Lawyers engage on climate talks
Australian law firms are sending their climate change experts to Copenhagen next week - Freehills, Deacons and Norton Rose, and Minter Ellison included.
AUSTRALIAN law firms are sending their climate change experts to Copenhagen next week to report on events from the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Deacons is sending Elisa De Wit, the firm's climate change practice leader, who will join seven of her colleagues from the soon-to-merge with Deacons firm Norton Rose.
The United Nations talks will take place at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 7 December and 18 December. The aim of the talks is to negotiate an agreement that will be in place when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
Freehills is also sending a climate change expert to the centre of the storm this week. Renee Garner will blog about her experiences from the conference, with daily updates on discussions being placed on the Freehills website.
"These discussions will be critical for our clients, and this detailed insight will prove an invaluable resource," Garner said.
Garner will attend the conference as part of a delegation with the Clean Energy Council of Australia. Her first blog was published yesterday, ahead of the talks themselves next week.
As reported by The New Lawyer yesterday, Minter Ellison is also sending its climate change expert Cheryl Edwardes, a special counsel and former WA Environment Minister, to Copenhagen for the talks.
Edwardes will scope the event and feed information back to her key clients. She will be followin it up with post conference reports to clients in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to assist them with forward planning.
Blogging from Copenhagen on Monday this week, ahead of the emissions trading scheme's defeat yesterday, the Norton Rose team reported on the Australian CPRS legislation, detailing the voting in of Tony Abbott as new leader of the Australian Liberal Party by one vote.
The climate change experts blogged on the secret ballot taken immediately after the leadership vote on whether the the CPRS legislation should be deferred to a Senate Committee and, if this was successful, whether the legislation should be rejected.
Norton Rose has also started a Twitter page, from which it updates followers on climate talk related content. Tweets like "Australian Government proposes to reintroduce CPRS legislation on 2 February 2010" and "Australia's CPRS has been voted down in the Senate - the big question is will the Prime Minister use result to call a double dissolution" were made yesterday.