These audits may be coupled with subsequent assistance and advice to address and resolve areas of non-compliance or other concerns in order for an operation to move towards sustainable compliance and to reduce the risks facing a company, its directors and its employees.
To this end, an audit report identifies key risk areas in order for an operation to prioritise its actions so as to achieve and maintain compliance.
We have developed a new electronic audit program that has made our environmental legal compliance audits faster, more user-friendly and significantly more cost effective. The electronic audit program enables clients to easily identify possible non-compliances with applicable environmental legislation and ascertain the most appropriate corrective measures to implement.
Key features of this program to be utilised by our lawyers when conducting audits:
Warburton Attorneys Inc tracks international climate change developments, including in litigation and in the carbon markets. We provide legal advice on climate change issues with particular focus on developing countries and the South African climate change legal regime. We have assisted with the implementation of many mitigation projects, including CDM projects and Carbon Offset Projects. We also assist with the drafting and review of climate change-related policies and legislation and are currently involved in the review of South Africa’s first Carbon Budget and Mitigation Plan Regulations.
Warburton Attorneys Inc provides advice on the authorisation requirements applicable to various developments and projects, including environmental authorisations, water use licences, waste management licences and atmospheric emission licences.
We also assist in formulating environmental authorisation strategies to allow for multiple authorisations and public participation processes to be aligned, including negotiations with the relevant regulatory authorities.
In particular, these services include:
Warburton Attorneys Inc provides the following services to the energy sector:
Warburton Attorneys Inc undertakes environmental legal due diligence investigations associated with commercial transactions. These services may be provided directly to clients involved in a transaction or as a specialist service to other attorneys advising on a transaction. We have concluded numerous environmental legal due diligence investigations of wind and solar energy facilities, and we continue to work with other law firms to provide input with respect to these projects.
Due diligence investigations are essential to ensure that contractual protections are adequately provided for, especially where there is a transfer of environmental legal risks.
Warburton Attorneys Inc assists in the drafting of sustainability-related contractual clauses whether directly for clients involved in a commercial venture, or as a specialist service to other attorneys.
Assistance associated with commercial transactions and due diligence investigations may also include drafting or advising on appropriate sustainability-related contractual provisions in lease and property sale agreements, loan agreements (where lender environmental liability issues may be relevant), servitudes, employment or service contracts, consultancy agreements, and the like.
Warburton Attorneys Inc has expertise in the drafting and negotiation of climate change-related contracts, including Emission Reduction Purchase Agreements (ERPAs).
We conduct High Court litigation and arbitrations, produce opinions and provide general advice on sustainability-related issues independently or in conjunction with other law firms and, where required, with input from Counsel.
We have assisted with a number of arbitrations concerning the determination of responsibility for environmental liabilities as well as numerous High Court review applications relating to environmental authorisations, wake loss impacts and mine closure. We also have expertise to conduct environmental criminal matters as well as land use and property related disputes.
