Director, Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre

Dr Maarten van Aalst is director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, the reference centre on climate risk management for the international Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, at the interface of science, policy and practice. He also leads the Knowledge Manager for BRACED, building climate and disaster resilience at scale in some of the most vulnerable countries. 

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Maarten has also worked on climate risk management with several other international organisations such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, OECD, UNDP, and several governments. He was Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC Special Report on Extremes and Lead Author of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.

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He holds adjoint appointments at Columbia University (International Research Institute for Climate and Society) and University College London (Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy). He received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from Utrecht University.

Partner and Chair, Responsible Investment, Mercer Investments

Jane Ambachtsheer is a Partner and Chair of Mercer’s Global Responsible Investment Business. She is responsible for overseeing the group’s strategy, developing intellectual capital across a range of responsible investment topics, and advising investors in Europe and North America.
Jane was consultant to the United Nations through the development of the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), which are now been supported by more than 1000 signatories. Jane is a Trustee of CDP, a member of the FSB Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, and a member of the PRI Academic Working Group.

Jane continues to produce new research and has been the author or co-author on a number of important papers and reports, including Mercer’s Investing in a Time of Climate Change (2015). 
In 2011, Jane received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Social Investment Organisation. In 2014, she was named one of Canada’s ‘Clean 50’ leaders in the field of sustainable capitalism. 

Jane is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto, where she taught a graduate course on responsible investment from 2007 to 2014. She holds a Bachelor of Economics and English literature with honours from York University and a Master of Social Science from the University of Amsterdam. 

Currently, Jane lives in Paris with her husband and two daughters. 

Cheif Executive, CDKN (Climate & Development Knowledge Network)

Sam Bickersteth has led CDKN, since 2011. CDKN is a leading global, multi-donor funded organisation supporting climate compatible development for developing countries. Through over 400 technical assistance, research and knowledge management projects in 70 countries CDKN has provided assistance on climate policies, planning and finance, climate related disasters and international negotiations.

Sam is an Honorary Research Associate at ECI and graduate of Oxford University’s School of Geography and Environment.   He is an agricultural economist with a background in food security, natural resources and climate change, having previously worked for DFID and Oxfam in Africa, South Asia and Latin America as researcher, policy adviser and programme manager. From 2006 to 2010 he was head of programme policy at Oxfam and previously held leadership positions in DFID including as Head of DFID Bolivia. Sam is a Director in PricewaterhouseCooper’s Sustainability and Climate Change team.

Executive Director, INET Oxford

Eric Beinhocker is the Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford. INET Oxford is a research center devoted to applying leading-edge interdisciplinary approaches to economic theory and public policy practice. INET Oxford researchers are working on issues ranging from financial system stability, to innovation and growth, economic inequality, and environmental sustainability. At Oxford Beinhocker is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government and a Supernumerary Fellow in Economics at Oriel College. He is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and a Visiting Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Central European University in Budapest.

Prior to joining Oxford, Beinhocker had an 18 year career at McKinsey & Company where he was a partner and held leadership roles in McKinsey’s Strategy Practice, its Climate Change and Sustainability Practice, and the McKinsey Global Institute. Beinhocker writes frequently on economic, business, and public policy issues and his work has appeared in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, The Times, the Guardian, The Atlantic, Newsweek, Democracy, and he is the author The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What it Means for Business and Society.

Head of Climate Impacts, Met Office Hadley Centre

Professor Richard Betts has worked in climate modelling for 24 years, and has been central to a number of pioneering developments in the emergence of the field of Earth System modelling.  More recently, he has turned his attention to the topic of climate change impacts, with a particular interest in the benefits of an Earth System approach, especially the interactions between vegetation and hydrology.

Richard was a lead author in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, responsible for assessing the radiative forcing due to land use change.  He was also a lead author in the Fifth Assessment Report, assessing the impacts of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems.  He had previously been a lead author on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and a lead reviewer of the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change.  He played a leading role in the UK government’s first Climate Change Risk Assessment.

Richard currently leads the major EU-funded project HELIX (High-End cLimate Impacts and eXtremes), comprising 16 institutions from 13 countries across Europe, Africa and Asia.  The primary mission of HELIX is to assess the global and regional impacts of “high-end” climate change, defined as above 2°C global warming. Additional HELIX work is now being carried out to examine the impacts of 1.5°C.

Director of the Sustainable Finance Programme, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford

Ben Caldecott is Director of the Sustainable Finance Programme at the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. He is concurrently an Adviser to The Prince of Wales’s Accounting for Sustainability Project, an Academic Visitor at the Bank of England, and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University.

