Three PhD projects contribute to CLIFF’s approach to climate-related issues. Jiesper Tristan’s project on IPCC’s emission scenarios at Utrecht University has informed CLIFF in several ways. Ivan Mugga is working on a PhD project on Uganda’s climate policy and will defend it at the Amsterdam Center for International Law. Opal Morales Asencio, a colleague at the University of Amsterdam within the GIO research group, is currently working on several projects:
- Public-Private Partnership Water Platform for Ukraine: within this platform, initiated and coordinated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) and the Netherlands Water Partnership, Opal provides legal advice to public and private entities working on the reconstruction of the Ukrainian water system in an environmentally responsible and sustainable way.
- Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) enforcement: The EU requires large and listed companies to report on risks and opportunities related to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and, in particular, on the impact of their activities on people and the environment. Companies are required to report their full emissions footprint. In this project, Opal advises the board of a European institution that issues microcredits in countries in the global south on how to implement the regulation and get investors to allocate their funds to environmentally friendly business activities.
- In line with her PhD research and the projects mentioned above, Opal presented the findings of her paper, ‘A future-proofed Environmental Law from a Corporate Law Perspective’ at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Academy of Environmental Law (IUCN-AEL) Colloquium 2023. In this paper, she studies how to formulate pragmatic, accessible and solid impact incentives for corporations to achieve environmental regulatory compliance.