Environmental Law
Environmental Law Section at COP 30
Environmental Law Section members joined global climate leaders at the United Nations Conference of the Parties (or COP 30) in Belem, Brazil. The annual summit brought together nearly 200 countries to address climate change, including heads of government, scientists, non-governmental organizations, and civil society leaders.
Leuwam Tesfai, Environmental Law Section Treasurer and Deputy Executive Director for Energy and Climate Policy at the California Public Utilities Commission, participated in COP 30 as a member of the California state delegation, led by Governor Newsom. California state leaders grew international climate partnerships, including holding bilaterals with countries and subnational governments and representing California in sector specific ministerials. Strategic discussions were focused on financing energy infrastructure, managing electrification growth, leveraging new tools for methane leak detection, and scaling clean energy affordably.
Leuwam Tesfai, far right, with California Public Utilities Commission President Alice Reynolds and members of the Australian delegation from New South Wales
Cara Horowitz, Environmental Law Section Advisor and Executive Director of the UCLA Law Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, attended to help launch UCLA’s STOP Methane Project, a user-friendly ranking of global methane emissions across multiple sectors, and to collaborate with other experts focused on super pollutants. She also supported the work of the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force, now based at the Emmett Institute. The GCF Task Force organized 18 different side events and panel discussions to highlight the importance of subnational governmental action to fight tropical deforestation, including implementation of Brazil’s newly launched Tropical Forest Forever Facility and the launch of a new Best Practice Guide for High-Integrity Carbon Projects in the Brazilian Amazon.
Cara Horowitz (left) with UCLA’s Jason Gray and Virginia Zaunbrecher
Tom McHenry, Environmental Law Section Advisor and Visiting Professor at Pomona and Claremont McKenna Colleges, escorted a group of Pomona and Scripps College students to the COP along with Pomona International Relations Professor Heidi Haddad. Through Pomona’s long involvement with the United Nations climate efforts, each student was able to spend several days in the “blue zone” where they attended plenary sessions, country and regional reports, press conferences, and a variety of seminars and discussions on a host of climate issues including the transition away from fossil fuels, climate finance, loss and damage funding, agriculture, transportation and plenty of other issues. They also visited the “green zone” which was heavily focused on Brazilian indigenous climate issues (the indigenous groups represent only 5% of the overall population but own more than 40% of the land). The United States had no official presence, which was embarrassing, but Gavin Newson, Sheldon Whitehouse, the chair of the California PUC and policy VP of SCE all attended, and American NGOs were well represented.
The students had an opportunity to interact with students from other colleges and universities and met a number of government and non-profit representatives, including some from indigenous groups that were much more widely represented at this COP than the last one. The students also safely avoided the small fire that occurred in the Africa Pavilion on the second to last day of the COP! We were lucky that two of our students spoke Portuguese and they acted as interpreters for our group.
The students were unanimous in concluding how much more complicated the climate issues are than they expected. They did say that the UN’s COP process gave them hope that climate issues can be addressed, but they remain concerned about the pace of change and allocation of responsibility between richer and poorer nations.
Students from Pomona and Scripps College
Hosted in Belem, Brazil, this year’s conference marked ten years since the Paris Agreement and emphasized moving from climate ambition to action.