Ben has authored and edited a wide range of publications related to the environment and is an experienced media commentator and public speaker. He is also a regular peer reviewer and has a number of board and advisory panel appointments, including with the Green Alliance, Carbon Tracker Initiative, Natural Capital Declaration, and the University of Oxford’s Socially Responsible Investment Review Committee.

Prior to joining the Oxford Smith School he was Head of Policy at investment bank Climate Change Capital, where he ran the company’s research centre and advised clients and funds on the development of policy-driven markets. Ben has previously worked as Research Director for Environment and Energy at the think tank Policy Exchange, as Head of Government Advisory at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, as a Deputy Director in the Strategy Directorate of the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, and as Sherpa to the UK Green Investment Bank Commission.

Ben read economics and specialised in development and China at the University of Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Peking University and held Visiting Fellowships at the University of Oxford and the University of Sydney. Ben is also a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and Royal Geographical Society, an Associate Fellow at Bright Blue, a Senior Associate at E3G, and a Member of the Senior Common Room at Oriel College, Oxford.

Environment Correspondent, Financial Times

Pilita Clark has been the Environment Correspondent at the Financial Times since 2011, covering issues ranging from climate change and renewable energy to wildlife and recycling, with a particular focus on the impact of low carbon policies on businesses and investors.

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She was previously the FT’s Aerospace Correspondent, Deputy News Editor on the main news desk, and Deputy Editor of the FT Magazine.

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Before joining the FT in 2003, Ms Clark was a Senior Writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, where she was a Political Reporter in Washington DC and Canberra. She was also Managing Editor of The Eye news magazine in Sydney, and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Leader of ECI Energy Research Programme, University of Oxford

Nick Eyre is Professor of Energy and Climate Policy at the University of Oxford. He leads the Lower Carbon Futures Programme of energy research in the Environmental Change Institute of the university and is a Jackson Senior Research Fellow at Oriel College. He is a Co-Director in the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), currently leading its research theme on decision making, and previously its work on energy demand. He is also a Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy.

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Nick was a lead author of the ‘Buildings’ Chapter of the Mitigation Report of 5th Assessment of the IPCC. He is a member of Ofgem’s Sustainable Development Advisory Group, a Fellow of the Energy Institute and a member of the Energy Policy Panel of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. 

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Previously he worked at the Energy Saving Trust as Director of Strategy and was a co-author of the UK Government’s 2002 Review of Energy Policy, leading its work on energy efficiency and energy scenarios. He was lead author of the research that underpinned the UK shadow price of carbon from 2002-2007.

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Nick’s research interests focus on the policy and governance implications of the low carbon transition. He has a strong background of work on energy demand issues, including research on its role in energy market reform and on energy efficiency policy instruments. This includes work on local government, trade groups and local communities in energy. Much of his ongoing research is concerned with the role of decentralised actors in the integration of renewable energy into energy systems, including the transition to low carbon heat, and the interaction of energy systems with other components of infrastructure.

Director of Science & Policy, Union of Concerned Scientists

Peter C. Frumhoff is director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a leading science-based advocacy organization, based in Cambridge Massachusetts. A global change ecologist, Dr. Frumhoff has published and lectured widely on topics including climate science and impacts, climate policy, tropical forest conservation and management, and biological diversity.  He was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCCs) 2007 Fourth Assessment Report and the 2000 IPCC Special Report on Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry, and served as chair of the 2007 Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment. He serves on the Advisory Committee on Climate Change and Natural Resource Science at the U.S. Department of the Interior, the board of directors of the American Wind Wildlife Institute, the board of editors of Elementa’s Sustainability Transitions, and the steering committee for the Center for Science and Democracy at UCS. He is an associate of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.

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In 2014, Dr. Frumhoff served as a Cox Visiting Professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University. Previously, he taught at Tufts University, Harvard University, and the University of Maryland. He also served as an AAAS Science and Diplomacy Fellow at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he designed and led conservation and rural development programs in Latin America and East Africa. He holds a Ph.D. in ecology and an M.A. in zoology from the University of California, Davis, and a B.A. in psychology from the University of California, San Diego.

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Dr. Frumhoff’s current research focuses on the climate responsibilities of fossil fuel companies. He has been quoted widely, including by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian, National Journal, Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and has appeared on National Public Radio.

