David M. Ong

David M. Ong is a Reader at the University of Essex Law School, UK where he teaches International Law, including WTO Law, and Environmental Law, including European Environmental Law. His main research interests are in and International Environmental Law and the International Law of the Sea, particularly on offshore joint development. He has acted as a consultant on joint development issues for the Guyanese legal team in the Guyana-Suriname maritime boundary delimitation arbitration (2007) and as a technical expert and resource person on Joint Development at the Second United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) South-South High Level Meeting on Oil and Gas Producing Developing Countries held in Nairobi, Kenya on 12-15 October, 2009. In this capacity, he was able to contribute with a presentation and participate in the drafting of the Nairobi Statement on Effective Oil and Gas Management in Developing Countries, adopted at the end of the High Level Meeting.

Mr. Ong has published in the American Journal of International Law (1999), the European Journal of International Law (2001), and the Irish Yearbook of International Law, 2006 (published 2008), as well as numerous invited papers in edited volumes of essays. Recently, he has been collaborating with Professor Sheldon Leader (also at Essex Law School) in an ESRC project on the implications of Project Finance-type loans for major infrastructure development projects and their implications for social and environmental rights. The results of this research project will be included in a co-edited book with Professor Leader published by Cambridge University Press in mid-2011. In this new research field, he has also published papers on the implications for international environmental law of transnational investment agreements (Yearbook of International Environmental Law, 2006 published in 2008), the Equator Principles on social and environmental impacts of Project Finance (Nordic Journal of International Law, 2010) and the implications of international investment law on environmental protection within the context of a major hydrocarbon development project in Sakhalin island, in the Russian Far East (Netherlands International Law Review, 2011). He has further co-edited the Research Handbook on International Environmental Law (Edward Elgar, 2010)  and has also contributed the entry on ‘Joint Exploitation Areas’ for the Max Planck Encyclopaedia of Public International Law, to be published by OUP both online & in print (2011).