Event

Robert Varney

JPAC Chair

César Rafael Chávez

CEC Executive Director

Gustavo Alanís-Ortega (Moderator)

JPAC member

Víctor Lichtinger

Coordinador General de Gabinete y Planeación,
Gobierno de Michoacán

A Stanford University-trained economist who has more than 25 years experience as an environmental consultant, international negotiator, and public servant and institution builder, Víctor Lichtinger was Mexico’s Minister of Environment during the first three years of the Administration of Vicente Fox, from 2000 to 2003; first executive director of the NAFTA-created Commission for Environmental Cooperation in Montreal, Canada, from 1994 to 1998, and the principal negotiator representing Mexico in several International Conventions (the UN Climate Change Convention, among others) as well as coordinator of the Mexican position in the UN Rio Summit for Sustainable Development in 1992. Since October 2015 he has been chief of staff of the State Government of Michoacán and, at present, representative of the Government of that state in Mexico City.

John J. Kirton

Director, G7 Research Group,
Munk School of Global Affairs,
University of Toronto

John J. Kirton is founder and director of the Global Governance Program based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College, where he is a professor of political science and director of the University’s International Relations Program. He is co-editor of the Routledge Research in Global Environmental Governance book series. He served as principal investigator of the Envireform project and the Commission for Environmental Co-operation’s pioneering project to develop and apply an analytical framework to assess NAFTA’s Environmental Effects, as mandated by Article 10:6(D) of the North American Agreement on Environmental Co-operation. He also served from 1989 to 2005 as a member of the Foreign Policy Committee of Canada’s National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, an advisory body to Canada’s prime minister. His recent books include, with Ella Kokotsis, The Global of Climate Change: G7, G20 and UN Leadership (2015); Mobilising Climate Finance; and Delivering Sustainable Energy Access.

Daniel Magraw

Professorial Lecturer,
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

Daniel Magraw is president emeritus of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and professorial lecturer and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). While an official at the US Environmental Protection Agency, Magraw participated in negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement and the environmental and labor side agreements to the NAFTA, as well as other international agreements. He has worked in government, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental organizations, business and academia, and serves as a consultant to the United Nations regarding environmental, human rights and investment law. He is on the boards of directors/trustees of several organizations and was counsel to India in the Kishenganga River arbitration brought by Pakistan under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. He served in the American Peace Corps in India as an economist and businessman. He has a B.A. magna cum laude in economics from Harvard University and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was editor-in-chief of the California Law Review.

Roundtable discussion between invited experts, JPAC members and audience (in-person + online)

Felicia Marcus (Moderator)

JPAC member

Felicia Marcus was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown as a board member of the State Water Resources Control Board (Board), and was sworn in on July 2, 2012. Before her appointment to the Water Board, she was the Western Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a national environmental leader in bringing science, law, and policy expertise to solving our world’s pressing environmental and conservation challenges. Prior to joining NRDC, Ms. Marcus was the Executive VP/COO of the Trust for Public Land, a national non-profit devoted to conserving land for people.

During the Clinton Administration, she had been administrator of USEPA Region IX, where she was known for her work in bringing unlikely allies together for environmental progress and for making the agency more responsive to the communities it serves, particularly Indian Tribes, communities of color, local government, and business. While at EPA, Ms. Marcus worked extensively on the range of environmental issues under EPA’s jurisdiction, most heavily in air quality, Bay-Delta water, tribal, and US-Mexico border issues. Prior to that, Ms. Marcus headed Los Angeles’ Department of Public Works at a time when the City went from garnering lawsuits to garnering national awards for environmental excellence. Ms. Marcus came to Public Works after extensive experience as a public interest lawyer and community organizer in Los Angeles.

She currently serves on many non-profit boards and advisory councils, including the Public Policy Institute of California, Urban Habitat, Kesten Institute for Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy, and the Center for Diversity and the Environment. She is also an Obama Administration appointee to the Commission on Environmental Cooperation—Joint Public Advisory Council (US, Mexico, Canada) and was a Schwarzenneger Administration appointee to the Delta Stewardship Council prior to her appointment to that board.

Armand de Mestral

Professor emeritus, Jean Monnet
Chair in the Law of International Economic Integration,
McGill University

Holder of the Jean Monnet Chair in Law at McGill University, Armand de Mestral is one of Canada’s most eminent legal scholars. He has served as co-director of the McGill-Université de Montréal Institute of European Studies, interim director of the McGill Institute of Air and Space Law, and is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. A panelist and arbitrator in disputes under the WTO, the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement, and NAFTA, he also served as a member of the Canadian Delegation to the UN Law of the Sea Conference 1973–80 and as a consultant to the CEC and the Law Commission of Canada.

He has co-authored studies on international law and arbitration, including Second Thoughts: Investor-State Arbitration between Developed Democracies (2017), Improving International Investment Agreements, (2012), International Law (7^th ed., 2006), and Law and Practice of International Trade (2^nd ed., 1999).

