Category Archives for "Speaker"

Suzanne Agius

Head of Policy and Permitting, Environment and Climate Change Canada
Government of Canada

Suzanne Agius is the current Head of Policy and Permitting in the Marine Programs Division of Environment and Climate Change Canada. Having studied marine ecotoxicology and law, she now has nearly 20 years of experience with disposal at sea permitting and monitoring. She has attended London Protocol and Convention Meetings as a Canadian delegate for several years, and has served as a member of the London Protocol Compliance Group since 2016.

Sara Seck

Associate Professor
Dalhousie University

Dr Sara L Seck is an Associate Professor and the Yogis & Keddy Chair in Human Rights Law at the Schulich School of Law and Marine & Environmental Law Institute, Dalhousie University.

Her research and teaching explore human rights-based approaches to local, transnational, and global environmental challenges, including business & human rights, plastic pollution, and the oceans-climate nexus. Recent co-edited books are (with Meinhard Doelle) the 2021 Research Handbook on Climate Change Loss & Damage (Edward Elgar) and (with Sumudu Atapattu and Carmen Gonzalez) the 2021 Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development.

In 2019 she received a legal specialist award in Peace, Justice and Governance from the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law. In 2021, she joined the editorial team of the Ocean Yearbook.

Ellen Johanessen

PhD Candidate and Research Assistant
WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute

Ellen Johannesen is a PhD Candidate at the World Maritime University, Malmö, Sweden.. Ellen is a Canadian who has spent the past 15 years in Copenhagen, and since 2009 has been working in marine science administration as the Coordinating Officer at the Secretariat of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).
With an interdisciplinary background, her professional interests include international marine science cooperation and administration, the ecosystem approach, and more recently considering the role of gender in the practice of international marine science.

Through ICES, she has contributed to a variety of international marine science projects, including as work package leader for the Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance Coordination and Support Action on the Ecosystem Approach to Ocean Health and Stressors; and contributing to the UNDP-GEF Large Marine Ecosystems (LME):LEARN Governance Mechanisms Working Group.

Ellen’s research perspective recognizes that change is needed at all levels, personal, political, and institutional to make the changes necessary for greater social justice and equality between genders, but also for the ocean. Without respect, understanding, and representation of diverse perspectives in science decision-making we will continue to struggle to change the current course of increasing degradation of the ocean, climate, and biodiversity.

Beatriz Martinez Romera

Associate Professor on Environmental and Climage Change Law
University of Copenhagen

Dr. Beatriz Martinez Romera is associate professor of environmental and climate change law at the University of Copenhagen Faculty of Law. She has a keen interest in the international climate negotiations, and the regulatory processes at the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization, as well as the developments at the EU level. For the last 13 years Dr. Martinez Romera has been teaching and researching on the field of climate, environment and energy transition law. She is the coordinator of the master courses on Climate Change Law and International Environmental Law and the Advanced LLM on Energy Law (NSELP). In 2020 she was awarded the Young Investigator Carlsberg Foundation Grant for a 3-year project on International Law-Making: Actors in Shipping and Climate Change. She is PI for a number of research projects including the Independent Research Fund Denmark project Enhancing Climate Action through International Law and the NOS-HS project Climate Change and Ocean Governance: Understanding International and Regional Ocean Regimes through the Lens of Climate Change.

Todd Bridges

Senior Research Scientist (ST) for Environmental Science
United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)

Dr. Bridges is the US Army and US Army Corps of Engineers’ Senior Research Scientist (ST) for Environmental Science.  He became one of approximately 40 Senior Research Scientists within the US Army in 2006, where his responsibilities include leading innovation and research and development that support goals related to resilience and sustainability.  Dr. Bridges is the founder and National Lead for the USACE Engineering with Nature_® (EWN_®) initiative (www.engineeringwithnature.org), which includes a network of research, field-scale applications, and communication activities to support the development of nature-based solutions.  He led a large international collaboration over five years to develop and publish (in 2021) technical guidelines on the use of natural and nature-based features (NNBF) for coastal and fluvial flood risk management.  Dr. Bridges is the technical lead and Program Manager for the Dredging Operations Environmental Research (DOER) program, one of USACE’s largest and longest-running R&D programs.  He has chaired international working groups and guidance development for the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization and the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure (PIANC).  Over the last 30 years, he has published more than 65 peer-reviewed journal articles, several books and book chapters, and numerous technical reports. 

