ESG Conference 2025: a conversation with Damilola S Olawuyi

Sara Carnegie (SC): Professor Damilola Olawuyi is an international lawyer, professor, and policy adviser specialising in business and human rights, energy, natural resources, and environmental law. He serves as UNESCO Chairholder on Environmental Law and Sustainable Development at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar and is Director of the OGEES Institute in Nigeria. In addition to being a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (KC) and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, he sits on the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights and chairs the IBA SEERIL Academic Advisory Group. His award-winning book Environmental Law in Arab States earned recognition from ASIL in 2023. He kindly spoke on a panel at the IBA session ‘ESG: The Brussels Effect at a Crossroads’. 

SC: Thank you so much for joining us today, Damilola. We’ve really enjoyed your contributions in the panel session just now. Just building on that and wanting to understand, based on your extensive experience in natural resources, energy, environmental law, and what you’ve done throughout Africa, Asia – and all the other continents, it seems you’ve got extensive experience – what would you say your thoughts on the impacts of the recent expansion of European disclosure and due diligence regulation with extraterritorial effect in Europe on non-European jurisdictions would be, particularly in Africa. Can you give us some more information about your thoughts on that? 

Damilola Olawuyi (DO): Thank you so much for having me, and it’s been a great conference so far. It’s a great question. The rise of norms and legislation across the EU, especially the CSDDD, raises opportunities, as well as risks, for African markets.
Thinking about the opportunities, it provides an opportunity to advance the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which, as you’re aware, has been around since 2011 and in my capacity as a member of the working group, we are often seen as the custodians of best practices in terms of advancing responsible investments and we’ve seen a number of African countries responding well to the UNGPs. At least now we have four countries, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, adopting national action plans on business and human rights.

We’ve also seen the rise of climate legislation. We have the Climate Change Act in Nigeria, for example. And just very recently, Kenya also released its carbon trading regulations, which shows an increasing appetite by countries on the continent to align their practices with international norms in this area. That will mean a number of good things for local communities that for many years have thought that international investment affects their rights; indigenous communities that complain about land grabs without compensation. So, there are opportunities to address all of that. There are opportunities to address environmental pollution that have been lingering in many parts of Africa for years; we’ve seen the concerns, for example, in the Niger Delta in Nigeria. And so, when these norms been adopted, then they signal good prospects for the environment. 

But at the same time, there are risks that come with this which lawyers will have to carefully navigate and work with states and businesses to navigate, and some of them, it will be, for example, geopolitical risk associated with these norms. Africa is a good example. We have the urgency to address the climate emergency, but there is also the energy poverty emergency. This is 2025, and there’s still a number of countries in Africa that still rely on wood for cooking, that have no access to electricity. So convincing governments to keep natural gas and oil underneath the ground in such a context when there is still huge energy poverty is a difficult argument to make. A number of African countries have also raised concerns about how EU standards may make it difficult to access the markets with our own products. You want to export your own agricultural products or your own energy products, but then the regulations make that difficult. 

There’s also the risk relating to lack of standardisation. What does ESG actually mean? What it means in Nigeria or in Africa may be different from what it means in the EU or even in North America. So, this lack of standardisation simply means that lawyers and clients are struggling to really, really understand where their liability starts and where it ends, and for lawyers, legitimacy and certainty is very important. So, I think when you look at the opportunities and the risk, it shows us that as energy lawyers, we have a lot of work to do to clarify these grey areas.

SC: Do you feel that the direction of travel that’s emerging in North America in particular raises concerns for governments in Africa in relation to is the playing field truly levelling, or why are we seeing this disconnect from the agenda coming from one of the most powerful countries in the world? I’m just curious if you’re hearing concerns about all the work that you’re trying to do, as you’ve described, when the kind of mixed messaging is emerging from other jurisdictions.

DO: Yes, exactly, in fact, that’s part of the geopolitical risk and problem I mentioned, because when you look at the ESG question, underneath it is the climate responsibility question, and we cannot neglect the historical responsibility of the United States for the climate change problem. We cannot neglect the historical responsibility of some of the large superpowers in Europe as well. Even the Paris Agreement expects developed countries to take the lead, both in terms of implementation, in terms of technology, in terms of providing financing. And so, when you have a country, an economy of US size and magnitude pulling back from these ESG standards and basically telling the world ‘we don’t care’, then it raises concerns. It not only imperils the economies of many African states, but it reminds me of George Orwell’s ‘all animals are equal, but some are more equal’, and that is an antithesis to international solidarity. All countries have sovereignty and equality and should pursue climate ambition with the same vigour.

SC: On this point though, the US government, in a recent executive order, has said it’s committed to unleashing American energy, especially through the removal of all illegitimate impediments to the identification, development, siting, production, investment in, or use of domestic energy resources, particularly oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, and a whole range of other, including nuclear energy resources, and that further, an affordable and reliable domestic energy supply is essential to the national and economic security of the United States, as well as its foreign policy. So that becomes an additional feature to bear in mind.

Emily Morison (EM): Damilola, in your comments in the session just now, you made some really interesting remarks about the way that private practice lawyers can really contribute to filling some of those gaps in financing, for example, that companies and governments in African jurisdictions are experiencing, noting those real inequalities that we’re seeing between the Global North, Global South. What are some of those mechanisms that that you see emerging and perhaps some tips that you have for lawyers wanting to advance positive action in this space? 

DO: Yes, it’s a great question. And one thing that we must keep in mind is that despite the geopolitical questions, despite the debates, despite uncertainty, lack of standardisation, since the UNGPs came into being in 2011, ESG has gained momentum, and ESG is squarely here to stay. It has become important, and it will always be important, and it means there is a strong business case for clients, for businesses to understand that. These norms underpinning the ESG debate have been around for many years. There’s really no country that does not have environmental legislation or human rights legislation. As long as those debates exist, the responsibility is very clear and I think what lawyers can then do is to work with clients to say, OK, what are the de-risking tools that we need to equip businesses to be able to understand their ESG responsibility and to be able to implement them. 

Of course, one key question is the issue of financing: we know what ESG means, but how do we even get the resources? So perhaps there’s a need to think of innovative blended financing that will enable clients to gain access to international facilities that can help them to increase their investments in ESG. 

There is also, of course, the issue of technology: ‘We understand, we want to act, but we simply do not have the technology’. This a question I get in my work in Africa and in the Middle East. So perhaps lawyers can also clarify the role of clean technology entrepreneurship: how can countries develop supportive laws that can enhance homegrown technology development, rather than relying on technology imports? Lawyers can provide regulatory advice to states on how to simplify clean technology entrepreneurship; how to promote local content at home that will lead to homegrown solutions. 

And of course, the third aspect is the issue of capacity. There is a need for training workshops conferences on ESG and that’s why I must indeed commend the IBA and all the organising partners for such a conference. It’s timely, and I think the IBA can continue to play a leading role in this regard, providing opportunities for stakeholders to understand the evolving landscape of ESG. So, I think that that will be really crucial going forward.