Dr. Eugenio Vaccari is short-term senior consultant for the Insolvency & Debt Resolution Program, and co-authored the discussion paper.

Early this year, the World Bank established a Working Group of academics, practitioners and experts to discuss how insolvency law and policy can contribute to the green agenda. Dr Eugenio Vaccari (Senior Lecturer, Royal Holloway, University of London) has been working as a senior-short term consultant for the Insolvency & Debt Resolution Program.

Together with the other members of this team (Akvile Gropper, Harry Lawless and Antonia Menezes), Dr Eugenio Vaccari prepared a discussion paper on “Insolvency and Climate Change”. The paper set the discussion points for the workshop with invited key experts in the field. The workshop, which was organized by the World Bank in collaboration with INSOL International and the International Insolvency Institute, was held in Washington DC on 23-24 February 2024.

Dr Eugenio Vaccari contributed to the discussion agenda of the World Bank’s Insolvency and Climate Change Working Group by co-authoring the discussion paper, as well as by moderating the discussion on Saturday 24 February. The overarching goal of this project is to determine what changes are needed for insolvency laws (primarily in emerging economies) to promote resilience, adaptation and mitigation to climate change, so that we can live in a livable world free of poverty.

This work will result in a policy paper that should be circulated internally within the World Bank and among the other funders of this initiative (INSOL International and International Insolvency Institute) by June 2024. The members of the Working Group who attended this event are listed below:

• Prof. Sumant Batra (Kesar Dass B. & Associates, Insolvency Law Academy)
• Mr. Colin Gower (BDO, New Zealand)
• Prof. Jason Kilborn (University of Illinois)
• Prof. Tuula H Lina (University of Helsinki)
• Prof. Anna Lund (University of Alberta)
• Dr. Adi Marchovich Gross (Columbia Law School)
• Mr. Devendra Mehta (INSOL Fellow)
• Ms. Smitha Menon (Wong Partnership, Singapore)
• Dr. Jonatan Schytzer (Uppsala University)
• Prof. Kristin van Zwieten (University of Oxford)
• Prof. Ray Warner (St. John’s University)