The emerging field of sustainability law
Working towards sustainability, which we see as a safe and just world, requires unprecedented collaboration across and beyond academia. The Research Group Sustainability Law builds on more than a decade of increasingly interdisciplinary work to integrate sustainability into regulation. Our emphasis in the Research Group continues to be on business, finance, and circular economy. Yet, sustainability law, as an emerging field, is for us broadly about identifying and analysing barriers to a safer and more just world, and identifying or co-creating possibilities for change.
With this conference, we aim to firmly establish sustainability law as a transformative and interdisciplinary field of law, with implications for research, teaching, and communication. The Research Group Sustainability Law, hosted by the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo, is also a part of the University’s new Centre for Global Sustainability (GLOBE). Our Sustainability Law conference is therefore also a contribution to the Centre’s aim of connecting scholars across disciplines with the aim of contributing to sustainability.
Sustainability law’s contribution
Working towards sustainability, to a safe and just world, includes mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss as core planetary boundaries, and promoting human rights, justice, peace, democracy and good governance as social foundations. Sustainability law is not limited to specific areas of law, and encompasses international laws and policies, regional laws and policies (including but not limited to the European Union), national and local approaches to regulation as well as the various standards, principles and guidelines relevant to the area. For us, sustainability is not only a matter of environmental or human rights law, or international law, or of sustainable finance, sustainable corporate governance, or circular economy. It is all of this and much more. Sustainability law can contribute to overcoming the fragmentation, siloed thinking and path-dependent perpetuation of inequalities that hinder coherent policy-making and regulatory responses to the unsafe and unjust conditions of our time.
The conference aims at fostering a broad, normative approach, one that helps identify and analyse regulatory responses to fundamental sustainability challenges through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. We are grounded in a common understanding of the need for justice and ecological integrity, and we call for critical reflections on Europe’s colonial legacy and its ongoing impact on global inequalities.
Sustainability as an overarching global societal goal, with its inherent requirement for a fundamental transformation, can break through established constraints of how to think about law – and how to regulate. It is easy to say that law has failed; with its silo-thinking, path-dependency and perpetuation of inequality. And yet, law has potential to redeem itself – and sustainability law can facilitate analyses that contribute to realising law’s potential.
Conference speakers’ blog posts
All conference speakers contribute blog posts based on the papers they will present at the conference.
Read the conference speakers’ blog posts
Programme (all times in Central European Time)
Day 1 | Sustainability Law
9.00-9.15: Opening of the conference by Marianne Jenum Hotvedt, Dean of the Faculty of Law, and Helge Jordheim, Director of the Centre for Global Sustainability, University of Oslo
9.15-10.00: Keynote followed by discussion. Sarah Cornell, Sustainability and Law in Sustainability Law. Chair: Beate Sjåfjell
10.00-10.15: Break
10.15-11.45: Session 1. Sustainability and Justice. Chair: Emma Coulthard
- Sara Todeschini: Ethics as Integrative Principle of Sustainability Law
- Felicity Tepper: Repairing Harm in a Multispecies World: Environmental Restorative Justice as a Contribution to Sustainability Law
- İrem Ebrar Altın (online): The Sustainable Rule of Law: Climate Justice and Just Transition as Legal Imperatives
- Siobhan Airey (online): Proliferating ‘Just Transition’ in law and governance – ‘promise’ or ‘peril’?
11.45-12.00: Break
12.00-13.30 Session 2. Postcolonial and Indigenous Perspectives. Chair: Chiara Morfea
- Owabelemam Ibim and Gemima Silva e Silva: From Margins to Mainstream: The Legal Recognition of Indigenous Women in Climate Adaptation Efforts in Brazil and Nigeria
- Juliana Aparecida Parcio: Indigenous Peoples, Territory, and Environmental Preservation in Brazil: Between the 1988 Constitution and Contemporary Conflicts
- Mehran Idris Khan: Fundamental Transformation Through Law: Power Dynamics, Colonial Legacies, and the Politics of Just Sustainability Transitions in European Environmental Law
- Debashish Lahiri: Postcolonial Critiques of Sustainability Law in International Trade: Examining Trade Agreements' Role in Perpetuating Inequalities and Barriers to Climate Justice
13.30-14.30: Lunch break
14.30-16.00: Session 3. Globalised Finance and Sustainability. Chair: Giulia Petrachi
- Javier Solana: Towards a theory of civic finance
- Türkan Gülce Budak: Sustainability in Climate Finance Law: Climate-Tagged Loans, Austerity and Distributional Justice
- Alana Malinde S.N. Lancaster: Sustainable Finance, Climate Justice & the Case of the Afro-descendant Peoples of the Caribbean’s Small Island Developing States
- Kuangran Li, Decolonizing Sovereign Lending: Colonial Legacies, Conditional Finance, and Global South Agency in Sustainability Transitions
16.00-16.15: Break
16.15-17.45: Session 4. Technology for Sustainability. Chair: Eléonore Maitre-Ekern
- Godwin Daramola: Algorithmic Sustainability Law: Navigating Justice, Power, and Integration in the Age of Digital Governance
- Marta Boura: Addressing the sustainable technology paradox: is innovation the solution towards sustainability?
