Participant Biographies

Climate Change Goals and the Global Trade and Investment Regime:
A Compatibility Review – April 25, 2016

Frank Ackerman is a principal economist at Synapse Energy Economics in Cambridge, MA. He has written widely about the economics of climate change, energy, globalization, and public policy. His books include Can We Afford the Future? Economics for a Warming World, and Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing. He has conducted research studies for international organizations, state agencies, and major environmental and consumer organizations. Frank has taught economics and environmental policy at MIT, Tufts University, and the University of Massachusetts, and worked for many years in research institutes at Tufts. His studies of globalization include “The Shrinking Gains from Global Trade Liberalization in CGE Models” (jointly with Kevin Gallagher), and his recent working paper, “Europe’s Regulations at Risk: The High Price of Trade Liberalization.” Most of his publications are available at http://frankackerman.com/. 

Cynthia Barakatt has more than 30 years of experience in the fields of communications and the environment. She is interested in effective methods and strategies for making complex environmental science information easily accessible to non-scientific audiences. She has worked as a communications specialist for two state environmental agencies and a large international environmental consulting firm, and served as an administrator for a university-based environmental research and education center. She also served as the Director of Training for the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program, a fellowship program for mid-career academic environmental scientists that focuses on improving outreach and communication skills to non-academic audiences, especially journalists and policymakers.  As Associate Director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Cynthia oversees the development and implementation of the Center’s programs and activities, and directs the Center’s outreach efforts, publications program, and the Graduate Summer Fellows Program.

Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder is a senior international lawyer and heads the Economic Law & Policy Programme of the International Institute on Sustainable Development (IISD). In this role, she works with developing country governments across Africa, Asia and Latin America in relation to bilateral and regional investment treaty negotiations, investor-state contracts, model investment treaties and foreign investment laws. Nathalie has extensive legal, policy and training experience in the area of international trade, investment, sustainable development, human rights, international environmental law and arbitration. She previously worked as an attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law in Washington and Geneva, where she also managed the office. Earlier, she was a Fellow at the International Institute of International Economic Law at Georgetown University Law Center where she worked with Professors Edith Brown Weiss and John H. Jackson. For several years, she worked in Hanoi, Vietnam, for a legal reform project of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and for the Australian law firm Phillips Fox. She is admitted to the Bar of Basel in Switzerland and has worked for the Justice Department, Berne, in the Section for International Law.

James Corbett has joint faculty appointments in Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering and in the School of Public Policy and Administration in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Delaware as a professor in the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment. He is focused on technology policy innovation for 21st Century freight systems, with a focus on international shipping and coastal marine policy. Jim has more than 20 years’ experience providing engineering, technology, and policy studies to industry, government, and other organizations. He was a lead author of seminal studies evaluating international shipping’s role in use of technology to meet stewardship goals. Among more than 175 publications, he coauthored the 2000 IMO Study on Greenhouse Gases from Ships, the Second IMO Greenhouse Gas Study 2009, and the IMO Greenhouse Gas Study 2014.

Rebecca Cowing is a master’s candidate in International Relations and Environmental Policy at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. Her research focuses on the climate change, trade and development policy and governance and her Master’s Paper focuses on emissions from international maritime shipping. Rebecca is also a research assistant to Kevin Gallagher and a teaching assistant for Environmental Change and Sustainability. Before Boston University, she joined the United States Army and graduated with high honors from the University of Texas at San Antonio with a bachelor’s in History and Geography.

Kevin P. Gallagher is a professor of global development policy at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, where he co-directs the Global Economic Governance Initiative and the Global Development Policy Program. He has authored six books: The China Triangle: Latin America’s China Boom and the Fate of the Washington Consensus, Ruling Capital: Emerging Markets and the Reregulation of Cross-Border Finance; The Clash of Globalizations: Essays on Trade and Development Policy; The Dragon in the Room: China and the Future of Latin American Industrialization (with Roberto Porzecanski); The Enclave Economy: Foreign Investment and Sustainable Development in Mexico’s Silicon Valley (with Lyuba Zarsky); and Free Trade and the Environment: Mexico, NAFTA, and Beyond. He is a chair of the Task Force on Development Banks and Sustainable Development and has served as an advisor to the Department of State and the U.S. EPA as well as to the UN Conference on Trade and Development and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Kevin has been a visiting or adjunct professor at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (Johns Hopkins), the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Tufts), El Colegio de Mexico (Mexico), Tsinghua University (China), and the Center for State and Society (Argentina). 

Tao Hu, an ecologist and environmental economist by training, is a veteran with an insider’s perspective on China’s environmental policy. With almost two decades of experience working at the Policy Research Center of China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, Tao has witnessed and participated in the formulation of a wide array of China’s national environmental policy recommendations ranging from smartly pricing natural resources to boost efficiency and cut down pollution to streamlining the environmental management systems to minimize bureaucracy and empower enforcement agencies. These experiences have taught him that environmental policy is only effective when informed by and built on solid economic thinking. Tao is a pioneer in China focusing on environmental issues arising out of international trade. He was the chief expert of a special technical team that provided support for China’s negotiation on trade and environment issues under the Committee of Trade and Environment (CTE) of WTO. He also advised on China’s Environmental Goods and Services (EGS) negotiation in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Currently, he serves as the director of the World Wildlife Fund’s China Program.

Professor Anthony (Tony) C. Janetos has devoted his career to high-impact global change science and policy, earning international recognition for his scholarship and holding executive leadership positions at institutions including the U.S. EPA, NASA, World Resources Institute, and the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment. He has written and spoken widely on the need to understand the scientific, environmental, economic, and policy linkages among the major global environmental issues, and he has served on several national and international study teams, including working as a co-chair of the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. In addition to his research interests in the interaction of land systems with human needs and climate change, he has been an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Lead Author and Coordinating Lead Author, and has served on multiple National Research Council committees and boards. Prior to his appointment as Director of Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and Professor of Earth and Environment in 2013, Tony served as Director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute at the University of Maryland.

