What is the eligibility level for participants in the Brazil Rounds?

The competition is open to college-level participants, providing an educational opportunity for students pursuing higher education in law.

Where are the Brazil Rounds of the competition held?

The Brazil Rounds are held in the city of São Paulo, BRA.

What is the format of the Stetson International Environmental Moot Court Competition?

The competition is a moot court format, where participants engage in simulated court proceedings to argue environmental law cases.

30th Stetson International Environmental Moot Court Competition – Brazil Rounds

Feb 27–28, 2026São Paulo, BrazilIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

The Stetson International Environmental Moot Court Competition's Brazil Rounds offer college-level participants an opportunity to engage with complex environmental law issues. Hosted in São Paulo, BRA, this event serves as a crucial regional qualifier, advancing teams to the international finals. Participants hone their legal research, writing, and oral advocacy skills by addressing contemporary environmental challenges within a simulated court setting. This competition emphasizes the practical application of international environmental law, fostering a deeper understanding of the legal frameworks and diplomatic considerations involved in global environmental governance. It prepares future legal professionals to navigate the intricate landscape of environmental disputes and policy-making.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

Brazil

As the host nation, BRA plays a central role in fostering environmental legal education and debate in South America.

Role in topic

BRA is a critical country for environmental law due to its extensive biodiversity and significant natural resources. Hosting the regional rounds in São Paulo underscores its commitment to developing expertise in international environmental law and engaging with global environmental challenges. BRA often navigates complex issues related to conservation, sustainable development, and resource management, making it a relevant context for environmental legal discussions.

Topics & background

The history behind each committee topic and the states that shape it.

International Court of Justice

The Evolution and Enforcement of International Environmental Law

International environmental law emerged piecemeal from 19th-century bilateral treaties on shared rivers and fisheries, crystallizing into a distinct field after the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. The 1992 Rio Earth Summit produced the foundational triad — the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Rio Declaration — embedding principles such as sustainable development, precaution, common but differentiated responsibilities, and the no-harm rule articulated in the Trail Smelter arbitration and reaffirmed by the ICJ in the Pulp Mills (2010) and Costa Rica v. Nicaragua (2015) judgments. Despite this dense treaty fabric, enforcement remains the field's persistent weakness. Compliance mechanisms are typically facilitative rather than coercive, and contentious cases reaching the ICJ — Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros, Whaling in the Antarctic, and the pending advisory proceedings on climate obligations — illustrate the difficulty of translating soft principles into binding obligations. Current debates focus on the interplay between environmental law and human rights, the recognition of ecocide, and the duty to prevent transboundary harm in the context of biodiversity loss and emerging technologies such as synthetic biology and de-extinction.

Key players

International Court of Justice

Sources, Sovereignty, and State Responsibility in Public International Law

Modern public international law rests on the sources enumerated in Article 38 of the ICJ Statute: treaties, custom, general principles, and subsidiary judicial decisions and scholarship. Since 1945, the UN Charter framework has constrained classical Westphalian sovereignty through prohibitions on the use of force, human rights obligations, and a growing body of erga omnes duties. The ILC Articles on State Responsibility (2001) codify the secondary rules governing breaches, including attribution, countermeasures, and reparation. In environmental disputes, general international law supplies the architecture through which specific regimes operate: the customary no-harm principle, the law of treaties (VCLT 1969) governing interpretation of the CBD and Nagoya Protocol, and the doctrine of state responsibility for damage to areas beyond national jurisdiction. Contemporary controversies — climate reparations, the legal status of ecosystems, and obligations toward future generations — test whether traditional state-centric structures can accommodate diffuse, intergenerational, and ecological harms.

Key players

International Court of Justice

Prior Informed Consent in the Access and Use of Genetic Resources

Prior Informed Consent (PIC) is a foundational procedural safeguard requiring that resource users obtain documented authorization from the providing state — and, where applicable, from Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) — before accessing genetic resources or associated traditional knowledge. The concept entered international environmental law through the 1989 Basel Convention on hazardous waste and the 1998 Rotterdam Convention on chemicals, before being adapted for biodiversity in Article 15 of the CBD (1992) and operationalized by the 2010 Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing. In practice, PIC regimes vary widely. Some provider states have enacted detailed national ABS legislation requiring permits and Mutually Agreed Terms (MAT); others lack the institutional capacity to administer consent processes. Disputes have arisen over biopiracy allegations, the adequacy of consent obtained from IPLCs under the UNDRIP standard of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), and whether PIC obligations extend to digital sequence information derived from physical samples. The Kunming-Montreal Framework and ongoing Nagoya Protocol implementation negotiations continue to refine these duties.

Key players

International Court of Justice

Fair and Equitable Benefit-Sharing from Biodiversity and Genetic Resources

Benefit-sharing is the third objective of the CBD, alongside conservation and sustainable use. It responds to a longstanding asymmetry: biodiversity is concentrated in tropical, developing states, while commercialization capacity sits in industrialized user states. The 2010 Nagoya Protocol established a bilateral, contract-based regime in which providers grant access under PIC and Mutually Agreed Terms specifying monetary and non-monetary benefits — royalties, technology transfer, capacity building, joint research, and recognition of traditional knowledge. The bilateral model has struggled with high-value, fast-moving sectors such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and synthetic biology, where traceability of genetic material is difficult. The rise of Digital Sequence Information has further destabilized the regime: if commercially valuable research relies on open-access databases rather than physical samples, bilateral contracts cannot capture benefits. CBD COP15 in Montreal (2022) therefore agreed in principle to a multilateral DSI benefit-sharing mechanism, with operational details — including the funding rate and disbursement to IPLCs — negotiated through 2024 at COP16 in Cali.

