Your course instructor

Jennifer Kamerman

Environmental Lawyer

Jennifer Kamerman is an environmental lawyer who holds an LLM in Environmental Law from the University of Cape Town.

After graduating with an LLB, Jennifer joined the retail industry for 17 years, gaining broad-based experience in commercial law, business organisation, leadership, management and governance, at a senior level. Jennifer left the corporate world to formally pursue her commitment to environmental justice, advocacy and sustainable development.
Currently, Jennifer is self-employed and provides legal expertise and strategic direction to communities seeking to effectively address threats to their environment. In addition, Jennifer coaches executives in shifting their thinking and re-framing their approach regarding corporate environmental governance. Jennifer is especially skilled in assisting companies to optimise their stakeholder engagement strategies and processes. Further, Jennifer expresses her passion for on-going education by teaching professional skills development courses in various aspects of environmental law.

Jennifer is an internationally accredited mediator who is experienced in facilitating long-term solution-building in multi-stakeholder environmental disputes. Jennifer’s over-riding goal is to contribute to mutually beneficial conflict resolution that is constructive, respectful, creative and unbiased.

Extramurally, Jennifer is actively involved in several environmental justice, social transformation and civic initiatives. Jennifer enjoys spending time in wilderness spaces, hiking, practising yoga and tending to her edible garden. Her research interests include environmental and social governance, politics and government, ecology and natural law, earth sciences, sustainable development, economics and trade, philosophy and ethics.

Jennifer lives in the Riebeek Valley, a picturesque wine and olive producing region, in close proximity to Cape Town, South Africa.

Guest contributor

Professor Loretta Feris

Partner, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Internationalisation, University of Cape Town

Loretta Feris was until recently Professor of Law in the Institute of Marine and Environmental Law at the University of Cape Town (UCT) where she taught natural resources law, pollution law and international environmental law. From January 2017 to July 2021 she was Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Transformation) at UCT. She holds the degrees BA (law), LLB and LLD from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and LLM from Georgetown University in the USA.

Prof Feris is an National Research Foundation rated researcher and has published widely in the area of environmental law, including environmental rights, liability for environmental damage and compliance and enforcement of environmental law. She is a board member of Biowatch and Natural Justice and has until 2013 served on the board of the South African Maritime Safety Authority. She is a Law Commissioner of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and a member of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law where she served on the teaching and capacity building committee for three years.

Guest contributor

Professor Andy Bytheway (PhD)

Retired Professor of Information Management

Professor Andy Bytheway has worked in the information systems and services industry and as a senior academic. As a consultant in the United Kingdom he worked extensively for the British Government, and for European business and industry. Then, as an academic, he undertook the first major business-funded research project into Electronic Data Interchange at the Cranfield School of Management in the UK, delivering new management guidelines for electronic commerce. In South Africa, he led a new Department of Information Systems at the University of the Western Cape and assisted the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in the initiation of new multi-disciplinary research focused on the Information Society. He has consulted here with the City of Cape Town, Portnet, the Government of the Western Cape, and others.

Andy is now retired, but he remains active. He published his fourth book in 2014 (“Investing in Information”, published by Springer, Geneva). In 2016 he completed a major research project concerning the management of information and information systems in higher education in the Western Cape. Most recently, he has become involved in the management of sectional title schemes in Cape Town, and has developed cloud-based support systems for managing agents and trustees.