Research Director/Special Adviser, Cicero

Dr. Jan S. Fuglestvedt has centered his research on atmospheric chemistry and climate interactions, and modelling of atmospheric and climatic impacts of different human activities, in particular the climate impacts of the transport sectors. He has also actively contributed to research on the effects of short-lived climate forcers and their potential role in mitigation strategies. He was Lead Author in IPCC AR5 WGI, Contributing Author in WGIII and Member of the Core Writing Team for the Synthesis Report. In October 2015 Fuglestvedt was elected vice-chair of IPCC WGI. Fuglestvedt has been member of the Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment’s Climate Advisory Board since November 2014.

Director, Forest Carbon Science, The Nature Conservancy

I direct the Carbon Science team at The Nature Conservancy. Our research is characterizing large global opportunities for nature to mitigate climate change through improved land management. We are completing a global analysis on the magnitude of cost-effective climate mitigation that could be generated by a wide variety of improved land management practices.  These include protection, restoration, and adoption of best management practices across forests, agricultural lands, and wetlands. We are refining this global analysis in key countries to characterize opportunities for lands to contribute to Paris climate agreement pledges.

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We complement global and national analyses with research in key geographies to refine our understanding of how to effectively implement climate smart protection, restoration, and best management practices.  For example, we are measuring the extent to which well-managed community-owned forests in Mexico are generating climate benefits by using reduced-impact logging practices while resisting deforestation.

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We also develop measurement and verification systems to quantify the climate benefits of improved land management practices. We just completed the first carbon methodology to verify the CO2 benefits of reduced-impact logging practices. We are implementing this methodology in eastern Borneo, and refining best logging practices to achieve greater carbon benefits. These practices can cut carbon pollution in half while maintaining local jobs, maintaining Orangutan habitat, and improving water quality.  We are beginning to scale these and other climate smart land practices around the world.

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Prior to joining TNC, I coordinated a successful effort at the U.S. Department of State, as an AAAS fellow, to make climate change funding available for forest-climate initiatives through the Global Environmental Facility (GEF). I completed a Ph.D. in tropical forest ecology from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 2003, and received my M.Sc. from New York University in plant genetics and conservation.

Professor of International Energy and Climate Change Policy, Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London

Michael Grubb is Professor of International Energy and Climate Change Policy at University College London (Institute of Sustainable Resources), editor-in-chief of the journal Climate Policy , and Senior Advisor, Improving Regulation, to the UK Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (the Energy Regulator OFGEM).  His former positions include Senior Research Associate in Economics at Cambridge University; Chair of the international research organization Climate Strategies; Chief Economist at the Carbon Trust; Professor at Imperial College London; and head of Energy and Environment at Chatham House, and he continues to be associated with these institutions. 

Director, Enivronmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Professor Jim Hall FREng is Director of the Environmental Change Institute and Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks in the University of Oxford. His research focuses upon management of climate-related risks in infrastructure systems, in particular relating to various dimensions of water security, including flooding and water scarcity. Jim Hall is a member of the UK independent Committee on Climate Change Adaptation. Until 2015 Jim Hall was co-chair of the Global Water Partnership / OECD Task Force on the Economics of Water Security and Sustainable Growth. He leads the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium, which has developed the world’s first national infrastructure simulation models for appraisal of national infrastructure investment and risks. 

Climate Change Group, World Bank

Stéphane Hallegatte is senior economist with the World Bank. His work covers green growth strategies, urban economics and environmental policies, climate change vulnerability and adaptation, and disaster risk management. He was lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change for its Fifth Assessment Report. He co-led, with Marianne Fay, the World Bank reports “Inclusive Green Growth: The Pathway to Sustainable Development” and “Decarbonizing Development: Three Steps toward a Zero-Carbon Future.” He also published dozen of articles in international journals and several books, including “Natural disasters and climate change – an economic perspective.” Most recently, he led the World Bank report « Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty » and was the team leader for the 2016-2020 World Bank Group’s Climate Change Action Plan. Stephane Hallegatte holds an engineering degree from the Ecole Polytechnique and a phD in economics from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Professor of Carbon Capture and Storage, University of Edinburgh

Stuart Haszeldine trained as a geologist, and has 40 years research and industry experience. The first half of his career was extracting hydrocarbons from the ground, and increasing greenhouse gases. The second half of his career is trying to put greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and ocean back into their geological and biological storage. He works on climate engineering, radioactive waste, biochar, and Carbon Capture and Storage – which is gradually developing the North Sea subsurface into a European sized CCS industry. He is occasionally advises both UK and Scottish governments, when facts and logic are fashionable. He was awarded the Geological Society William Smith Medal for applied geology in 2011, and in 2012 was appointed OBE for services to climate change technologies.