Key players

International Court of Justice

De-Extinction and the International Law of Revived Species

De-extinction refers to scientific efforts to recreate extinct or functionally extinct species through back-breeding, cloning, or genome editing. High-profile programs targeting the woolly mammoth, thylacine, passenger pigeon, and northern white rhinoceros have moved from speculation to active research, raising novel legal questions that existing biodiversity instruments did not anticipate. The CBD, CITES, and the Convention on Migratory Species were drafted around the conservation of extant taxa, leaving the status of revived organisms ambiguous: are they native wildlife, genetically modified organisms under the Cartagena Protocol, or a new legal category altogether? Core disputes concern biosafety risks of releasing engineered organisms into ecosystems that have evolved in their absence, the allocation of intellectual property and benefits arising from genetic resources sourced (often without modern PIC) from museum specimens and ancient DNA, and the diversion of conservation funding from preventing extinction toward reversing it. The IUCN has issued cautious guidelines on "conservation introductions," and Parties to the CBD have begun debating synthetic biology under a dedicated process, but no binding international framework yet governs de-extinction.

Key players

International Court of Justice

Digital Sequence Information (DSI) on Genetic Resources

Digital Sequence Information — a placeholder term covering nucleotide sequences, and arguably also amino-acid sequences and associated metadata — has transformed biological research. Open databases such as GenBank, ENA, and DDBJ allow scientists worldwide to use sequence data without ever touching a physical sample. This decoupling has created a major gap in the CBD/Nagoya benefit-sharing architecture, which is built on bilateral access to tangible genetic resources. Provider states argue DSI use without benefit-sharing constitutes a form of digital biopiracy; user states and scientific communities warn that restricting open data would cripple pandemic preparedness, taxonomy, and conservation genetics. After years of expert processes, CBD COP15 (Montreal, 2022) agreed to establish a multilateral mechanism for sharing benefits from DSI, decoupled from individual access transactions. COP16 (Cali, 2024) operationalized the "Cali Fund," inviting large commercial users — particularly in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and agribusiness — to contribute a percentage of profits or revenue, with at least half of disbursements directed to Indigenous peoples and local communities. Implementation, the legal status of DSI under the Nagoya Protocol, and parallel debates under the WHO Pandemic Agreement and BBNJ Agreement remain unresolved.

Key players

International Court of Justice

Biotechnology, Biosafety, and the Governance of Engineered Organisms

Biotechnology — from traditional fermentation to CRISPR-based gene editing and gene drives — sits at the intersection of agricultural, environmental, health, and trade law. The 2000 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, supplemented by the 2010 Nagoya–Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress, governs the transboundary movement of "living modified organisms," requiring advance informed agreement and risk assessment grounded in the precautionary approach reflected in Rio Principle 15. Parallel regimes in the WTO (SPS, TBT Agreements) and the FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources interact, sometimes uneasily, with biosafety obligations. New techniques have outpaced the framework. Genome editing without inserted foreign DNA, synthetic biology, gene drives capable of suppressing wild populations, and self-spreading vaccines raise questions about whether they fall within the Cartagena definition of an LMO and how PIC should apply when engineered organisms can cross borders autonomously. CBD Parties have established an Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on synthetic biology, and the Kunming-Montreal Framework's Target 17 calls for strengthened biosafety measures. Disputes continue over labeling, liability, and whether developing-country regulators have the capacity to assess risks of technologies primarily developed in industrialized states.

Key players

International Court of Justice

Sovereignty and Stewardship over Genetic Resources

Until 1992, genetic resources were widely treated as the "common heritage of humankind," freely accessible to collectors, breeders, and pharmaceutical bioprospectors. The CBD reversed this paradigm, affirming in Article 15 the sovereign right of states to determine access to genetic resources within their jurisdiction, subject to PIC and equitable benefit-sharing. The 2001 FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) created a parallel multilateral system for a list of crops critical to food security, balancing sovereignty against the interdependence of agriculture. The regime now faces three structural strains. First, the BBNJ Agreement (2023) extends ABS-like obligations to marine genetic resources in areas beyond national jurisdiction, where no state can claim sovereignty. Second, DSI severs the link between physical access and commercial value, undermining bilateral sovereignty-based controls. Third, IPLCs increasingly assert that genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge are governed by their own customary laws and FPIC, complicating purely state-centric models. Reconciling sovereignty, multilateralism, and Indigenous rights is the defining challenge for the next generation of genetic-resources governance.

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before 30th Stetson International Environmental Moot Court Competition – Brazil Rounds, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) under the Biological Diversity Act Article 142 (Power to do Complete Justice)Article 142 — Doing Complete Justice Advice and Consent Advice and Consent of the Senate Age of Consent Act

Frequently asked questions

Related conferences

30th Stetson International Environmental Moot Court Competition – Brazil Rounds

Feb 27–28, 2026São Paulo, BrazilIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

Brazil

As the host nation, BRA plays a central role in fostering environmental legal education and debate in South America.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The history behind each committee topic and the states that shape it.

International Court of Justice

The Evolution and Enforcement of International Environmental Law

Key players

International Court of Justice

Sources, Sovereignty, and State Responsibility in Public International Law

Key players

International Court of Justice

Prior Informed Consent in the Access and Use of Genetic Resources

Key players

International Court of Justice

Fair and Equitable Benefit-Sharing from Biodiversity and Genetic Resources

Key players

International Court of Justice

De-Extinction and the International Law of Revived Species

Key players

International Court of Justice

Digital Sequence Information (DSI) on Genetic Resources

Key players

International Court of Justice

Biotechnology, Biosafety, and the Governance of Engineered Organisms

Key players

International Court of Justice

Sovereignty and Stewardship over Genetic Resources

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before 30th Stetson International Environmental Moot Court Competition – Brazil Rounds, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Key terms & resources

Frequently asked questions

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