At the 2012 'Rio+20' Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro where I participated as an academic observer and journalist for Idealog Magazine.

Vernon Rive LLM(Envir)(Hons) BA LLB (Auckland)

I'm an Associate Professor at the School of Law at the Auckland University of Technology which I joined in 2009 after over 14 years of private practice, latterly as a partner at one of New Zealand’s leading national commercial law firms Chapman Tripp.

Since becoming a full time legal academic in 2009, my research activities have focused on three key areas of interest: climate change law, international environmental law and New Zealand environmental law.  At AUT Law School I lecture in Judicial Review, Constitutional Law, International Environmental Law,  Resource Management Law and Climate Change Law.

I'm undertaking doctoral research at Melbourne University Law School under the supervision of Professor Michelle Foster and Associate Professor Margaret Young.  My PhD research examines the capacity of a fragmented international law system to respond to issues of climate change-related displacement and migration.

Since 2013, I have also been working on a New Zealand Law Foundation-supported project critiquing New Zealand and international law responses to fossil fuel subsidies. The project culminated in publication in 2019 of a monograph Fossil Fuel Subsidies: an International Law Response.

I am the co-convenor of the New Zealand Resource Management Law Association Academic Advisory Group, member of the managing committee of the New Zealand for Environmental Law, Consultant Editor of the LexisNexis Resource Management Bulletin and Affiliated Graduate Researcher with the University of Melbourne's Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness.