International Sustainability

Dean Ottinger is currently leading a variety of international projects at the Pace Energy and Climate Center to assist developing nations and to support wider adoption of renewable energy and energy efficiency measures. The Center conducts most of its international energy activities in partnership with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), on behalf of international agencies. Dean Ottinger contributed the Renewable Energy Chapter to the recently published "Beyond the Carbon Economy," Oxford University Press 2008. He was appointed to the IUCN Energy Executive Group formulating an IUCN energy policy. Dean Ottinger has forthcoming presentations at the IUCN Academy Forum on Climate Change (September 2008) on "Rush to Judgment on Proposed Climate Change Solutions," which discusses vastly improved environmental assessment of proposed climate change solutions (e.g., biofuels, nuclear energy, and carbon capture and storage (CCS). He is also chairing a panel on "Biofuels – Potential, Challenges and Solutions" at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona (October 2008), and will be co-presenting a paper on "Biofuels’ Contribution to Poverty Alleviation" at the IUCN Academy Colloquium in Mexico (November 2008). Dean Ottinger is also involved in a new project with the Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation to examine hazards of CCS and necessary regulatory steps. As a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels, Dean Ottinger is developing biofuel environmental and social standards. Dean Ottinger also serves on the Executive Committee of the IUCN Climate Change Initiative, and in that role is assisting in the development of IUCN policies. He is also the Co-Chair of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law Energy Law and Climate Change Specialty Group, which involves 60 world-wide members in these activities.

Another recent initiative at the Center is to assist the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the U.N. Least Developed Countries to form an alliance to jointly advocate for maximum mitigation commitments and for greatly increased adaptation assistance at the post-Kyoto conference negotiations in Copenhagen next year. The Center also assisted in the Report prepared in November 2007 by the Center for Environmental Legal Studies at Pace Law School regarding proposed revisions to China's environmental and energy laws. This Report, prepared for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) through Shanghai Jaio Tong University, included proposed amendments to PRC’s environmental protection laws. For more information, please contact Dean Ottinger at rottinger@law.pace.edu.