Paulo de Bessa Antunes

Practice Areas

Environmental

Career

Paulo de Bessa Antunes is a partner at Campos Mello Advogados in cooperation with DLA Piper's Environmental practice, based in Rio de Janeiro.

Paulo works in highly complex environmental cases. He has extensive experience in civil and administrative litigation and in the negotiation of extrajudicial and judicial settlements in environmental cases, even though his practice is focused on preventing disputes and seeking solutions for complex cases.

Paulo is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL), the main commission on environmental law in the world. Previously he served as an attorney general for the Republic of Brazil and a regional attorney general for 30 years, president of the Permanent Commission on Environmental Law of the Instituto dos Advogados Brasileiros and head of the Legal Counsel of the State Secretariat for the Environment of Rio de Janeiro.

Paulo worked on environmental licensing for large infrastructure projects, implementation of thermoelectric plants, ports, transmission lines, contaminated areas, large real estate developments, and biological diversity (patents and benefit sharing).

At the Public Prosecution Service, Paulo dealt with environmental, indigenous, and diffuse rights issues in general.

Paulo is a CNPq Academic Research Leader and Visiting Scholar at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon.

He is widely respected by peers, judges, and members of the Public Prosecutor for his experience and in-depth knowledge of environmental law, being also one of the most renowned authors in environmental law in Brazil.

Professional Memberships

- Member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL)

- Member of the Special Commission on Basic Sanitation and Water Resources, 2019

- Coordinator of the Graduate Courses of CCJP/UNIRIO

- Assistant Professor of Environmental Law at Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO)

- Member of Instituto dos Advogados do Brasil (IAB)

- Associate of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CiArb), London

- Former chairman of IAB's Permanent Environmental Law Commission