Raquel Gutiérrez Nájera

Director,
Instituto de Derecho Ambiental

Raquel Gutiérrez Nájera, a graduate of the University of Guanajuato Law School and holder of an M.A. in Criminal Law from the University of Guadalajara and a PhD from the National Institute of Penal Sciences (Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Penales), is a full-time research professor at the University of Guadalajara, where, as the chair of environmental law, she teaches courses and coordinates different research projects concerning the environment, access to justice, human rights and climate change. A member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores de México), she was recently appointed to the Coordinating Committee for the Evaluation of National Climate Change Policy (Coordinación de Evaluación de la Política Nacional de Cambio Climático) as a social advisor.

For over 25 years, Ms. Gutiérrez Nájera, a member of the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW) network of lawyers, has worked tirelessly on environmental issues and in defense of human rights and development for the most underprivileged groups, such as the indigenous Nahua communities of the Sierra de Manantlán. Through the Environmental Law Institute (Instituto de Derecho Ambiental), of which she is both president and founder, she has worked to defend the human and environmental rights of populations affected by megaprojects in San Luis Potosí, Guanajuato, Jalisco and Nayarit.

She has received numerous awards, including the University of Oregon’s Kerry Rydberg Award for Environmental Activism in 2007, the 2009 Ecological Merit Award (Premio al Mérito Ecológico), awarded by Mexico’s Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), and, in 2013, the first Svitlana Kravchenko Environmental Rights Award, presented by the University of Oregon’s Public Interest Environmental Law Conference.

Jennifer A. Haverkamp

Former Special Representative for Environment and Water Resources,
US Department of State

An internationally-recognized expert on climate change, international trade, and global environmental policy and negotiations, Jennifer Haverkamp recently concluded her service as the Obama Administration’s Ambassador and Special Representative for Environment and Water Resources in the US Department of State. In 2016 she led the Department’s successful negotiations of the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol to phase down the use of hydrofluorocarbons and the International Civil Aviation Organization’s landmark agreement to control global greenhouse gas emissions from international flights. She was also President Obama’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs.

Previously, Haverkamp directed Environmental Defense Fund’s International Climate Program and spent nearly a decade as the Assistant US Trade Representative for Environment and Natural Resources in the Executive Office of the President. While at USTR, she conducted and oversaw environmental negotiations in the World Trade Organization, the OECD, the NAFTA side agreements, and numerous regional and bilateral free trade agreements. She held posts at the Environmental Protection Agency, the US Department of Justice (where her work on the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act earned her the Attorney General’s John Marshall award), the Conservation Foundation, and a clerkship on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She has taught at George Washington University Law School and Johns Hopkins graduate school and served on the boards of the Verified Carbon Standard Association and the American Bird Conservancy, as well as USTR’s Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee.

Haverkamp earned a B.A. in biology from the College of Wooster (on whose board of trustees she serves), an M.A. in politics and philosophy from Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar), and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Roundtable discussion between invited experts, JPAC members and audience (in-person + online)

Sabaa Khan (Moderator)

JPAC member

Konstantia Koutouki

Associate Professor,
Université de Montréal Faculty of Law

Konstantia Koutouki is a professor of law at the Université de Montréal, Lead Counsel for Natural Resources with the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law at McGill University, and executive director of Nomomente Institute. Her research examines the links between international trade, intellectual property, and environmental protection. She has extensive experience working on issues concerning social, economic and cultural development of Indigenous and local communities, as well as the preservation of natural spaces and traditional knowledge. She has first-hand experience with Indigenous and local communities around the world, where she has spent much time as a guest and researcher.

David A. Gantz

Samuel M. Fegtly Professor of Law,
James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona

David A. Gantz, AB (Harvard College), JD, JSM (Stanford Law School), is Samuel M. Fegtly Professor at the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law, where he teaches and writes in the areas of international trade and investment law, regional trade agreements, public international law, and international environmental law. He served earlier in the Office of the Legal Adviser, US Department of State and practiced law in Washington, DC. Gantz is the author or co-author of four books and more than 50 law review articles and book chapters. He has served as a consultant for the UNDP, USAID and the World Bank, among others, and as a panelist under Chapters 11, 19 and 20 of NAFTA. His most recent book is Liberalizing International Trade after Doha: Multilateral, Plurilateral, Regional and Unilateral Initiatives (Cambridge University Press, 2013, 2015).

Carlos Véjar

Senior Counsel,
Holland & Knight

Carlos Véjar is a domestic and international trade attorney in Holland & Knight’s Mexico City office. He counsels companies on international trade strategies, investments, government procurement, regulatory compliance, unfair trade practices, intellectual property and customs procedures, as well as commercial, private and international trade arbitration matters.

Véjar previously served at the Ministry of Economy of Mexico (SE) as general counsel for international trade for more than six years. At the SE, he was responsible for coordinating Mexico’s participation in trade and investment disputes, as well as providing legal advice on international trade negotiations and foreign trade matters under World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other free trade and bilateral investment agreements. He also served as an economic counselor in the Permanent Mission of Mexico to the United Nations before the WTO in Geneva from 2004 to 2009. He has nearly 20 years of experience working in the Mexican government on trade and foreign investment matters, including arbitration.

Roundtable discussion between invited experts, JPAC members and audience (in-person + online)