Legal Pathways to Net Zero and Nature-Positive Outcomes: Comparative Insights, Tools, and Strategies

Speaker Bios

The Hon Justice Brian Preston AO FRSN SC, Chief Judge, Land and Environment Court of New South Wales

Justice Preston is the Chief Judge of the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales and an additional judge of the Court of Appeal and the Court of Criminal Appeal of New South Wales. He has lectured in postgraduate environmental law for over 30 years and is an Adjunct Professor at three Australian universities. He is the author of Australia's first book on environmental litigation (published in 1989) and has written 157 articles, book chapters, and reviews on environmental law, administrative law and criminal law. Justice Preston is a fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales and the Australian Academy of Law, an honorary fellow of the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand, a Visiting Professor at Durham University and a former Visiting Fellow at Corpus Christi College and Magdalen College at Oxford University. In 2023, Justice Preston was awarded the Medal of Honour by the World Jurist Association. On 26 January 2025, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia, General Division (AO) in the Australian Day Honours List, for "distinguished service to the judiciary and the law, to legal academia, and to environmental and natural resources governance and education".

Dr. Ivano Alogna, Senior Research Fellow in Environmental and Climate Change Law, BIICL

Dr Alogna is the Senior Research Fellow in Environmental and Climate Change Law at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL), where he leads the Institute's program in this field, including the Global Toolbox on Corporate Climate Litigation, an innovative platform advancing comparative research and practical tools for corporate climate litigation worldwide. He also serves as Co-Lead of the Climate Litigation Cluster within the Climate Change Law Expert Group of the IUCN-World Commission on Environmental Law. Additionally, he is an Associate Member of the Sorbonne Research Institute in International and European Law, Sorbonne Law School (Paris 1), where he defended his award-winning PhD thesis on "The Circulation of Legal Models in the Environmental Field: Toward a Global Environmental Law". Dr Alogna is also a licensed Attorney-at-Law at the Bar of Milan.

Richard Wilmot-Smith KC, 39 Essex Chambers

Richard Wilmot-Smith is a specialist in all aspects of construction and engineering litigation and arbitration and has over forty years' experience in that field, thirty of them at the highest level. He has been in silk since 1994 and sits as an arbitrator and adjudicator worldwide in high value cases. He is Editor of Wilmot-Smith on Construction Contracts Fourth Edition OUP 2021.

His expertise also extends to issues involving European law, environmental law (including coal and nuclear power, and waste incidents), libel, health & safety, railways and oil & gas. He has acted in litigation and arbitration concerned with major projects in the United Kingdom, the United States, Tanzania, Egypt, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, Iran, Iraq, Dubai, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

He is a co-editor, with other members of 39 Essex Chambers, of "The Law of Net Zero and Nature Positive" recently published.

 Stephanie David, Barrister, 39 Essex Chambers

Stephanie David has a multidisciplinary practice spanning public law and human rights; energy, the environment and planning matters; financial services and regulatory work. She is ranked as a leading junior and 'up and coming' in administrative law and public law, human rights and civil liberties, and planning law by The Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners. She has particular expertise in climate change and nature-related litigation having been instructed in cases relating to financial services, national policy, infrastructure projects and agriculture. She is an editor of the Environmental Law Bulletin (published by Sweet and Maxwell), a regular contributor to the Journal of Environmental Law and hosts the podcast "Climate Law Matters."

CPD Information

This event offers the equivalent of 1.5 CPD hours.

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