Lise Johnson is Head of Investment Law and Policy at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI). Her work at CCSI centers on analyzing the contractual, legislative, and international legal frameworks governing international investment, and shaping the impacts that those investments have on sustainable development objectives. She focuses in particular on analyzing international investment treaties and the investor-state arbitrations that arise under them, examining the implications those treaties and cases have for host countries’ domestic policies and development strategies. In addition, she concentrates on key institutional and procedural aspects of the legal framework, including efforts to increase transparency in and legitimacy of investor-state dispute settlement. She has a B.A. from Yale University, J.D. from University of Arizona, LL.M. from Columbia Law School, and is admitted to the bar in California.

Makane Moïse Mbengue is Associate Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, the Institute of Environmental Sciences and the Global Studies Institute of the University of Geneva where he teaches International Environmental Law, International Investment Law, International Water Law and International Dispute Settlement. Makane is also a Visiting Professor at Sciences Po Paris (School of Law) where he teaches general international law and WTO law. He holds a Ph.D. in Public International Law from the University of Geneva. He is the lead expert for the negotiations and drafting of the Pan-African Investment Code (PAIC). He has served as an expert for the African Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) among others. He is also a professor for courses in International Law organized by the UN Office of Legal Affairs (OLA) and by the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). Makane acts as counsel in disputes before international courts and tribunals. He is the author of several publications in the field of international dispute settlement, international law and sustainable development law.

Irene Monasterolo is an economist with experience in complex systems thinking applied to the analysis of coupled human-natural systems, with a focus on climate risk of impact on resource depletion, food security and political instability, green fiscal and monetary policies, modeling and climate finance risk analysis, and the governance of evidence based sustainability policies. She has worked as a scientist in academia and as a consultant for the World Bank, European Investment Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. Currently, she is a Post-doctoral Associate at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer Range Future where she works on the development of a System Dynamics – Agent Based Model to simulate the role of green fiscal and monetary policies within the context of international trade and climate agreements (e.g., the TTIP agreement). Since October, she coordinates the research area on environment-economics interaction of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy.

Miquel Muñoz Cabré works on clean energy policy and finance. His research includes the effects of international trade agreements on national renewable energy policies. Miquel was a program officer at the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Prior to joining IRENA, Miquel was a researcher at Boston University’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, where he worked on sustainable development, renewable energy, climate change, and global environmental governance. He holds a Ph.D. on Public Policy, a master’s degree in International Relations and Environmental Policy and a master’s degree in Environmental Management and Ecological Economics, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Physics. Miquel has worked for research institutions including the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the Environmental Science and Technology Institute (ICTA), the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), the Worldwatch Institute, and the Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT).

Matt Porterfield is Deputy Director and Adjunct Professor at the Harrison Institute for Public Law, Georgetown University Law Center. Matt works on various aspects of international economic law, with a particular focus on the relationship between international trade and investment rules and environmental policy. He has served as a member of the State Department’s Subcommittee on Investment of the Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy (ACIEP) for the last two revisions of the United States’ Model Bilateral Investment Treaty. Matt has published numerous articles on international investment law, including most recently Exhaustion of Local Remedies in Investor-State Dispute Settlement: An Idea Whose Time Has Come? in the Yale Journal of International Law Online.

Stefanie Schacherer is a Ph.D. candidate in International Public Law at the University of Geneva. She is specialized in international and European investment law. Her research focuses on the new investment and trade agreements concluded by the European Union. Stefanie holds a master’s degree in International and European Law of the University of Geneva as well as a LL.M. in International Business Law from King’s College London. She is currently working as teaching and research assistant at the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva. She is also working with Professor Makane Moïse Mbengue on the elaboration of the Pan-African Investment Code.

Judith (Claire) Schachter is a 2L at Georgetown University Law Center. In law school, Claire participates in the Harrison Institute for Public Policy Clinic and serves as president of the National Security Law Society. Prior to law school, Claire worked at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. and the Canadian International Council in Toronto, Canada. Claire graduated with high distinction from the University of Toronto, earning a specialist degree in International Relations. Claire holds a master’s in International Relations from the University of Oxford, where she was a Heaslip Scholar at St. Antony’s College.

Henrik Selin is Associate Professor in the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University where he conducts research and teaches classes on global and regional politics and policy making on environment and sustainable development. He is the author of Global Governance of Hazardous Chemicals: Challenges of Multilevel Management (MIT Press), co-author of European Union and Environmental Governance (Routledge), and co-editor of Changing Climates in North American Politics: Institutions, Policymaking and Multilevel Governance (MIT Press) and Transatlantic Environment and Energy Politics: Comparative and International Perspectives (Ashgate). He is also the author and co-author of more than fourdozen peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters, as well as numerous reports, reviews, and commentaries. In addition, he serves as Managing Editor for the journal Environment and Planning C: Government & Policy.

Rachel Thrasher received a J.D. and a master’s degree in International Relations, both from Boston University. She works on policy issues related to trade and investment agreements, trade law and development, economic relations between developing countries, and multilateral environmental agreements. She is the co-editor, alongside former Pardee Center Director Adil Najam, of a Pardee-sponsored book titled The Future of South-South Economic Relations. She teaches a course on trade and development at the Pardee School of Global Studies and continues to research areas of trade and investment agreements and their impact on development policy as part of the Global Economic Governance Initiative at Boston University.