CLE Speaker Series: A Climate for Change: Governing Knowledge for Innovation under the Paris Agreement and the Global Climate Funds

Join us on November 13 when CLE visiting scholar Dr. Katherine Owens (Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney Law School) explores the connection between innovation, knowledge and climate governance. Remaining within the temperature goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change will require profound and complex transformations in our energy, land, urban and infrastructure, transport and industrial systems. Innovation is needed on an unprecedented scale, and these innovation processes will not be linear but highly interactive, and will rest on capturing, adapting, scaling up and replicating available knowledge. While there is a growing emphasis on knowledge sharing in the international development arena, questions remain as to how knowledge is created and governed in the particular context of climate change, including the types of knowledge that comprise the knowledge system, the kinds of mechanisms through which knowledge is generated, captured and disseminated and the connections between knowledge and climate innovation. This talk will provide an introduction to the structures of law and governance required to facilitate knowledge flows and innovation processes in the context of global climate governance, focusing on the mechanisms for knowledge sharing under the global climate funds.

Dr Katherine Owens’ research interests focus on the role of law in sustainability transitions. Her areas of specialty include global climate finance, environmental water markets and the regulation of coal and coal seam gas mining activities. She is the author of Environmental Water Markets and Regulation: A comparative legal approach (Earthscan/Routledge 2017). Her most recent work assesses the relationship between law and innovation in global climate governance. Katherine practised law in State Government and leading commercial firms in Australia and New Zealand as an environment and planning lawyer.

All are welcome. Light lunch will be served. RSVP to events@allard.ubc.ca.

Eligible for 1 hour CPD credit.