Corporate Sustainability Law Committee Quarterly Meeting

NOTE: There are no written materials for this program. The content of this program does not meet requirements for continuing legal education (CLE) accreditation. All recordings and materials from this program and previous programs are available for free for ABA members and can be found on the ABA Business Law Section website

About Dr. Lalanath de Silva

Dr Lalanath de Silva has been active in public interest environmental law and policy for over four decades.  He is currently the Managing Director of Transparentem, an NGO that investigates labor and environmental abuse and seeks remediation through supply chain tracing.  He is also a Panel member of the Independent Complaints Mechanism of the International Climate Initiative of the Germany.

Lalanath was the first Head of Green Climate Fund’s Independent Redress Mechanism (IRM), where he established the mechanism, staffed it and developed its infrastructure and complaint handling procedures. He also established the GRAM partnership bringing together a community of practice around grievance redress mechanisms.  He has extensive experience in legal affairs, with more than 40 years of service as a lawyer. In Sri Lanka, he co-founded the Environmental Foundation Ltd and the Public Interest Law Foundation, two leading NGOs and practiced as a litigator for over two decades. He supported the Ministry of Environment as a legal consultant writing many of Sri Lanka’s environmental regulations, and was a member of the Sri Lanka Law Commission. Lalanath previously worked at the Environmental Claims Unit of the UN Compensation Commission in Geneva helping to process the environmental claims arising from the first Gulf War and served as Director of the Environmental Democracy Practice at the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Washington DC. As a member of the Compliance Review Panel of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), he led the review of multiple compliance cases.

Lalanath has a PhD from the University of Sydney, Law Faculty, a Master of Laws from the University of Washington, Law School, and graduated with honors from the Sri Lanka Law College as an Attorney-at-Law.  He has also been trained as a mediator. He is also a composer and conductor with several orchestral, choral and chamber works to his credit.