- Sara Garsia and Alexandra Papageorgiou: An Institutional Conception of Energy Justice for AI Infrastructures: Lessons from Italy and Greece
- Emma Bruin Coulthard: Integrating AI into Corporate Sustainability Law: Parallel Regulatory Challenges and the Case for Convergence
17.45-18.00: Closing Day 1
19.00 - Dinner for speakers and organisers
Day 2 | Corporate Sustainability Law
9.00-9.15: Opening of Day 2 of the conference
9.15-10.00: Keynote followed by discussion. Beate Sjåfjell, Corporate Sustainability Law: Identifying Seeds of Hope. Chair: Emma Coulthard
10.00-10.15 Break
10.15-11.45: Session 1. Business and evolving sustainability duties of corporate decision-makers. Chair: Beate Sjåfjell
- Gabriela de Oliveira Junqueira and Sheila C. Neder Cerezetti: From Global Pressures to Legal Change: Corporate Sustainability and the Transformation of Business Law in Brazil
- Temiloluwa Lawal: Developmental Corporate Regimes: The Global South’s Legal Blueprint for Binding Sustainability Duties
- David Monciardini: Value Creation in the Anthropocene: Paradigm Changes in Corporate Reporting in the European Union
- Leah Field: The Impact of the ICJ Advisory Opinion on State Obligations in Respect of Climate Change on China’s Belt and Road Initiative
11.45-12.00: Break
12.00-13.30: Session 2. Governing sustainability across global value chains. Chair: Chiara Morfea
- Emma Wentzel: When Sustainability Law Meets Gendered Labour: The Limits of Due Diligence and the Promise of Social Dialogue
- Marta Paricio Montesinos: Constructing Corporate Accountability in Mineral Value Chains: A Critical Conceptualisation of Heightened Sustainability Due Diligence in EU Law
- Obbie Afri: Climate Litigation after Omnibus I: Legal Risks for Energy Companies under the CSRD and CSDDD
- Merve Sizer: Reimagining Private International Law in Global Value Chains
13:30-14.30: Lunch break
14.30-16.00: Session 3. Sustainable finance as a driver for change. Chair: Alessio Bartolacelli
- Anne-Christin Mittwoch: Sustainability risk management in EU law: Regulatory asymmetries between the financial sector and the real economy
- Riccardo Aquilini: Climate Litigation, Banks and Money: towards a new trend
- Federica Agostini: The integration of defence financing within the EU’s ‘sustainable’ finance framework: lost in translation?
16.00-16.15: Break
16.15-17.45: Session 4. Breaking the silo between environmental law and business law and governance. Chair: Eléonore Maitre-Ekern
- Ndubuisi Augustine Nwafor: Substantiating the Legal Basis of Ubuntu and Sustainability in Tackling Plastic Pollution.
- Katrien Steenmans: Regulating for Sustainability through Circular Product Labels: Balancing Safety and Sustainable Circularity Standards
- Feja Lesniewska and Jonas Voorter: From New Build to Renovation: Sustainability Law and the Legal Anatomy of Construction Digital Information Systems in Europe
17.45-18.00: Closing of Day 2
18.00-21.00: Tapas reception at Litteraturhuset (The House of Literature) with a concert with the duo Katarina Sjåfjell and Julie Martine Vestrheim
Day 3 | Charting ways forward
9.00-9.15: Opening of Day 3 of the conference
9.15-10.00: Keynote followed by discussion. Christopher Bruner, Navigating Sustainability Backlash: Advancing Reform in Turbulent Times. Chair: Chiara Morfea
10.00-10.15: Break
10.15-11.45: Session 1. How to move forward with policymaking? Chair: Alessio Bartolacelli
Speaker to inspire the discussion in the session:
- Siri Gloppen: Sustainability transitions in an age of lawfare
- Olivier Boutellis-Taft, New ways for policymaking: freeze, flight or fight?
11.45-12.00: Break
12.00-13.30: Session 2. Creating new bridges for governance for sustainability. Chair: Giulia Petrachi
Speakers to inspire the discussion in the session:
- Hanna Ahlström, Aikaterini Argyrou (online) and Chen Zhu: Enhancing EU climate governance through polycentricity and effectual strategies
- Eléonore Maitre-Ekern and Maximilian Nawrath, Regulatory Ecology and the Transformative Potential of Rights of Nature
13:30-14.30: Lunch break
14.30-16.00: Session 3. From sustainability talk to action. Chair: Beate Sjåfjell
Speakers to inspire the discussion in the session:
- Rachel Chambers (online) and Pedro Aranguez-Diaz: Enforcing Business and Human Rights: The Effectiveness Turn in ESG
- Matthias Vanhullebusch (online): Mediating the Green Transition: A Conflict-Sensitive Approach to Sustainability Law
16:00-16.30: Concluding reflections and closing the conference
Participate
Register by 13 September 2026 to attend the conference digitally. The conference has now reached full capacity for in-person participation. New registrations for in-person participation will therefore be placed on a waiting list.
Organisers
The Research Group Sustainability Law & Centre for Global Sustainability (GLOBE), Knowledge Technology and Trust, University of Oslo
Academic organising committee:
- Alessio Bartolacelli
- Emma Coulthard
- Eléonore Maitre-Ekern
- Chiara Morfea
- Giulia Petrachi
- Beate Sjåfjell
Please direct any questions to Beate Sjåfjell
Administrative support: Kristin Koren Viksjø