Inaugural Sutherland Fellow to fuel changes to oil and gas laws in her native Caribbean

New PhD student Alicia Elias-Roberts arrived on campus this fall on a mission. As the first recipient of the Robert Sutherland Fellowship in Law, she plans to make changes that will benefit her region, the Caribbean islands thousands of miles away. 

One target: outdated laws and regulations governing oil spills. Following a huge spill in 2013, the government of her resident country Trinidad and Tobago was widely criticized for falling behind. “If my recommendations are adopted and implemented,” she says, “I believe such environmental disasters will be prevented or, if they do occur, their impact will be minimized.”

At Queen’s Law, Elias-Roberts will be honouring the legacy of a key figure in the university’s history. The Robert Sutherland Fellowship in Law, established in 2015 by alumni and friends, supports graduate students coming from his Caribbean home region to study in Macdonald Hall. Sutherland was the first black graduate of an Ontario university, receiving a BA from Queen’s in 1852, and went on to practise in Ontario as British North America’s first black lawyer. When he left his alma mater his entire estate (almost $13,000, or $260,000 today), he saved Queen’s from annexation by the University of Toronto. 

Elias-Roberts, whose research focuses on the international environmental law field’s relationship to oil and gas regulation, was previously Lecturer in Law and Deputy Dean (Outreach) at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. From the University of Guyana, she graduated at the top of her LLB class and earned a Certificate in Legislative Drafting from a program the university offers in collaboration with the Commonwealth Secretariat. She also holds a BCL from Oxford University and an LLM in Energy, Environment and Natural Resource Law from the University of Houston. 

“As our first Sutherland Fellow, I can’t imagine a better candidate than Alicia,” says Dean Bill Flanagan. “She has not only demonstrated her outstanding scholarly potential, but also her commitment to applying her Queen’s legal education to the promotion of development in the Caribbean region.”

After a course in international environmental law at Oxford piqued her interest in the subject, Elias-Roberts spoke with industry insiders in her home country, realized there was a need for a course in oil and gas law, and developed one for her university. 

The topic is especially timely. “There are so many dimensions to this research in light of global concern about climate change and other environmental issues,” she says. “Even with alternative energy sources off-shore you have to think about the risk to marine species and research the best ways to protect them and their environment.”

To emphasize her topic’s relevance to her region, she points to countries like the Bahamas, Guyana and Jamaica, which have been granting permits and licenses to oil companies to do exploratory work off-shore. “It’s important to look at the environmental challenges being faced and to take precautionary measures. As the companies go out deeper into the sea, questions arise about environmental challenges to the marine ecology and potential problems like oil spills. These can pose a particular threat to islands in the Caribbean because so many depend on tourism. There would be an economic impact, too.”  

She chose Queen’s after speakers from the U.K. and Canada at a conference she organized in Trinidad recommended Queen’s as a place to study. When she started investigating universities, Queen’s was very responsive, and when Professor Bruce Pardy, a renowned environmental law expert, offered to be her supervisor, she was thrilled. “That cemented my decision.”

She says she’s been thinking about doing her PhD for years, and now the fellowship means she can. “Although an academic career is what really appeals to me, I wanted my studies to have impact and contribute to the Caribbean region and to its government. I want to research, to publish, to contribute in this academic way.”

It’s not hard to imagine how proud Robert Sutherland would be of this trailblazer carrying on his legacy at Queen’s and of the generous law community that made it possible. 

By Georgie Binks

N.B. Alicia Elias-Roberts has also been awarded the 2016-17 H.R. Stuart Ryan Fellowship in Law. This fellowship, named in memory of a founding Queen's Law faculty member, is presented on the basis of academic excellence to an international doctoral student from a Commonwealth country.