Panel for the Shared Pathways to a Sustainable and Just Future: Navigating the Anthropocene - Thursday 30 January 2025
Clemens Kaupa and David Rossati - VU Faculty of Law, Amsterdam Centre for Climate Change, Corporations and the Law (A4CL)
Panel’s theme
For decades, climate governance has focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but its policies and laws have so far failed to address its key cause in a meaningful way: that is the production and supply of fossil fuels. However, the terms of this struggle are changing as phasing out fossil fuels is increasingly considered as a necessary element have a chance for a relatively safe climate in the future. This session looks at research and initiatives about targeting fossil fuel supply with an interdisciplinary perspective, including voices from both academia and practice. We discuss the topic from a perspective of energy policy, look at legal cases and strategies to target fossil fuel companies and extraction, as well as a demo of a digital tool to visualize the network of fossil fuel production to foster understanding. With this session we hope to contribute to greater interaction between the relevant academic disciplines, as well as practice.
The session contributes to the conference themes “science for sustainability” and “governance for society.”
Format and speakers:
- Interview: Rebecca Byrnes (Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative) - The diplomatic effort towards a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (15 minutes) – Interviewer David Rossati
Description: the interview will set the scene of the entire session by discussing the rationale and ongoing work at diplomatic level to adopt a new treaty complementary to the Paris Agreement, given the latter’s insufficiency in dealing with fossil fuel supply.
2. Roundtable: The law and politics of targeting fossil fuel supply (1hr) – Moderator David Rossati
Description: the roundtable will consist of an interactive discussion where each panellist will briefly answer cross-cutting questions by the moderator tailored in a way that the themes below will be discussed. After each question the audience will be invited to follow-up with questions, comments, etc.
Example question: “If you had the opportunity to address a CEO of a fossil fuel company, what key message would you convey about their company's role in the climate crisis, based on your research or work?”
- Tim Bleeker (VU) - Discussing the appeal decision in the Milieudefensie v Shell case
- Mathieu Blondeel (VU) - Petrostate futures under global energy system transformation
- Robin Kautz (VU) - Transition plans of fossil fuel companies under due diligence frameworks
- Clemens Kaupa (VU) - Filing a claim against a fossil fuel corporation's extraction project under the OECD framework
3. Pitch session: showcasing “The Last Coal” (15 minutes, 5 minutes of pitch, 10 of Q&A, moderator Clemens Kaupa): a digital tool to visualize and query (legal) data on fossil fuel infrastructure and its entities
- David Rossati (VU), Christopher Stone (University of Saint Andrews), and Lydia Muessig (PwC Germany)