Bottom Up Policy, Environmental Justice, and the Interdisciplinary Lawyer with Sergio Sánchez

Welcome to Studying Law Around the World. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. I talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for you. Today I'm hosting Sergio Sanchez, and he is an incredible individual with such an interesting story. He is a lawyer in Mexico, Stanford PhD candidate, and an environmental policy leader working at the intersection of sustainability, climate justice, and community-driven solutions. Thank you so much for coming to the podcast today, Sergio. Thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. And to start off the podcast, I'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about yourself. I'm Maurerio, original from Mexico City. I consider myself an environmental advocate. I'm very interested in topics related to energy transition, how to make it more just and equitable for communities. I love being outdoors. I love sightseeing. I love to travel. I love to be in beautiful places, such as natural protected areas. That's kind of what I do, which connects to my personal life and also my profession. That's amazing. I'd love to learn a little bit more about your story. And I saw that you've worked across law, policy, sustainability, and still do, and academia in both Mexico and the U.S. And looking back in your career, your story, what first made you realize that environmental justice would be something that you wanted to pursue as a career? Yeah, of course. So in Mexico, when you have to graduate, you are required to make 480 hours of social service when you are doing your undergrad. So in order for you to get your degree, you need to make that social service. And mine for my degree in international business, which is the one I studied before law school, was in the southern state of Chiapas, which is in the southern Pacific of Mexico. And this is one of the most diverse states in Mexico. So I had the opportunity of interacting with a lot of indigenous communities in this beautiful biodiverse state in Mexico. Also when I was a little kid, I got the opportunity of traveling and meeting all these beautiful states in Mexico because my dad is from the southern part of Mexico. So we would travel quite often inside Mexico. So I think that's how I realized that the environment, we cannot disconnect it from society and that environmental problems are also social problems. So I think that's how I started making the connection. And definitely that summer that I spent in the state of Chiapas was very important for me as to realizing how indigenous communities and natural protected areas are connected and start making me think about how could I make that career. That's amazing. I must mention quickly here. I actually was supposed to spend some time during school in Mexico, in Puebla. I got accepted to go do an exchange at the Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla in 2020, but COVID came around. Happily the university accepted two people to do it online. And it was still an interesting experience. I had very little guidance on what to choose. So I ended up doing international public law. And also I chose this subject that seemed so interesting called Seminario de Titulación. Well, later I found out that I had to write a substantial piece to be able to pass that course. So it was quite interesting. Probably not the best choice when you're like an exchange student online, but it was really nice to be able to, you know, talk to so many people about, you know, pressing issues and things that we were interested in. How did your experience as an international lawyer shape this way that you approach environmental policy, energy transition, all the work that you do these days? Yeah. So, you know, one of the questions that I usually get asked by students here at Stanford, I've taught a couple of courses. So whenever I tell my students that I'm a lawyer by training, they are a little bit surprised. I'm like, well, Sergio, like, what do you mean, how is a lawyer now teaching environmental courses? And I think, you know, people have this idea that lawyers only wear suits and ties and that are always in courthouses, litigating, filing suits and whatnot. And the truth is that, as you know, now you're hosting all these lawyers around the world in your podcast. The profession of a lawyer is very diverse. You can do many things, many fields. And for me, just making this connection of public policy with environmental law, energy law, and then figuring out how to use all that knowledge to come up with conservation strategies that are also, I guess the correct word would be bottom up, which means considering what the communities and the people that are living in these areas are very interested about. And then having, you know, their concerns, their needs, considering this public policy. And I think that's a way of incorporating different fields and making sure that the environmental law, the energy law, the water law, it's considered while we're drafting all this policy with folks from diverse backgrounds and fields of study. Amazing. I saw here too, that your work often focuses on making clean energy transitions more equitable, community centered. What are some of the mistakes maybe that policymakers or institutions still make when they're trying to advance sustainability initiatives? I think one of the main problems of policy, which it's also understandable, policymakers, they try to make policy for everyone, right? You probably have local congresses or federal congresses, and they're not thinking about how a specific policy or a law will affect individual communities or individual persons. And I think that's kind of the main problem because they're making choices for the majority. Unfortunately, some of these projects, specifically about renewable energies, for example, siting and permitting, where should we build a wind farm? Some of these harms are specific to the communities where these projects are going to be. So unfortunately, as this, let's say, policy about renewables for a specific country comes from the capital city or from the federal congress, they're not thinking about that specific community. So one of the problems is once a project is built, then people that are part of those communities start realizing about the harms that potentially this project, or actually these projects already having in their communities. And back, you know, when this already happens, when this project is already executed, it's probably a little bit too late to start making changes because, you know, all the money has been spent, all the policy has been passed. So it's very difficult to include the needs of the communities. So what I think is that even though it's a little bit more difficult, through public policy, we can come up with things that will also help the communities during the process. For example, we can think about consultation process, going with the communities and addressing their needs during the process of construction of these projects, rather than at the end when it's very unlikely