Catherine Warburton

Catherine Warburton is our exclusively recommended Environmental Law expert in South Africa on the Advisory Excellence website. If you need assistance in this area, please contact Catherine directly using the contact details listed above.

Catherine has more than twenty years of practical experience in the relatively new field of sustainability law in South Africa. Her experience has been mainly developed across a broad spectrum of infrastructure development and mining projects.

She has also assisted NGO groups and government with legal advice and has provided input into governmental policy development in South Africa. Catherine has been involved in the environmental legal aspects of the Gautrain Project as specialist advisor since 2002 and has advised on a number of development projects and climate and energy related projects.

Whilst working as in-house Environmental Legal Counsel for Anglo American she completed a two and a half year international sustainable development training programme in 2001 entitled LEAD i.e. Leadership for the Environment and Development. In 2012 Catherine completed a Sustainability Reporting Course, certified by the Global Reporting Initiative.

In 2013 she completed the GRI Certified Course based on the G4 reporting guidelines. Catherine completed her dissertation for her Master of Laws at Wits University in 2014 with distinction. The title of her dissertation was, “Evaluating South African EIA processes in the context of the Gautrain Project”.

Catherine Warburton has developed specific expertise in the area of climate change. She has attended UNFCCC meetings as a South African business representative and has worked on greenhouse gas mitigation and reporting projects in South Africa.

She presents papers and training courses on a wide range of sustainability legal issues in South Africa. She provides strategic legal advice at the Board level, is currently advising on a number of mine closure projects and is acting in a criminal environmental prosecution.