King’s Climate & Sustainability (KCS) welcomes you to our second seminar of the year. KCS hosts an open-access, interdisciplinary seminar series that aims to engage the King’s community with some of the biggest topics in the field. The series invites seminal professional speakers to discuss subjects such as climate science, justice, sustainable agriculture and much more.

From providing an impetus to tackle some of the most pressing environmental challenges to ensuring a wide range of perspectives are considered in climate adaptation, environmental treaties are a key tool in promoting sustainable action across the world.

But are international treaties always effective? How are they implemented and monitored? And how can we harness the power of legal treaties inspire positive climate action across the globe?

Drawing on the potential of COP28 and the international plastic treaty - both of which will be going through negotiation rounds in November - this seminar brings together speakers from across the climate and legal sectors to explore the effects, strengths and history of environmental treaties on global climate action. 

David Azoulay

David Azoulay (he/him) is the Managing Attorney of the Geneva office of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and the Director of CIEL’s Environmental Health Program. David has 15 years of experience engaging in the negotiations and implementations of environmental international legal frameworks such as the BRS conventions, the United Nations Environment Assembly, and the Plastic Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee. In addition to directing CIEL’s Environmental Health Program, David leads CIEL’s nanotechnology project, advocating for a precautionary approach to the development of nanotechnologies in the EU and at global level, and supervises CIEL's work at EU level to ensure that the health impacts of plastics throughout its life cycle are adequately considered in EU policy, and in particular in the design of the EU circular economy strategy, and EU Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) strategy.

Zuzanna Borowska

A 21-year-old social activist and climate advocate, Zuzanna is a Political Science and International Relations student at the University of Amsterdam. She is the Founder and President of the Open Dialogues International Foundation - an NGO dedicated to the values of dialogue, cooperation, sustainable development, democracy, and equality for all - and initiator of the Foundation’s flagship global project, the Open Dialogues on Climate Change which have been happening since 2021 in over 30 different countries around the world. Zuzanna is also a climate negotiator working for the Republic of Liberia in the UNFCCC (the United Nations multilateral climate negotiations process), specialising in Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) and Just Transition, and is presently Liberia’s lead negotiator on the Just Transition Work Programme. The Lead Organiser of the first two editions of the Polish Local Conference of Youth on climate change(LCOY Poland) in 2019 and 2021, Zuzanna is a member of YOUNGO, UNMGCY, UNEP MGCY, and other global youth groups, as well as being a European Climate Pact Ambassador since February 2022.

The panel will be moderated by King's alumni Clarisse Mace and Ifeoluwa Praise Bayo-Oluyamo, who have both stayed engaged as active volunteers after graduating. Clarisse studied the Master of Laws LLM at King's and is now a French lawyer specialised in environmental law. Ifeoluwa is an aspiring commercial lawyer. She is currently undertaking the Solicitors Qualification Examination course, in order to qualify as a lawyer in England & Wales. She studied an MA in Medical Law at King’s.

Photo credit: Pietro Naj-Oleari via climatevisuals.org