Dr Saskia Vanderbent | Sustainable Investment Advocate and Law Firm Director

The QUT Alumni Team had a chat with Saskia about her incredible journey, what keeps her inspired, and her latest professional guide on attracting sustainable investment.

Summarise your expertise and current role. What are you working to achieve?

I currently provide guest lectures on attracting sustainable investment for private companies, law firms and universities. I recently provided an onsite seminar to the post graduate students at Bond University and CPD training to a Melbourne law firm in a virtual classroom. My next online course “Sustainable Investment, Capital Markets and Corporate Governance starts in September” and is open for registration. My CPD training is available online and in person here: https://www.saskialaw.com/.

I am also the Director of my law firm, Saskia Law and advise communities and companies on sustainable projects. Recently I worked on a project in the Kimberleys.

I have also designed and co-ordinated several university law and property economics courses.

What inspired you to pursue your area of work/research?

Early on in my career as a lawyer I worked as a researcher for the Land Court and Aboriginal Land Tribunals, as a Registrar in the Supreme Court and then subsequently as a senior lawyer in the Native Title and Resources Division of Crown Law, appearing in the Federal Court. During that time I became interested in issues of economic justice as they related to remote communities. Having studied economic justice in my philosophy degree as an undergraduate I was interested in how theories of justice applied in real life contexts. The court participants I assisted came from diverse pastoral, Australian Indigenous, mining, government and infrastructure groups. I became proficient at negotiating with multiple participants from these diverse communities who all shared common resources. Many of these diverse participants were concerned about the sustainability of the resources in these remote locations and lack of infrastructure supply.

Although their interests often differed, commonality could be found. Whether a farmer, an Indigenous elder or a mining company, each participant wanted the water, land and energy supply to be sustainable. This experience sparked my interest in sustainable energy security for remote communities. I particularly saw a gap in energy justice for remote farming and Indigenous communities in regional Australia. Due to the vast distances, poles and wires cannot be built to all regions. The increasing affordability of small scale solar and wind generation and the advantages of decentralised off-grid systems for remote communities inspired this research.

Why is your work important?

It was apparent that the gap in remote community infrastructure supply was one of access to legal and financial services or “soft technology” and not just the physical technological infrastructure. I focused my research questions on closing that gap. I soon discovered that the issue for infrastructure supply could not be solved by mere provision of public government grants or private financial institutional funding because many projects funded this way in the past had become defunct due to unsustainable models. For example, where infrastructure was unable to be fixed, maintained or upgraded under a grant only model, or where funding was unavailable from institutional investors due to the underlying security assets required for loans or the high-risk nature of the investments. The research discovered a variety of structures and methods that have been used successfully to raise funds and attract investment in regional energy projects.

While researching the supply of sustainable solar infrastructure to cities to see how these models might be adapted to remote Australian communities, I discovered that funding bodies and private investors were using a new concept called “indicators” which were a set of tailor-made parameters used to assess infrastructure gaps and to inform investment decisions on infrastructure builds for large cities. It was from this research that the idea was born to develop a set of community investment indicators designed to attract investment in areas where there was an infrastructure gap Sustainable Community Investment Indicators (SCIIs®).

What are some of your career highlights? What excites you most about your field/current work?

It was exciting and a dream come true to launch my new book at QUT this year. It is available in the QUT bookshop.

I enjoy conducting seminars with enthusiastic students where I can learn their hopes and ideas for the future of sustainable investment in capital markets and in return I can teach them my knowledge and experience in the field.

One of my career highlights was being seconded as Board Director for the Future Courts Project. Our board advised the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on legislative changes to assist in the transition to a paperless court system while preserving the rights and interests of parties and the public.

What research challenge would you like most to overcome in the next 5 years?

It would be wonderful to see more women in the economic justice and engineering research space.

You recently published a professional guide on attracting sustainable investment with a focus on enabling investors to understand the economic indicators, income potential, return on investment, demand, and legal compliance, as well as community and social benefits. What motivated you to do this? What are you hoping to achieve?

I realised that although all remote communities had similar needs of energy security, energy justice and sustainable management of resources, a diverse economies perspective was required. Diverse economic thinking and community-based economic action was needed to close the gap in infrastructure supply. This is particularly the case in energy and infrastructure. Mining, pastoral and Indigenous communities often share overlapping interests over the same parcels of land. As there is a diverse range of needs between these communities there is a responsibility to apply context based, diverse perspectives at the enterprise design phase of an infrastructure project. A diverse economies perspective enables recognition of the multitude of ways that individuals and communities can engage, participate and contribute to economic, social and environmental aspects of a project. This approach allows for responsive, place-appropriate generation of a diverse range of economic outputs and inputs. It allows for free choice in legal structures such as companies, trusts, associations, cooperatives and allows individuals to choose their ownership and voting rights, fund-raising options, trading activities, tax status and so on. It relies on community involvement in making those enterprise design choices.

This industry guide analyses and develops a diverse range of economic and legal structures beyond the traditional government grant based or financial institutional based investment models. It provides a cost benefit analysis and recommendations in relation to those models. Further, this industry guide provides a set of community indicators, the Sustainable Community Investment Indicators (SCIIs®) designed as a decision-making tool for investment in remote community infrastructure and a set of propositions, the Sustainable Development Propositions, that inform those indicators by reviewing what it means to be a “sustainable development project”.

What are your hopes for the future?

I hope that capital markets will attract more investment in sustainable energy projects. My opinion is that less regulation, lower taxes and less government intervention incentivises these markets to attract more investment.

What is one skill you couldn’t live without and why?

Research skills are vital for all aspects of academia but also in the field of law. I have had many wonderful mentors who taught me research skills.

What were some of the best parts of undertaking a PhD at QUT? And how did it help prepare you for your career?

My supervisors were the best part of my PhD as they shared a great deal of their experience and knowledge.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

I was told not to expect my PhD to be published, which inspired me to get a publisher.

What advice would you give Law (especially women) alumna?

Trust your own counsel.

Do you have a question for Saskia? Connect on LinkedIn or via her website.