Harvard Project on Climate Agreements Hosts Susan Biniaz

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements hosted Susan Biniaz, former lead attorney for the U.S. climate-change negotiating team on April 17–19, 2018 at Harvard Kennedy School. Ms. Biniaz conducted a public seminar, “The Paris Agreement: Thoughts of a Negotiator on its Significance and Future,” on April 19, which attracted students, faculty, and other members of the academic community from Harvard, Tufts University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology interested in hearing her unique perspective on the past, present, and future of the treaty.

Ms. Biniaz also met with Harvard faculty members who focus on environmental policy. She was a guest speaker in courses taught by Professor Jody Freeman at Harvard Law School (“Climate Change Law and Policy”) and Dr. Robert Stowe, Co-Director of the Harvard Project (“International Climate Change Policy”) — allowing students the opportunity to gain a broader understanding of the Paris Agreement and interaction between U.S. and international policy. Ms. Biniaz also held several meetings with students at the Kennedy School who were interested in climate-change policy, diplomacy, and negotiations.

Ms. Biniaz served for over thirty years in the State Department’s Legal Adviser’s Office, where she was a Deputy Legal Adviser, as well as the lead climate lawyer and a lead climate negotiator from 1989 until early 2017. She is now a senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation and an adjunct faculty member at Columbia Law School. During the winter 2017 quarter, she was a distinguished fellow at the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago and taught at the University’s Law School. She attended Yale College and Columbia Law School and clerked for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.