Senior Fellow, International Centre for Climate Change & Development ​

Dr. Saleemul Huq is the Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB), a Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London and a past Director of the Climate Change Programme at the institute. He has worked extensively in the inter-linkages between climate change (both mitigation as well as adaptation) and sustainable development, from the perspective of the developing countries, with special emphasis on least developed countries (LDCs). He has published numerous articles in scientific and popular journals, was a lead author of the chapter on Adaptation and Sustainable Development in the third assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and  was one of the coordinating lead authors of ‘Inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation’ in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007).

Vice-Chair of Sustainable Solutions, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research  ​

Dr. Elmar Kriegler is a senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), vice chair of Research Domain “Sustainable Solutions”, and head of the integrated assessment modeling activities at PIK. His research focuses on the integrated assessment of climate change, scenario analysis and decision making under uncertainty. He has coordinated several international integrated assessment modeling projects and contributes to the development of new scenarios for climate change research. He has been a lead author for the chapter on transformation pathways in the Fifth Assessment Report of Working Group 3 of the IPCC. Elmar Kriegler earned a diploma in Physics at the University of Freiburg, and a Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He was a Marie Curie Fellow at the department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Research Fellow, Overseas Development Institute

Virginie is a Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in London working on the social dimension of disaster risk reduction and climate change mitigation and adaptation. With a background in urban planning and a PhD in human geography, her research combines social development and environmental issues, in both rural and urban contexts. She leads the work on gender equality at the Climate and Development Knowledge Network and for the BRACED programme (Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters). Her interest for action-oriented research draws on past experiences working with the Red Cross on Disaster Risk Management in the Indian Ocean, and regular consultancies with NGOs, primarily in South Asia and central Africa.

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Virginie is currently co-editing a book on Gender relations and climate change together with Prof. Susan Buckingham. She also conducts gender-awareness trainings and regularly lectures at UK and European Universities.

Head of Knowledge Intergration and Mitigation Advice and lead scientist for the AVOID programme, Met Office Hadley Centre

Jason Lowe has worked for several years providing tailored scientific advice to Government to aid in policy development and planning. He has recently been the chief scientist for the AVOID programmes, which focused on the scientific questions and issues around avoiding potentially dangerous climate change. His research interests include constraints on future carbon budgets and climate pathways, non-linear climate changes and sea-level rise. He is currently overseeing the development of the next generation of climate pathways to inform UK adaptation. In addition to his Met Office role of developing and delivering climate services, Jason is also visiting Professor at the University of Reading.

Leader of Ecosystems Research Programme, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Yadvinder Malhi is Professor of Ecosystem Science at the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, Senior Research Fellow at Oriel College and Director of the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests. His research interests focus on the ecology, composition and functioning of forest ecosystems and how this is changing in response to various drivers of change, and in turn how ecosystem processes feed back and affect planetary functioning. His interests span intensive field studies, airborne and satellite remote sensing, modelling and also the social science and policy dimensions of forest science. He has a particular interest in tropical forests, and has established a network intensive monitoring studies tracking change in forest and savanna ecosystems across the tropics, ranging from the slopes of the Andes, through the lowland forest regions of Amazonia and Africa, and on to the forests on Borneo and Australia. He also maintains research programme at Wytham Woods, a woodland research site near Oxford.

Senior scientist, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace / Co-chair of IPCC Working Group I

Dr. Valérie Masson-Delmotte is a senior scientist from Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace. She is the Co-chair of IPCC Working Group I for the AR6 cycle. Her research interests are focused on quantifying and understanding past changes in climate and atmospheric water cycle, using analyses from ice cores in Greenland, Antarctica and Tibet, analyses from tree-rings as well as present-day monitoring, and climate modelling for the past and the future. She has worked on issues such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, drought, climate response to volcanic eruptions, polar amplification, climate feedbacks, abrupt climate change and ice sheet vulnerability accross different timescales. She is active in outreach for children and for the general public and has contributed to several books on climate change issues (e.g. Greenland, climate, ecology and society, CNRS editions, in press; in French). Her research was recognized by several prizes (European Union Descartes Prize for the EPICA project, 2008; Women scientist Irène Joliot Curie Prize, 2013; Tinker-Muse Prize for science and policy in Antarctica, 2015; Thomson Highly Cited Researcher since 2014).

CEO, Ocean Conservancy

Andreas Merkl is the CEO of Ocean Conservancy, which educates and empowers citizens to take action on behalf of the ocean. From the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico to the halls of Congress, Andreas leads the organization’s efforts to tackle the ocean’s biggest challenges with science-based solutions.

