Alessandra Accogli is a visiting researcher from University College Dublin, Sutherland School of Law, where she recently submitted her doctoral thesis on the legal protection of carbon sinks. Specifically, her work lies at the intersection of climate change law, environmental law and human rights law. With the help of a case study on peatlands in Ireland, she investigates the tensions and synergies between protecting and restoring peatlands as important carbon sinks in Ireland and respecting the human rights of local people who depend on the ecosystem for their livelihoods and/or culture.
During the three-month research stay as a 2024 Climate Change Fellow at the University of Graz, Alessandra will be involved in a number of ongoing activities at the Research Center ClimLaw: Graz. In particular, she will work under the guidance of Prof Oliver Ruppel on a joint publication that aims to investigate how the findings of Alessandra’s doctoral thesis – which promote integrating a human rights lens into legal measures on ecosystem protection and restoration – can serve as a general framework for analysing the tensions between global demands for carbon sink protection and local realities, thereby allowing for application in diverse contexts. She will also hold two sessions as part of the Lecture series on “International Climate Change Law, Policy and Litigation”.