Johanna Aleria P. Lorenzo is an Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL). Specializing in international law and sustainable development (international development law), international trade law, and the legal aspects of the international financial architecture, Johanna is affiliated with the Sustainable Global Economic Law (SGEL) research group. Her teaching includes courses on general international law, international trade law, and the law of international financial institutions (IFI). She also supervises master's theses in these areas.

Dr. Lorenzo's research and publications sit at the intersection of international economic law and global sustainability governance, examining how international trade law and the law of international financial institutions interact with and are shaped by socio-ecological concerns, climate change, and development imperatives. It engages with the fragmentation of international law, tracing how the interaction of distinct legal regimes — trade, finance/debt, environment, human rights — produces both normative tensions and opportunities for integration in the pursuit of sustainable development.

Her recent monograph, International Financial Institutions and Sustainable Development: Lawmaking and Accountability (Cambridge University Press, 2025) elaborates the ways that international organizations and non-State actors participate in the international lawmaking process concerning sustainable development—by scrutinizing the safeguard policies of multilateral development banks (MDBs), such as the World Bank's Environmental and Social Framework, and the independent accountability mechanisms (IAMs) that receive project-affected people's complaints regarding MDBs' compliance with such policies. This book is based on Johanna's doctoral dissertation, 'International Financial Institutions and International Sustainable Development Law: The Role of Safeguard Systems and Non-State Actors', which was awarded by Yale Law School the Ambrose Gherini Prize for best paper in international law. 

Central to Dr. Lorenzo's work are the inequalities embedded within, and ostensibly addressed by, international law: in particular, the disproportionate legal and material burdens that Third World states and communities (continue to) bear in the context of realizing collective or global objectives, such as energy transition. This focus is reflected in her contribution to Oxford University Press's 'The UN Sustainable Development Goals: A Commentary' that explains the international law dimensions of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, specifically Goal 10 on reducing inequalities. 

Drawing on insights from international relations and (ecological) economics, Johanna explores questions of regime interaction, policy space, and institutional coherence in the governance of sustainable development, with particular attention to how interlocking international legal frameworks (re-)distribute the costs and benefits of economic and ecological interdependence. She was recently a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Law, Regulation & Governance of the Global Economy (GLOBE) in Warwick Law School, where she shared and further developed her working paper that investigates the ‘greening’ of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of larger trends such as the ‘economization of nature’ and the systematic disciplining of the Third World. The paper interrogates how climate change matters have figured into the IMF’s mandate, and with what legal and financial consequences for its member States, especially developing countries.

Dr. Lorenzo has taught international trade law (LL.M. program) and public international law at the University of the Philippines, where she also served as supervising legal officer at its research arm, the Institute of International Legal Studies. She holds  J.S.D. (Doctor of the Science of Law) and LL.M. (Master of Laws) degrees from Yale University, as well as J.D. (Juris Doctor) and B.Sc. (Economics) from the University of the Philippines.

International Financial Institutions and Sustainable Development: Lawmaking and Accountability (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

'Legal Opinion: International Legal Obligations of Multilateral Development Banks and their Member States in Relation to Climate Change’ (co-authored with Dr. Jolene Lin), commissioned by Bank Climate Advocates, 07 November 2025.

'The contribution of international financial institutions to international sustainable development law' in Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Ted Gleason and Sean Stephenson (eds.), Research Handbook on Investment Law and Sustainable Development (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025), pp. 449-472.

'Mission Creep' at the IMF: Frankenstein's Dilemma, 52(3) Legal Issues of Economic Integration 207 (2025), https://doi.org/10.54648/leie2025010.

Accountability Mechanisms of Multilateral Development Banks and the Law of International Responsibility, 73(1) International & Comparative Law Quarterly 209 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020589323000556.

‘10: Reduce inequality within and among countries’, in The UN Sustainable Development Goals: A Commentary (Ilias Bantekas and Francesco Seatzu, eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Differential Treatment and Inequalities under the Sustainable Development Goals: Beyond Preferential Market Access, Law and Development Review (2023), https://doi.org/10.1515/ldr-2023-0031. 

‘Connected, but damned: A conversation regarding the Belt and Road Initiative’, Arts of the Working Class (AWC), Issue 26: “Grassroots”, circulating May-July 2023.

Contemporary International Law and China’s Peaceful Development Zeng Lingliang (Book Review), 14 Asian Politics & Policy 290 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1111/aspp.12636.

A Path Toward Sustainable Development Along the Belt and Road, 24(3) Journal of International Economic Law 591 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/jiel/jgab032.

A Multilateral Track for Sustainable Development Along the Belt and Road: Aligning Country Ownership with International Rule of Law, KFG Working Paper Series, No. 47, Berlin Potsdam Research Group ‘The International Rule of Law – Rise or Decline?’ (April 2021), available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3831867 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3831867.

Law, Sustainable Development, and Foreign Financing of Infrastructure: Legal Safeguards for Economic, Environmental, and Social Sustainability of Foreign-Funded Infrastructure Projects in the Philippines [Monograph] (University of the Philippines Law Center, 2020).

'To sue or not to sue: Enforcing the obligation to notify under the international health regulations', Symposium: International Law in Pandemic TImes, Völkerrechtsblog (June 2020).

'Integrating Non-Economic Concerns in International Economic Organizations: Learning from the International Financial Institutions’ Approach to Sustainable Development', in Cool Heads in a Warming World: How Trade Policy Can Help Fight Climate Change (Daniel C. Esty and Susan Biniaz, eds., 2019), available at Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy.

International law-making in the field of sustainable development and an emerging droit commun among international financial institutions, 7 Cambridge International Law Journal 327 (2018).

“Development” versus “Sustainable Development”?: (Re-)Constructing the International Bank for Sustainable Development, 51 Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 399 (2018).

Investment Promotion as Progressive Realization of Economic and Social Rights, 16 Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and The Law 55 (2015).

States, Societies, and Revolutions: Legal Historical Analysis of Philippine Institutions, 84 Philippine Law Journal 1003 (2010).