Prior to taking the helm at Ocean Conservancy, Andreas served as a principal at California Environmental Associates, a San Francisco-based think tank and consultancy that works on the management of the natural resource commons, ranging from fisheries to freshwater, forests, air and biodiversity.

Andreas’ particular interest has been the deeply connected challenges of ocean ecosystem decline and climate change. He has worked with the major U.S. foundations, multi-laterals and corporations on developing market-based incentive systems for responsible resource stewardship, ranging from catch-share systems for commercial fisheries to green growth development mechanisms for developing countries. Earlier in his career, Andreas was a founding member of McKinsey & Company’s Environmental Practice and served as Vice President and co-founder of the CH2M HILL Strategy Group, a leading provider of environmental management consulting services worldwide. Andreas has broad experience in environmental management consulting, venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, and business strategy.

Andreas holds an MBA with distinction from Harvard University, a master’s degree in Regional Planning and Natural Resource Analysis from the University of California at Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Faculty of Philosophy and Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Professor Müller is Managing Director of Oxford Climate Policy (a not-for-profit company aimed at capacity building for developing country climate change negotiators), and Director of the European Capacity Building Initiative (ecbi), an international initiative for sustained capacity building in support of international climate change negotiations.

At the University of Oxford, he serves as Convener International Climate Policy Research at the Environmental Change Institute, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the School of Geography and the Environment, Visiting Professor at the Social Sciences Division, member of the Philosophy Faculty, and Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. He was Director Energy & Climate Change at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (1996 – 2014).

He has been serving as Adviser to the LDC Group Chair (2011-12) and the Africa Group Chair (2012-13). He participated in the deliberations of the Transitional Committee (TC) for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) as Adviser to the LDC TC members, who he has also been also advising on the GCF Board and the UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance.

Professor Müller received his doctorate (D.Phil.) in Philosophy from the University of Oxford and was formerly a Research Fellow at Wolfson College and a Lecturer in Logic at the Queen’s College, Oxford.  He has a Diploma in Mathematics from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland.  

For a list of publications see www.OxfordClimatePolicy.org 

Deputy Director General/Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Senior Research Scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) 

Nebojsa Nakicenovic is Deputy Director General and Deputy CEO of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and former Full Professor of Energy Economics at the Vienna University of Technology

Among other positions, he the Executive Director of The World in 2050 (TWI2050) initiative; Member of the United Nations Secretary General Special Advisory 10-Member Group to support the Technology Facilitation Mechanism; Member of the Advisory Council of the German Government on Global Change (WBGU); Co-Chair of the Global Carbon Project; and Member of the OMV Resourcefulness Advisory Board.

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Nebojsa Nakicenovic was the Director of the Global Energy Assessment and has been member of the United Nations Secretary General High-Level Technical Group on Sustainable for Energy for All Initiative; Project Leader of the Austrian Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report (APCC-ARR14); IPCC Coordinating Lead Author of the Special Report on Emission Scenarios and Lead Author for a number of the IPCC Assessment Reports.

Nebojsa Nakicenovic holds bachelors and masters degrees in economics and computer science from Princeton University, New Jersey, USA and the University of Vienna, where he also completed his Ph.D. He also holds Honoris Causa PhD degree in engineering from the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has published more than 300 publications and serve on over ten Journal Editorial Boards.

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Among Prof. Nakicenovic’s research interests are the long-term patterns of technological change, economic development and response to climate change and, in particular, the evolution of energy, mobility, information and communication technologies.

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A complete overview of his many achievements can be found at the following link:
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/staff/nakicenovic

Princeton University

Michael Oppenheimer is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton University.  He is also the Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP) at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School.  Oppenheimer is a long-time participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.  Most recently, he served as coordinating lead author on IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report and on the Core Writing Team for the Fifth Assessment’s Synthesis Report.  Oppenheimer is coeditor of the journal Climatic Change.  He serves on the US National Academies Board on Energy and Environmental Systems and the New York City Climate Change Panel, and is also a science advisor to the Environmental Defense Fund. Oppenheimer is a Heinz Award winner and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research focuses on the science and policy aspects of climate change and its impacts, particularly sea level rise. Oppenheimer, an atmospheric scientist, has an SB degree from MIT in chemistry and a PhD from the University of Chicago in chemical physics.  He joined the Princeton faculty in 2002 after more than two decades with the Environmental Defense Fund, a non-governmental environmental organization, where he served as chief scientist and manager of the Climate and Air Program. Previous to that position, he was an Atomic and Molecular Astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.   

