The third seminar of the spring term Environmental Law Seminar Series resumed in February with a talk by Kent Law School alumna Claire Walls on her experience working as an environmental regulatory analyst at Datamaran (formerly known as eRevalue), a tech start-up company focusing on navigation and data analysis.
Claire started the presentation with the overview and objectives of the company. As a company, Datamaran seeks to provide the customers the data on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues that will help them make a decision and prepare for an annual non-financial report. Customers have access to data provided by her company via their regulatory database called ‘Datamaran’. The data are specially catered to the customer’s business. In addition to environmental law, the Datamaran database also encompasses other emerging issues such as the General Data Protection Regulation, fair pricing, occupational health and safety and equal pay issues.
In collecting data for the ‘Datamaran’ regulatory database, it requires keeping track of the regulations and analysing its effects on the regulated companies. Claire explained that her responsibilities generally include analysing and creating short summaries of the regulations relating to environmental law for customers on its provisions, jurisdiction and penalty.
Claire’s work focuses on environmental law and the European Union Law in particular. She gave an example of her work with the non-financial reporting directive and the sustainability report. As a directive, it has to be transposed by each member states. The team at Datamaran has to produce a report on the transposing procedure of the member states and the changes the member states adopt. After the final country transposes the directive, a comprehensive report has to be made to include the enforcement aspects in order to evaluate the potential effects the directive may have on the affected entities.
After the presentation, the participants had the opportunity to ask questions and in this session Claire further touched on the challenges and benefits of working as an environmental regulatory analyst and also gave us her view on the role of the corporate social responsibility in dealing with environmental issues.
At the end of the seminar, Professor Martin Hedemann-Robinson, Professor William Howarth, Professor Elizabeth Hiester and all the participants thanked Claire for her presentation.
This month’s seminar was organised for LLM students by the student committee comprising LLM students Pirunrak Siwarom, Sara Sanchez and Kaewpim Rungsimunpaiboon
Environmental law at Kent
Environmental law is a recognised and long-established area of teaching and research expertise at Kent Law School. Academics, including Professor William Howarth and Dr Martin Hedemann-Robinson, are engaged in research across a number of areas of environmental law, with research spanning international, European and national law and policy. The Law School’s Environmental Law Seminar Series has been designed specifically for LLM (Master’s in Law) students with an interest in the environmental law modules offered at Kent.
Kent LLM students can graduate on the International Environmental Law and Policy pathway by (i) opting to study at least three (out of six) modules from those associated with the pathway of their choice and by (ii) focusing the topic of their dissertation on their chosen pathway. Students can also study environmental law in combination with other areas offered by the Law School.
A record of previous talks held as part of the Law School Environmental Law Seminar Series is available on our news blog.