that things will change. And I think that kind of overflows to what's happening with policymakers. As I mentioned earlier, they're thinking about kind of the national or the state effects of certain policy. They are not thinking about what will be the effects on specific communities. Fantastic. And I find it very interesting, you just mentioned, you know, kind of how the engine works and how this decision making is done. I'm also curious that, you know, after your work in government, not-for-profit advocacy organizations, so I see you worked from different angles as well. And I'm curious if, you know, how has moving between these different sectors changed the way you think about creating real impact? Because I'm sure there's different angles, there's different ways, but also it's good to understand how somebody in the public sector thinks, how somebody in academia thinks. So I believe you can make a connection with that. Can you tell us a little bit more on your thoughts on that? Yeah, for sure. So I'll use some example. Let's say there's solar farm development. You have the investors, which of course, you know, they want to spend their money because they will have an eventual revenue when they start selling the electricity. You have policymakers that are probably interested in advancing and making sure that the deployment of renewables is happening in a specific part of the country. And you also have community members, right, that are kind of curious about what's going to happen. The thing with policymakers and with investors and even, you know, NGOs working for advocacy for the communities is, you know, once they clock out, they are probably going back to their homes, to their regular lives, which are not in that community where that project is about to happen. The community will live there 24-7. There's no way out of that project for them. All the things that will happen will happen in their lives, in their communities. So I kind of gave you an example of how these different stakeholders interact. They always are thinking about moving forward their own interests, whether it's investment, whether it's policy or politics. And then oftentimes the communities are left behind, or the communities will advocate for what's best for the communities. Investors will get some help from NGOs, but as I was mentioning, they are not part of the community. As much as they help them and advocate for them, they are not part of it. So each stakeholder will have their own specific interest and make sure that it moves forward. The main issue is how can you make sure that, and sometimes it doesn't really happen, how to make sure that all the interests are kind of connected and are not conflicting between each of them. So I think that's the relevance of a good policy, good advocacy, and good community engagement. And that's what I'm very interested in, and that's what part of my research is about. Very interesting. I saw that one of your recent projects involved helping Stanford's educational farm moving towards an electric grid. And I was so interested because I'm feeling here that your work now intertwines as well with engineering, with other points that also can make these projects kind of come to light. And I'm curious, you know, what that experience taught you about, you know, turning research into real world ideas. And also, I guess, you know, having this opportunity to actually be in a place where you can have real effect, right, where your projects can go forward. So this project was part of an initiative from Stanford, which is called the Living Laboratories. And I was hired by the Stanford Educational Farm to electrify the farm. And they have this idea that students should go out of their regular laboratories, which are usually in a building with controlled conditions. And it happens very often with scientists and researchers that once they go out of these controlled situations, then they realize it's not the same. And, you know, for lawyers, we kind of realize that, right? Like, as soon as we get out of the classroom and go into courts, we realize that what we were taught in school is probably not the same as real practice. And I think something that we as lawyers, we are always thinking about is how to get this practice earlier on our careers. So anyway, with this project, what Stanford is trying to do is that all these electrical engineers, physicists, mechanical engineers, or even folks interested in energy policy kind of come together and have all this information, all this data of a real farm that actually, you know, supply some of the produces into the dining halls here at Stanford University that has a real tractor, we have refrigerators, we have classrooms, and making sure that students understand how the electrification process went and how can this data be used not only for Stanford, but think about probably a little bit about the farm of the future, particularly for small scale farms that can benefit from the Stanford experience. Of course, acknowledging all the privileges that we have here at Stanford, but at the same time, I think when we start building these cases and letting the world know about what places like Stanford is doing, then other folks can, to some extent, copy or use it as a model so we can scale the deployment of renewables in small scale farms, and also for students to get kind of the whole experience of what does it mean to have an operational farm with real world data, and then kind of take it back to the research projects to make it more efficient or to make better policy decisions, and I guess in the end, it's more about how things work in real life, interdisciplinary teams, people with different backgrounds making decisions that will have an effect on real people's lives. So that's what the Stanford farm was about, and we finished the construction in December. The farm went fully online on January of this year, and so far, it's been quite a success And for not only the farm, for what I would say as a whole, as Stanford University, students are very happy to go visit the farm, we're being asked to get some data so students can run some experiments, for example, changing the charging and discharging cycles of the batteries and other stuff, fun stuff, that's probably more in the electric engineer side, but I think everyone is welcome and has the opportunity of learning about the microgrid at Stanford. That's amazing. And you've researched topics ranging from renewable energy to conservation in Colombia, to you know, batteries in Atacama, Chile, environmental justice, marginalized communities, so many different things and such an interesting array of topics. How do you balance, you know, the local community voices with the large scale climate and energy goals? I think one of the main problems about research and academic spaces is that most of the knowledge that's produced in academic institutions, no matter where in the world you are thinking about or what specific place or university you're thinking about, it's very abstract knowledge, most of it will stay only between the scientists, the researchers