Mayer Brown collaborates with the Commonwealth Secretariat to rebuild Law and Climate Change Toolkit

London — Global law firm Mayer Brown has partnered with the Commonwealth Secretariat to rebuild the Energy Module of the Law and Climate Change Toolkit. Developed through a partnership between the UN Climate Change secretariat, UN Environment Programme, and the Commonwealth Secretariat, the updated online Toolkit will support energy-related legislative and regulatory reform by national governments as they take action against climate change.  

As no single sector contributes more emissions than the energy supply sector, the Toolkit will be a vital resource for government policy makers, international organizations focused on climate law and governance, and other experts engaged in assisting countries to implement national climate change laws. The Toolkit, which gives users access to climate change-related legislation from around the world, is continuously updated and expanded.

To update the Energy Module of the Toolkit, 15 Mayer Brown team members conducted a global search for national energy legislation and then tagged the provisions of every statute according to a complex taxonomy. In total, Mayer Brown committed 342 hours of work to the task. The result is a comprehensive, thoroughly up-to-date and cutting-edge online tool to drive the reform of national energy law frameworks.

“We are extremely proud to have been part of this innovative project," said Kirsti Massie, a partner at Mayer Brown. "The Toolkit is a great resource for policymakers—the first of its kind—which will be used to assist the advancement of climate change laws and best practice around the world.”

“We are the first generation to feel the abhorrent consequences of climate change, and probably the last to be able to do anything about it," said the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Patricia Scotland. "The Law and Climate Change Toolkit is one of the ways in which the Commonwealth Secretariat, in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme and the UNFCCC Secretariat, is helping our member states and the world to do something about climate change. Thanks to the immense efforts of our friends at Mayer Brown and others, policy-makers now have access to more energy legislation to meet their Paris Agreement targets.”

The Toolkit was launched at the COP 26 conference on November 12, 2021.