Squire Patton Boggs and Sciences Po Law School Announce Creation of Climate Change Arbitration Monitor and Research Excellence Award

Paris, 1 March 2022

Squire Patton Boggs and Sciences Po Law School in Paris are pleased to announce the establishment of the Climate Change Arbitration Monitor. The Monitor aims to further understanding of how climate change is affecting commercial relationships and generating disputes that are submitted to arbitration. The Climate Change Monitor’s activities will be supervised by an advisory board composed of a broad cross-section of stakeholders. The Monitor will issue an annual publication accompanied by an event series, which will be launched on 29 March 2022 during Paris Arbitration Week.

As part of its partnership with Sciences Po Law School, Squire Patton Boggs will grant an annual Research Excellence Award to provide students from the Transnational Arbitration and Dispute Settlement (TADS) LLM programme with the opportunity to support their studies with a scholarship, a research grant and an internship.

Following a highly competitive process, including an interview before Squire Patton Boggs and Sciences Po Law School representatives, the 2021-2022 Squire Patton Boggs Research Excellence Award was presented to Akash Santosh Karmarkar, a qualified lawyer with more than four years of experience in India in the field of arbitration (international and domestic) and commercial litigation.

José Feris, a partner in Squire Patton Boggs’s International Dispute Resolution Practice Group in Paris, said: “We are delighted to partner with Sciences Po Law School for this cutting-edge initiative. There is a pressing need to better understand how arbitration and dispute resolution can assist in managing climate change and energy transition.”

John Adam, also an International Dispute Resolution partner in Paris, commented: “We are delighted to have Akash on board. Akash is a talented young lawyer and we are confident that he will make an important contribution to this inaugural phase of the Squire Patton Boggs and Sciences Po Law School partnership.”

The Director of the TADS LLM, Prof. Diego P. Fernández Arroyo, has also manifested his satisfaction for this new partnership and for the selection of a brilliant LLM candidate to conduct the research tasks in the first issue of the Monitor. According to him, “It is hard to find a single topic that deserves more attention from the lawyers and academics involved in transnational disputes than climate change. All of us are strongly committed to put this topic at the centre of our interests and actions.”

“I am grateful to receive the Squire Patton Boggs Research Excellence Grant,” said Mr. Karmarkar. “I was drawn to this grant for its unique combination of financial aid, research on climate change arbitration and an internship opportunity. Each element of this grant is perfectly aligned with specific aspects of my work experience, repertoire of skills and research interests. In the wake of COP26 and the discourse around climate change disputes, I am particularly excited to work on the Climate Change Arbitration Monitor, a comprehensive and timely guidance tool for stakeholders. I look forward to working with Squire Patton Boggs on pushing the envelope of this emergent area of international arbitration.”

Squire Patton Boggs was named “International Arbitration Practice of the Year” by Law360 in 2020. The firm is also recognized as a GAR 30 firm in Global Arbitration Review’s prestigious annual ranking of the top 30 international arbitration practices in the world.