Dr. Bridges and his work have been recognized through receipt of several national and international awards, including receiving a Distinguished Presidential Rank Award from President Biden in 2021 for “sustained, extraordinary accomplishments.”

Woong Seo Kim

President
Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST)

Dr. Woong-Seo Kim received B.S. and M.S. at Seoul National University, Korea and Ph.D at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA. He is the President of the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST), as well as Chair of the Korea Oceanographic Commission (KOC).

He had experiences as the Director of Ocean Resources Department and Vice President of KIOST. He also played roles as the Director of IMMS (International Marine Mineral Society), and the Legal and Technical Commission of ISA(International Seabed Authority). He was the President of the Korean Society of Oceanography.

Fuad Bateh

2022 G77 & China Chair´s BBNJ Team

Mr. Fuad Bateh consults regularly for a variety of organizations and institutions working in development, law and negotiations related to environment and water resources. Throughout 2019, he led negotiations on behalf of the Chair of the Group of 77 at the United Nations on the intergovernmental conference to elaborate an international legally binding instrument under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and this support has continued to the 2022 Chairman of the Group of 77. Previously, he served as the Water Governance and Infrastructure Advisor to the Office of the Quartet; Advisor on Environment and Water to the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean; Advisor to the Palestinian Minister of Water working on multilateral negotiations and water sector reform; Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Chief Negotiator and negotiations team; and also legal consultant for the International and Environmental Law unit of the World Bank.

Tracy Shimmield

Co-Directors
Lyell Centre

Dr Tracy Shimmield is Co-Director of the Lyell Centre. Previously she was Associate Director of research institute the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and Managing Director of their trading subsidiary SRSL (SAMS Research Services Limited), Oban, UK.

Tracy, a marine geochemist, has over 30 years’ experience in environmental geochemistry. She obtained an MSc From Strathclyde University and a Ph.D. from Edinburgh University. Her research interests include the investigation and assessment of human impacts on the marine environment through the monitoring of pollutants and the study of biogeochemical processes involved in their redistribution. She is also an experienced radiochemist and utilises natural and manmade radionuclides as tracers of marine processes including sediment accumulation and mixing rates.

Dr Shimmield has been supervisor to 9 PhD students and has been a Principal Investigator on a number of research and commercial grants funded by the UK Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), European Union Framework programme and commercial companies.

Dr Shimmield is interested in how science and innovation can come together to realise societal benefit and economic growth. She is a member of the Scotland Can Do Forum set up by the Scotland’s Deputy First Minister.

As a marine biogoechemist, Dr Shimmield began working with the government of Papua New Guinea a decade ago, advising on mitigating and managing the impacts of mining on their marine environment, including the writing of ‘General’ and ‘Specific’ regulatory guidelines for the use of Deep Sea Tailings Placement (DSTP) in the country. As part of this project, Dr Shimmield organised and participated in an International Conference on Deep Sea Tailings Placement, held in Madang, Papua New Guinea (2008).

Over the years, Dr Shimmield has become a world-renowned expert in the environmental impacts of DSTP and was consequently invited to be a speaker at the Deep Sea Mining Summit held in London in May 2017. She has since travelled to Brussels to take part in a workshop on Technological and Environmental Aspects of Deep-Sea Mining and has presented to the Norwegian Mineral Waste Committee under the Norwegian Mining and Quarrying Industries (Norsk Bergindustri), and at the International Mineral Processing Congress held in Santiago, Chile.

David Freestone

Executive Secretary
Sargasso Sea Commission

Professor David Freestone is a Professorial Lecturer and Visiting Scholar at George Washington University Law School in Washington D.C. He is the Executive Secretary of the Sargasso Sea Commission, established by the Government of Bermuda pursuant to the 2014 Hamilton Declaration on Collaboration for the Conservation of the Sargasso Sea, now signed by ten governments, that is working to protect this unique high seas ecosystem. The project was awarded the International SeaKeepers Prize in 2013. He is also founding Editor of the International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law (now in its 37th year). From 1996-2008 he worked at the World Bank in Washington DC, retiring as Deputy General Counsel/Senior Adviser. From 2008-2010 he was the Lobingier Visiting Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at the George Washington University Law School. He was the Ingram Fellow at the University of New South Wales in Sydney in 2009 and has held visiting positions at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute (2014-18), University of Cape town (2016) and the Oxford University Martin School (2018). In 2008 he was awarded the Elizabeth Haub Gold Medal for Environmental Law.