Sustainable Law and Finance Research Group
Head of Research Group: Youcef Rahmani
Launched in 2022, the Sustainable Law and Finance Research Group pursues interdisciplinary work at the intersection of law, economics and climate science. We believe that the potential for a proactive and systemic use of the law as a tool to address global sustainability issues, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, or water and waste management, has yet to be fully exploited.
Coordinated government action to address the global environmental crisis remains limited to date. The climate action plan launched by the European Commission in 2018 is essentially limited to disclosure policies. This approach assumes that investors will “green” their investments if they have access to the right information. The Sustainable Law and Finance Research Group seeks to explore how the law can help reorient private capital towards sustainable activities while challenging certain assumptions policies are being built on.
Beyond the field of sustainable finance, the Working Group intends to reflect on the emerging notion of “sustainable law”, including topics in environmental law, international public law, and sustainable accounting. We aim to draw on works conducted in climate science to identify the objectives of sustainability, while relying on the economic analysis of law to refine the legal tools needed to achieve such objectives.