Roca Junyent awards the VI Law and Society Award to Christiana Figueres for her legal defence of the environment

Barcelona, 2 October 2019 -. This afternoon, Roca Junyent presented the Law and Society Awards in Palauet Casades at the Ilustre Colegio de Abogados de Barcelona (the Barcelona Bar Association). This is the sixth edition of these awards, based on the firm’s Social Responsibility Advocacy Plan. The awards ceremony was presided by Miquel Roca, chairman of the firm, and Joan Roca, Executive President of Roca Junyent.

This time, the VI Law and Society Award was presented to the international leader fighting climate change, Christiana Figueres. She was Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (CMNUCC) from 2010 to 2016. During her tenure, Figueres met with national governments, corporations and activists, financial institutions, think tanks, technology providers, NGOs and parliamentarians to jointly work on the climate change agreement. Figueres led the process that ended the historic Paris Agreement, signed by 195 countries on 12 December 2015. In 2016, TIME magazine nominated her as one of the 100 most influential leaders in the world. She currently acts as convenor of Mission 2020, an initiative that seeks to ensure the reduction of global greenhouse emissions from now on to prevent warming of over 1.5 degrees Celsius.

During the event, the awards for Roca Junyent’s sixth prize for the Social Responsibility Advocacy Contest (RSA) were held, in recognition of the best work conducted by secondary school students on the value of Law. The office’s RSA project, involving most of the firm’s lawyers, is held through a school session programme, delivered to third and fourth-year secondary students. Over 3,500 young people have attended more than 250 classes taught by the firm’s lawyers in the six editions of the programme.

The VI Edition of the Law and Society Award recognised the work of five students at the Turó school in Tarragona. The second prize was awarded to the Montjuic International School in Girona. And finally, the third prize went to four students at the Ramón Fuster school in Bellaterra.

Executive President of the firm Joan Roca acknowledged the high level of the work presented in this edition, which also seeks to promote and recognise talent amongst young people. Joan Roca emphasised “the importance of binomial law and society to jointly achieve a fairer society”.

The event for the VI Law and Society Award was attended by, among others, the Ambassador of Costa Rica in Spain, Ana Helena Chacón, the Councillor of Justice of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Ester Capella, the councillor of Territory and Sustainability, Damià Calvet, the President of the Port of Barcelona, Mercè Conesa, the General Secretary for Education of the Generalitat, Núria Cuenca, the Director of Sustainable Development, Salvador Sedó, the Director of Rights and Legal Entities, Xavier Bernadí, the councillor for the Council of Statutory Guarantees, Margarida Gil, the Director of the Law School, Jorge Jiménez, the Dean of the Barcelona Bar Association, María Eugènia Gay, and the Chief Executive of the Council of Chambers, Narcís Bosch.