Moss-Fletcher Lecture in São Paulo, Brazil By Dr. Janis Sarra
III and South Square, London co-sponsored the 2025 Moss-Fletcher lecture in São Paulo, Brazil on June 6, 2025. The Moss-Fletcher lecture series is a tribute to the late Gabriel Moss QC and Ian Fletcher QC, both extraordinary leaders in international insolvency law who made significant and lasting contributions to the advancement of insolvency law frameworks around the world. The inaugural lectures were delivered by Sir Roy Goode KC in 2021 and Professor Westbrook in 2023.
This year the lecture was given by Dr. Janis Sarra, a leading scholar in international and comparative insolvency law, with special focus on financial institutions. She is Professor of Law Emerita and former Presidential Distinguished Professor, University of British Columbia, Canada, Principal Co-Investigator of the Canada Climate Law Initiative, a former board member of III, and a member of the Canadian Delegation to UNCITRAL WG V.
Dr. Sarra’ s lecture, titled Green Swans and Blue Skies: Climate Change and Insolvency Risk for Financial Institutions, A Lecture in Honour of Gabriel Moss and Ian Fletcher, reflected on strategies being used to manage systemic climate-related financial risk and support opportunities for the financial sector going forward, using examples from the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Canada. The physical impacts of climate change, both acute and chronic, are crystallizing everywhere. For example, in Brazil one year ago, atmospheric rivers dumped 700 millimetres of rain in less than four days in the Rio Grande do Sul. The flooding submerged
entire cities, affecting 2 million people, including 184 deaths and over 81,000 people made homeless. Increasing frequency and intensity of acute events and escalating chronic changes can increase credit risk through damage to and loss of value of collateral for bank loans. There is increased probability of default on loans and loss given default( LGD) due to stranded assets in carbon intensive investment portfolios. These losses create risks for financial market stability, in turn affecting macro-economic stability.
Prudential regulators and central banks recognize that the systemic nature of climate-related financial risk makes it an emerging vulnerability relevant to cross-border insolvency resolution. Dr Sarra explored how to reduce the risk of insolvency by using both hard law and soft law tools to enhance the role of the financial system in managing risks and mobilizing capital for sustainable development. Integrating climate-related risk analysis into financial stability monitoring and prudential supervision is challenging because climate-related physical and transition risks interact with complex, far-reaching, nonlinear, chain reaction effects.
The lecture was followed by a reception hosted by Pinheiro Neto and IWIRC. Particular thanks to hosts in Brazil, Professor Francisco Satiro de Souza and Professor Sheila Neder Cerezetti, Universidade de São Paulo. The second part of the lecture series will be held Thursday October 23 at the London School of Economics, same title, with new insights drawn from Dr. Sarra’ s meetings with policymakers, judges, and practitioners during her residency in Brazil. Please contact Professor Sarah Paterson at The London School of Economics and Political Science for more information.
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