDRI), among others.

Chairs Biography

Dr Pedro Schilling de Carvalho is an Assistant Professor in Financial and Environmental Law at UCL Faculty of Laws and Co-Director oof the UCL Centre for Law and Environment. He holds degrees from the University of Cambridge (PhD, LLM) and from the University of São Paulo (LLB) and was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School and at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg. Pedro has broad research interests in financial regulation, corporate finance, international economic law, and international development. He has experience providing legal and policy advice to organisations such as the Green Climate Fund, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He also works on operations and advisory projects at the Legal Vice Presidency of The World Bank Group, where he contributed to flagship products such as the B-READY Report (successor to the Doing Business series), Country Climate and Development Reports, and is a certified reviewer by the Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions Global Practice. Prior to joining UCL, Pedro has taught and worked at the University of Cambridge, London School of Economics, University of Edinburgh, and University of São Paulo.

About the UCL Centre for Law and the Environment

The Centre for Law and Environment was established to provide a focal point for the UCL Faculty of Laws' outstanding expertise and academic strength in the field of the environment and the law. The main goals of the Centre are to advance research and teaching and explore the role of law in meeting contemporary environmental and energy challenges. The Centre is committed to treating domestic law (UK), regional (European Union) and international aspects of environmental law in a comprehensive and integrated manner. This approach is reflected in offerings on the LLM course and the supervision of doctoral students, as well as in the diverse range of research pursued by members of the Centre.

See the activities of the Centre