Rethinking Plastics Pollution Post-Pandemic

Biography

Noreen O'Meara is an Associate Professor (Reader) of Human Rights, European and Environmental Law. She read Law at the University of Cambridge (Corpus Christi College) and UCL (LLM (Public Law) and did her PhD at Queen Mary, University of London. She has also completed non-degree studies at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Université Paris-1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and RADA. She previously worked as a research fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) and in practice at the European Commission's Legal Service and the Court of Justice of the European Union (cabinet, Advocate General Sharpston). Her work focused on infringement actions against Member States and cases in a broad range of areas, including data protection, taxation, environmental law and extradition.

At the University of Surrey, she has focused her research on human rights and European law, developing particular expertise on rights and the environment, environmental pollution and the evolution of human rights protection in Europe.

Noreen is Co-Director of the School of Law’s newest research centre, the Surrey Centre for International and Environmental Law (SCIEL) which launched in May 2020, and is a Fellow of the Institute for Sustainability. She leads and researches on a range of projects, several of which are hosted at the Governing Plastics Network, on the law and governance of plastics pollution - funded by UKRI/GCRF, AHRC, ESRC/IAA, and EPSRC. Further recent interdisciplinary projects were funded by UGPN (focusing on plastics pollution during Covid-19) and the British Academy (exploring strategies for tackling fake news and online misinformation in the G7). She is also PI on four British Academy projects with collaborators across the EU exploring aspects of rights of nature, trade and urban sustainability. A forthcoming project funded by UNEP addresses global plastics and trade governance in the light of the negotiations for a UN Global Plastics Treaty, in collaboration with colleagues at Exeter and Copenhagen.

In 2018 and 2020, Noreen was a Sutherland Fellow (UCD), and previously held visiting positions at The Institute of European and Comparative Law (IECL, University of Oxford), iCourts (University of Copenhagen), University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin. She is also a Visiting Associate Professor in Law at Stockholm University, a Research Affiliate at UCD Earth and an Affiliate researcher at the Exeter Centre for Environmental Law (ExCEL). From 2020-2023, she is on the Editorial Board of the Irish Journal of European Law.

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Biography

I am an environmental lawyer and I specialise in looking at the ways law can be used to protect the environment.  Recently I have been working on the 'wicked problem' of the polluting waste from plastics and how a circular economy might help to stop the problem of waste.  So I look at laws around the ecodesign of products and how they can be implemented to stop the production of waste and pollution.  I look at the whole governance frameworks for environmental law including not just the legislation but policy, implementation, enforcement and compliance as well as the impact of property rights. I have been working on the rights to water and sanitation and how they can be used to ensure a decent standard of living for people especially in developing countries.  I believe that we will not solve the problem of the degradation of the earth unless we work across disciplines seeking solutions together so I specialise in multidisciplinary research working with social and natural scientists and engineers.

I am the Director of the Environmental Regulatory Research Group (http://www.surrey.ac.uk/errg/) which is a research grouping of individuals and organisations engaged in research, teaching and consultancy into environmental regulation, compliance and enforcement and is part of the Surrey Centre for International and Environmental Law.

I am an associate member of the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey and I also practice as a barrister from Guildford Chambers.

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