Senior Advisor to the UN Secretary-General on Climate Change, United Nations

Janos Pasztor (Budapest, 4.4.1955, Citizenships: Hungary and Switzerland) is currently Senior Fellow and Director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance project at the Carnegie Center for Ethics in International Affairs.  At the same time, he is also Senior Advisor to the UN Secretary-General (UNSG) on Climate Change. He has over 35 years of work experience in the area of energy, environment, climate change and sustainable development.

In 2015 he worked as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Climate Change in New York, in the office of the UNSG. 

He was Acting Executive Director for Conservation (2014) and Policy and Science Director (2012-2014) at WWF International.  He directed the UNSG’s Climate Change Support Team (2008-2010) and later was Executive Secretary of the UNSG’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability (2010-2012).  In 2007 he directed the Geneva-based UN Environment Management Group (EMG).

During 1993-2006 he worked, and held many responsibilities at the Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC), initially in Geneva and later in Bonn.

His other assignments included: in the Secretariat of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit ’92); Stockholm Environment Institute;  United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); Secretariat of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission); the Beijer Institute; and the World Council of Churches.

He has BSc and MSc degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Head, IPCC WG1 Technical Support Unit

Anna Pirani is Head of the IPCC Working Group I Technical Support Unit and is responsible for coordinating and implementing the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth IPCC Assessment. Previously, Anna worked for over 10 years in supporting international coordinated climate research activities focused on advancing understanding and modelling of climate variability, predictability and change and was Deputy Executive Director of the World Climate Research Programme CLIVAR Project. Before joining CLIVAR, Anna worked at Météo France on ocean model development aspects. Anna has a background in oceanography and climate dynamics.

Professor at the University of East Anglia and director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

Corinne Le Quéré FRS is Professor of Climate Change Science and Policy at the University of East Anglia and Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, an interdisciplinary and pan-university research centre that works to inform sustainable responses to climate change.

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Prof Le Quéré conducts research on the interactions among climate change, the carbon cycle, and society. Her research has contributed to understanding how climate change and variability affects the uptake of carbon by the natural carbon ’sinks’, particularly in the Southern Ocean.

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Prof Le Quéré instigated and leads the annual update of the ‘global carbon budget’ as part of the Global Carbon Project, an effort to highlight the very latest data on carbon emissions and their partitioning in the environment, understand their drivers, and assist policy and actions to address climate change. Prof Le Quéré was author of multiple assessments reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the new ‘Future Earth’ research platform for global sustainability, and serves on the UK Committee on Climate Change. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016.

Professor, Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi

Lavanya Rajamani is professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, where she researches legal issues relating to the environment (in particular climate change), international law, and human rights. She has authored or edited several books on international environmental law, is a frequent contributor to academic journals, and has written reports the International Law Association, the World Bank, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). She also serves on the editorial board of several international academic journals. She is currently working on a co-authored book on ‘International Climate Change Law.’

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Lavanya has worked on and analysed the international climate negotiations since 1998. Among other roles, she has served as a consultant to the UNFCCC Secretariat, as a negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, and as a legal adviser to the Chairs of Ad Hoc Working Groups under the FCCC. She was part of the UNFCCC core drafting  and advisory team at the Paris negotiations. Lavanya has advised many government and multilateral agencies, served as a legal expert in several high-level informal climate dialogues, and participated in BASIC Expert meetings. Lavanya has taught at Queens’ College, Cambridge, where she was a University Lecturer in Environmental Law, and Fellow and Director of Studies in Law, and at Worcester College, Oxford, where she was a Junior Research Fellow in Public International Law. She has or had teaching engagements at Oxford, the Hague Academy of International Law, University of Aix-Marseille, Osaka Gakuin University, and the University of Bologna. She holds an LLM from Yale, a DPhil and BCL from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes scholar, and a B.A.LL.B. (Honours) from National Law School, Bangalore. She has held several visiting fellowships at Universities across the world, including most recently as the Sir Frank Holmes Visiting Fellow at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department, South Africa

Dr Debra Roberts established and heads the Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department of eThekwini Municipality (Durban, South Africa) and is the city’s first Chief Resilience Officer. She was a lead author of Chapter 8 (Urban Areas) and a contributing author to Chapter 12 (Africa) of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report and was recently elected as Co-Chair of Working Group II for the sixth assessment cycle. She was until recently a member of the South African United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiating team and has sat on various international advisory bodies focused on climate change issues in cities (e.g. the Rockefeller Foundation’s Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network). Dr Roberts was vice-chair of UN-Habitat’s HS-NET Advisory Board which oversaw the production of the 2011 “Cities and Climate Change” Global Report. She is a member of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Thematic Group on Sustainable Cities, involved in the establishment of an urban SDG as part of the post-2015 development regime. Dr Roberts is also a member of the Future Earth Engagement Committee and a fellow of the Watson International Scholars of the Environment Programme. She has written widely in the fields of urban open space planning, environmental management and urban climate protection and has received a number of awards for her work.

