CONNIE HEDEGAARD
Commissioner for Climate Action, European Commission
in conversation with
JAIRAM RAMESH
Member of Parliament, India
and Former Minister for Environment and Forests
and
JOANNE SCOTT
Professor of European Law, University College London
and CPR Climate Initiative Fellow
DISCUSSION THEME
Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change launched a process in Durban, 2011, to arrive at a ‘Protocol, another legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all’ by 2015 to take effect from 2020. With a mere 16 months left to the Paris conference, 2015, slated as the deadline for these negotiations, many disagreements remain between Parties, including between India and the EU in relation to the design of the agreement, and the nature and extent of differentiation in it. Both the EU and India will be key to shaping this agreement as well as brokering a deal between nations, as was the case in Durban, 2011. An effective and equitable agreement will require their active participation and complete ownership. This discussion will touch on the role that EU and India play in these negotiations, their respective asks of each other and the international process, and the prospects for a 2015 climate agreement.
This panel discussion will also consider the steps the EU has taken to lead global action on climate change to 2020 and beyond. Although it has achieved a great deal, including the establishment of an EU-wide emissions trading scheme, there have nonetheless been challenges and setbacks as well. This discussion will also explore the EU’s successes and setbacks and examine steps being taken by the EU to address the challenges arising.
SPEAKERS’ BIOGRAPHIES
Connie Hedegaard had already been working with climate issues for several years by the time she began her appointment as the EU’s first ever Commissioner for Climate Action in February 2010. In August 2004 she was appointed as Danish Minister for the Environment. In 2007 she was in charge of setting up the Danish Ministry of Climate and Energy, where one of the main tasks was to prepare the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. Besides her political career, Connie has had a long career in journalism. She worked for the Danish national newspapers Berlingske Tidende and Politiken, and the Danish Broadcasting Corporation.
Jairam Ramesh has been Member of Parliament, representing Andhra Pradesh in the Rajya Sabha, since 2004. Between 2011 and 2014, he served as Minister for Rural Development and between 2009 and 2011, was the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Environment and Forests. He has worked as the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry as well as the Minister of State for Power and has earlier been Advisor to the Finance Minister, Deputy Chairman Planning Commission and to the Prime Minister. He has also served in the Planning Commission, Ministry of Industry and other economic departments of the Central Government.
Joanne Scott has been Professor of European Law at University College London since 2005. She taught previously at the University of Cambridge and has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School. Her work focuses on new modes of governance, environmental law and policy and on the intersections between different sub-national, national and international legal orders. She was recently awarded a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship for her research on the global reach of EU climate change law (2012-2014). She was a member of the UCL/Lancet Commission on Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change and of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (2009-2011). She was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2013. She is currently visiting the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, as a CPR Climate Initiative Fellow.
