IUCN CCC Finance Thematic Group

A senior international climate finance and environmental economics professional with nearly three decades of experience working at the intersection of climate policy, biodiversity, and sustainable finance. Academic and professional foundations include early specialization in environmental economics and the integration of ecological considerations into financial and development decision making. Among the first economists recruited by IUCN in 1997, this individual helped establish the organisation’s economics and private sector engagement function, and later served as Senior Policy Advisor on Climate, Biodiversity and Trade. Work during this period contributed to mainstreaming climate and biodiversity issues into trade, development, and macroeconomic frameworks at a time when these agendas were still largely addressed in isolation.

Extensive participation in international environmental diplomacy includes attendance at most Rio Convention Conferences of the Parties (UNFCCC, CBD, and UNCCD) since 1998. This long-standing involvement has provided deep institutional memory and fluency in the political and technical evolution of climate and biodiversity processes, including finance mechanisms, nationally determined contributions, and the alignment between the Paris Agreement and the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The individual’s career reflects continued work at the science–policy interface, with an emphasis on connecting climate ambition, biodiversity integrity, and sustainable development pathways.

Significant contributions have been made to global environmental governance through work at UNEP. This includes the design of funding mechanisms for the UN Nature based Solutions Coalition; collaboration with UN REDD leading to a UNEA resolution on Nature based Solutions; coordination of resource mobilization strategies across 51 UN agencies under the UN Environment Management Group; and co authoring the UN Decade of Ecological Restoration Action Plan, which integrated climate mitigation and adaptation within a system-wide biodiversity restoration framework. Additional impact was achieved at Global Footprint Network, where campaigns using biocapacity and ecological overshoot metrics reframed the climate–economy relationship and generated more than three billion media impressions across six continents.

Current roles include Director at Earthmind, Senior Advisor at the Global Rewilding Alliance, and Director of Climate Finance at Green Initiatives. In these capacities, work focuses on mobilising climate and biodiversity finance across diverse biomes, including GCF funded wetland restoration in South Sudan’s Sudd, biodiversity and carbon credit initiatives in Zimbabwean grasslands, and marine ecosystem regeneration programs in the Gulf of California and the Northern Pacific Coast. These efforts emphasize alignment with both the Paris Agreement and the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and demonstrate ongoing commitment to high integrity, science based environmental finance.

This professional brings a uniquely international perspective, supported by four nationalities and a base at the IUCN Conservation Centre in Gland, Switzerland. The career trajectory illustrates a consistent focus on operationalising the climate biodiversity nexus, advancing global policy coherence, and building financial mechanisms capable of supporting transformative environmental outcomes at scale.