Widener Law - Widener Law professor named to prestigious international environmental board

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Widener Law professor named to prestigious international environmental board

Public Relations - Published: May 7, 2008

When Widener Law Professor David R. Hodas lectures to students on the Delaware campus about global environmental issues, he speaks with authority. Hodas was recently elected to the governing board of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Academy of Environmental Law.

As the nine-member board’s North American representative, Hodas has an extensive international network of environmental law colleagues. When he talks about how warm it was in Moscow this past winter, or the ethanol being made from the sugar cane fields of Brazil, he shares information he gleaned from people who are living it.

“I can talk about problems and issues in other countries from these personal accounts,” Hodas said.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature is the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network. It helps the world find pragmatic solutions to the most pressing environmental and development challenges. The academy supports the IUCN’s Commission on Environmental Law Programme through its focus on global education and research. The academy is dedicated to advancing knowledge of environmental law through a network of academic institutions.

Widener University School of Law is a charter member of the academy, which is made up of 79 law schools and universities around the world. Hodas began his two-year term as the board’s North American representative on April 15. He will work to help build the academy into a major institution by working on academy governance, helping to organize committees, planning teaching and research functions, fashioning rules for admitting new universities into the academy and developing a model curriculum for climate change to be taught around the world.

“Enormous energy gains from improved energy efficiency are achievable rapidly and at low cost. However, that can happen only if we have the right policies and laws in place – and educating people about environmentally sound laws that make energy efficiency profitable is the critical first step in most countries,” Hodas said. “I would like to look back in 10 or 20 years and be able to say my efforts helped build the academy into an institution that helps improve the world.”

Hodas teaches and writes in the areas of environmental law, climate change law, energy law, international environmental law, administrative law and constitutional law. He established Widener’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic on the Delaware campus in 1989.