Research Scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

Joeri Rogelj is a Research Scholar at the Energy Program of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), where he works on connecting insights from geoscience with energy modelling and climate policy. He has published on emission scenarios (including leading work on 1.5°C scenarios), carbon budgets, climate change uncertainty, implications of near-term policy choices, and on trade-offs and synergies between air-pollution and climate policies. His current projects focus on connecting the natural sciences to the policy realm, and include the study of extremely low emission scenarios, the simultaneous achievement of multiple sustainability objectives, and the exploration of approaches that can foster integration of knowledge across disciplines.

Dr. Rogelj holds a PhD in climate science from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and Master’s degree in Engineering and in Development Studies from KU Leuven, Belgium. Before joining IIASA, he held research positions at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK, Germany) and as a post-doctoral researcher at ETH Zurich. Furthermore, his professional experience includes three years as a project engineer in the field of rural electrification and drinking water systems in Rwanda (Africa).

Dr. Rogelj has served as a lead author on the annual UNEP Emissions Gap Reports and also contributed to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), both to the tome on Physical Science (Working Group 1) and to the tome on Mitigation of Climate Change (Working Group 3), and was a member of the Extended Writing Team of the IPCC Synthesis Report.

In 2016, he was awarded the inaugural Piers Sellers Award for his world-leading contributions to solution-focused climate research.

Associate Professor, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich

Sonia Seneviratne is Associate Professor for Land-Climate Dynamics at the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Her research interests include climate change and extreme events (droughts, hot extremes), land-climate interactions, and terrestrial water processes. Dr. Seneviratne was a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC Special Report on Extreme events (SREX, Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation”) published in 2012. She is presently the co-chair of the GEWEX Scientific Steering Group, a core project of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). In 2013, she became a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and was awarded the AGU James B. Macelwane Medal. In 2014 and 2015, she was identified among the most highly cited researchers in the field of Geosciences. In 2014 she received a 5-year Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). Dr. Seneviratne holds an MSc and PhD from ETH Zurich, and was a visiting scientist at MIT and NASA/GSFC.

Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford

Henry Shue is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for International Studies of the Department of Politics and International Relations of the University of Oxford as well as Professor Emeritus of International Relations, Oxford, and an Emeritus Research Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.  Best known for his 1980 book, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton; 2nd ed., 1996) and his articles, “Torture” (1978) and “Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions” (1993), he has taught at the University of North Carolina, Wellesley College, University of Maryland, Cornell University, and Oxford.  After initial research on human rights, especially economic rights, he has during recent decades concentrated on practical philosophy concerning war, on which he co-edited The American Way of Bombing (Cornell 2014) and collected twenty-two of his own essays in Fighting Hurt: Rule and Exception in Torture and War(Oxford 2016); and concerning climate change, on which he collected seventeen of his essays written between 1992 and 2013 in Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection(Oxford 2014) and continues to write and speak on the international and intergenerational issues inherent in attempts to control climate change.  His most recent essay is “Uncertainty as the Reason for Action: Last Opportunity and Future Climate Disaster”.  He is a member of the High Level Advisory Committee for the Climate Justice Dialogue initiated by the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice and the World Resources Institute.

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Chair in Plant & Soil Science, Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen

Pete Smith is the Professor of Soils and Global Change at the Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland, UK), Science Director of the Scottish Climate Change Centre of Expertise (ClimateXChange) and Director of Food Systems for the Scottish Food Security Alliance-Crops. He leads the University of Aberdeen multi-disciplinary theme on Environment & Food Security.

Since 1996, he has served as Convening Lead Author, Lead Author and Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He was the Convening Lead Author of the Agricultural Mitigation chapter of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and for the Agriculture and Forestry Mitigation chapter of the IPCC Fifth Assessment. He has coordinated and participated in many national and international projects on soils, agriculture, bioenergy, food security, greenhouse gases, climate change, mitigation and impacts, and ecosystem modelling. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, a Rothamsted Research Fellow, a Research Fellow of the Royal Society (London; 2008-2013), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

He has published >330 peer-reviewed journal papers with total citations of >13000. These papers have received >1000 citations each year since 2010 (and 2000/year since 2015). H-index = 58. He is Highly Cited Researcher: hcr.stateofinnovation.thomsonreuters.com.