or other academics. So building these connections, translating this knowledge from academic knowledge into actionable knowledge, building these bridges between academia and the industry or the government, something that's very relevant for me. And having this opportunity of doing research, for me, it's very important to the extent possible, of course, to amplify the voices of the communities I work with, because they are often overlooked. It's very common when you think about research, this parachute type of research where a researcher from high income Western countries will go into developing countries, the Global South countries, do some research, extract some samples, and then never go back to the communities to share the results with them. And for me, that part was probably the most important component of my PhD, making sure that the knowledge I co-produce with them is useful for them, not only for my academic purposes, but it's also good and useful for them. Just to give you a little example related to my research that I've done in peatlands in the Colombian or in Okiya, so peatlands, they are a type of wetland and they are the terrestrial ecosystem that store more carbon in planet Earth. So it's very relevant for us to take care of them and to make sure that carbon stays in the soil. However, in a lot of South American countries, they have recently discovered that there's a lot of peat in these peatlands. Peatlands are made out of organic matter that's decomposing, but as it's in a wetland, there's always a lot of water, there's no oxygen, so decomposition takes longer. So it accumulates over thousands of years. Actually peat is a precursor of coal and well, it's very relevant for us to keep it there. Right now, there's a big trend related to market-based interventions. For example, carbon markets, where most likely people or companies in the global North will pay people in the global South to conserve their lands. Some of these projects or contracts, they are very restrictive because sometimes they tell people, well, you know, we are telling our customers to this fiduciary responsibility that we're taking care of the Amazon in South America. So we know you have these cultural practices that relate to traditional burnings, but how can we tell people that, you know, we're conserving the Amazon, but at the same time, you are burning the land. So you start to see a lot of conflict between the different interests of the communities and the stakeholders. So for me, this particular project, I was very interested in letting people know that there's value on what's below the soil. Usually these carbon credit contracts, they're only considering the CO2 that's stored in trees. That's, I would say that's very common for carbon credits. They're not considering what's below. And that's because, you know, people don't know what's below. So part of this project was letting people know what are the resources that they have so that number one, they can take care of them. And number two, they have better information when these companies are trying to negotiate carbon credits contracts with them. They can actually get a fair price that is considering the carbon that's being stored below as well as the carbon that's being stored, for example, in trees or grasslands. So for me, it was very relevant to go back to the communities to share the results of our research. So they have this actionable and useful knowledge that goes beyond the regular academic conversation. Fantastic. And in the same context that a lot that you mentioned, you know, all these aspects that have been getting, you know, kind of repeated throughout this session in a very interesting way as you explain your research, the approach, I think it's once again, very nice that we have a space as legal practitioners to really understand these issues and have a voice, you know, in a way to share that. I believe that many law students and young professionals might be listening to this podcast might have had at some point the desire to work, you know, with environmental law, with sustainability, this intersection of policy, regulation, sustainability, and so forth. But it's kind of hard to see examples of where that can lead you, right? They quite don't know where to start. Sometimes it's hard to find, you know, a firm that specializes in that and then that hired a lot of people as well, right? Sometimes you have a hire a year or less than that. What kind of practical advice would you give, you know, to international lawyers or, sorry, to lawyers who are maybe thinking about that, who might be, you know, international, who might be from underrepresented backgrounds, but are just wanting to stick to this purpose and mission in your life? I would say that the first recommendation would be kind of be open to understanding that as I was mentioning before, the profession of a lawyer is very broad, and at the same time kind of acknowledging that there will be opportunities away from the usual law firms. I think there's a very common thing happening in a lot of countries, particularly I'm thinking about Latin American countries where environmental law is often more like administrative law. It's more related to citing a permitting for energy projects, renewable energy projects, oil and gas projects, and you rarely have that access of actually interacting with the community. Probably some of these projects will end up in litigation, but it's more kind of a usual track of lawyering. I think once you enter that little circle, I think you can start seeing who are the stakeholders or the folks involved in these type of projects and how they're approaching the situation. For example, if you are interested in the policy side, you can work for think tanks, or you can go work for the government, or you can go work with some folks doing legislation in your country. If you are interested in the community side, you can work with advocacy groups, you can work with or for the communities, and if you are in the side of research, you can also make sure that you co-design your research to make sure that the interests of the communities are embedded in the research that you are doing. So I would say stay curious, stay open, and understand that the deeper you get, I would say, into environmental problems, the more you realize that you need an interdisciplinary team and interdisciplinary knowledge to be able to talk about these solutions. So yeah, stay curious and always try to be open-minded and try to pursue your dream because it's possible. And I think it's very common for lawyers to kind of reach to this wall where we're separated by fields. So just realizing that there is something beyond that barrier that takes you to interdisciplinarity, I think that's my recommendation. Fantastic. I really appreciate you making the time to come on the show, and I really appreciate you all for taking the time to listen to this episode. Thank you for the invitation. I'm very always happy to talk to all the folks that are pursuing a similar career. Thanks for the time. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you.