International Environmental
Drawing on experience from our global network of offices, Sidley lawyers assist clients throughout the world to identify and meet their legal obligations while supporting their strategic goals. We understand the needs of multinational business and the different regional and national approaches to environmental regulation, and we have the ability to help companies meet environmental challenges around the world. We have extensive experience with multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the European Commission and the International Organization on Standardization (ISO), giving us the perspective necessary to work with private and public stakeholders to reach consensus on complex issues.
Sidley brings a cross-functional approach that integrates its experience on subject matters such as international trade, compliance and ethics programs and the environment. Further, our ability to advise our clients at the strategic level is informed by our practical ground-level experience on a broad range of specific legal challenges.
Our clients entrust us with virtually every type of significant sustainable development, corporate responsibility and environmental matter, typically in complex contexts. Sidley lawyers understand the interplay between local, national, regional and international legal requirements and can assist clients to develop multifaceted strategies that take these nuances into account.
Selected Transnational Representations
- Advise clients on EU product regulations, including:
- A major multinational automobile manufacturer regarding compliance with the EU’s end-of-life vehicle directive;
- A large multinational industrial equipment manufacturer regarding compliance with the EU’s WEEE and RoHS directives regulating the design and recycling of electrical equipment; and
- Natural resource and chemical companies on the classification of materials under the Dangerous Substances Directive.
- Advise clients on various issues related to climate change, including national, regional and international schemes for trading greenhouse gas emissions, including the international trade law implications of such schemes.
- Advise clients on worldwide supply-chain management issues associated with product stewardship and compliance.
- Represent clients in matters involving advocacy to the European Commission regarding environmental issues, including seeking favorable interpretations of Directives, obtaining exemptions from particular requirements or excluding particular ingredients from regulation.
- Currently participate as an international negotiator on standards in other cutting-edge areas such as nanotechnologies and served as lead international negotiator and drafter of several key international environmental standards, including the ISO 14001 standard on environmental management systems.
- Evaluate regional and national environmental requirements against the provisions of the WTO/Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement, and assist clients in developing and executing TBT-based advocacy strategies.
- Assist more than 100 client facilities around the world to implement comprehensive environmental, health and safety management systems (including over 70 ISO 14001 projects). These projects frequently include broad corporate responsibility and sustainable development issues such as supply-chain management, product and service stewardship, environmental performance that may go beyond regulatory requirements and public/community communication and reporting.
- Advise manufacturing and financial institutions on the environmental aspects of complex transnational business transactions and related financing, including due diligence.
- Advise clients on the transnational movement of hazardous materials and waste (including the Basel Convention), and on international environmental treaties such as the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants (POPs), the Montreal Protocol on ozone depleting substances and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
- Advise national governments in the negotiation of the environmental components of free-trade agreements with the U.S. government.
- Represent private entities regarding environmental provisions in bilateral or multilateral trade agreements between governments.