United Nations Environment Programme ​

The United Nations General Assembly in 2006 unanimously elected Mr Achim Steiner as Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme for a four-year term, and subsequently for a further four years in 2010. Following the decision of the 68th General Assembly of United Nations, Mr Steiner’s mandate has been extended for two years up to June 2016.

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From March 2009 to May 2011, he was also Director-General of the United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON). Before joining UNEP, Mr Steiner served as Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) from 2001 to 2006, and prior to that as Secretary General of the World Commission on Dams. His professional career has included assignments with governmental, non-governmental and international organizations in different parts of the world including India, Pakistan, Germany, Zimbabwe, USA, Vietnam, South Africa, Switzerland and Kenya. He worked both at grassroots level as well as at the highest levels of international policy-making to address the interface between environmental sustainability, social equity and economic development. Mr Steiner serves on a number of advisory councils and boards including as the International Vice Chair of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED). His work has been recognized for a number of awards such as the Tallberg Foundation’s Award for Principled Pragmatism and the Steiger Award for “commitment and important work in the protection of the planet”. In 2009 His Serene Highness, Prince Albert of Monaco conferred upon Mr Steiner the decoration of Officer of the Order of Saint Charles.

Mr Steiner, a German and Brazilian national, was born in Brazil in 1961. His educational background includes a BA from the University of Oxford as well as an MA from the University of London with specialization in development economics and policy. He also studied at the German Development Institute in Berlin as well as the Harvard Business School.

French Ambassador for the Climate Change Negotiations

Laurence Tubiana is the French Ambassador for climate change negotiations, and the special representative for the Paris Climate 2015 conference (COP21). A globally recognized specialist of climate change and development issues, Mrs Tubiana founded in 2001 the Institute for sustainable development and international relations (Iddri) and has authored over a hundred papers, reports and books on these topics. She has also advised Prime Minister Lionel Jospin on sustainable development issues from 1998 to 2002, and held the position of Director of global public goods at the Ministry of Foreign affairs from 2009 to 2010. In addition, Mrs Tubiana currently chairs the Administrative council of the French Development Agency (AFD), co-chairs the Executive Committee of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and is a member of the United Nations Scientific Advisory Board.

Executive Vice President, The Nature Conservancy

Peter Wheeler joined The Nature Conservancy (TNC) as a London-based Executive Vice President in September 2013. He has a long and distinguished career as an investment banker having been the Head of Wholesale Banking for EMEA and Americas for Standard Chartered and previously a partner and Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, working initially in New York in the 1980s, then based in Hong Kong, where he established and led the firm’s Investment Banking business for Asia outside of Japan from 1991 to 1998. He was the firm’s first Chief Representative in Beijing.

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In his post-banking business life, Peter was a seed investor and Board member of Climate Change Capital until it was sold to Bunge in 2012.  He sits on the Board of Rift Valley Corporation, a dynamic African agro-industrial enterprise which owns and operates a diversified portfolio of subsidiary companies across seven operating platforms in three countries in Tanzania, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. He is a founding partner of Silk Road Finance Company, a Hong Kong-based and Chinese- led investment and advisory boutique working with Chinese State-owned and private companies in their activities outside of China in pursuit of the official New Silk Road policy. He is an active seed investor in a personal capacity in innovative new companies in the renewables and low carbon economies.

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Peter is a co-founder and trustee of New Philanthropy Capital, a charity that works as a consultancy and think tank, dedicated to helping charities and funders achieve the greatest impact so the lives of the people they serve are improved. He is a Board member of Social Finance, a social enterprise dedicated to the transformation of the third sector’s capabilities by developing access to a range of innovative financing methods. He serves on the Advisory Council of the Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment Stranded Assets Program. He has recently served on the Board of the Young Foundation (as Chair) and Virgin Unite.

Director, Energy Research Centre, University of Cape Town   ​

Professor Harald Winkler is Director of the Energy Research Centre (ERC) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The ERC focuses on energy, its relation to key challenges such as poverty, development and climate change, and energy efficiency, renewable energy and energy modeling as approaches to addressing such challenges. His personal research interests focus on energy and environment, in particular climate change and the economics of mitigation in the context of sustainable development