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6th to 8th October 2015
Abu Dhabi
St Regis, Saadiyat Island
Including data acquisition and management, how data can be communicated and visualised for optimal use, and current data requirements, challenges and solutions.
Including the availability of and access to environmental, social and economic data, innovations in knowledge sharing and open access data, and the importance of crowd sourcing and citizen science for information gathering.
Including the necessary legal, financial and technological infrastructures and capabilities required to facilitate better availability of, access to and sharing of data.
Following the success of the 2011 inaugural Summit, Eye on Earth 2015 will take centre stage once again to promote dialogue and drive international action that revolutionises the way we collect, access, share and use data and information for real-world change. The 2015 summit will seek to foster a culture of collaboration through a network committed to achieving scalable impact for a sustainable future.
Summit 2015 will feature a dynamic blend of prominent speakers from the worlds of business, government, philanthropy, data engineering and technology, environmental protection, industry, civil society and youth. Confirmed speakers include:
Economic Statistician, ESCWA Statistics Division
Fathia Abdel Fadil holds a first degree in statistics and economics, a master's degree in statistics and a diploma degree in development planning techniques.
Fathia Abdel Fadil has a long experience in socio-economic issues and statistics. She started her career in ESCWA Statistics Division (SD) as a team leader for Trade and Transport Statistics and later a team leader for Social and Demographic Statistics. She has worked in the Economic Development and Globalization Division (EDGD) in ESCWA as a First Economic Affairs Officer for three years, dealing with transport and trade facilitation issues. She has been involved in a number of capacity building activities during her assignments in SD and EDGD in various areas of statistics and economics including international trade, e-commerce, transport, population, poverty, labour, employment, social indicators, sustainable development indicators, trade facilitation, single window for trade facilitation, supply chains and aid for trade. She has a notable experience in project formulation, management and monitoring. Currently, Ms. Abdel Fadil works as an Economic Statistician in ESCWA Statistics Division, dealing with integrated economic statistics, short term economic indicators as well as sustainable development goals.
Her main areas of expertise include key economic indicators to monitor economic development, early warning indicators and Sustainable Development Goals.
CEO and Founder of Trend Green Knowledge Inc.
Adel Farid Abdel-Kader is CEO and Founder of Trend Green Knowledge Inc., Toronto, Canada. His focus area is environmental knowledge creation, analysis and use for decision-making, policy advice, strategic environmental planning, and communicating environmental and sustainable development knowledge to the public.
He has extensive experience in inter-agency and inter-governmental negotiations and networking functions. He has a multi disciplinary expertise and education with strength in environmental reporting, strategies and action plans development, institutional development for environment and sustainable development, policy analysis, environmental information systems, decision support, strategic planning and management, scenario development, and use of remote sensing and GIS in environmental applications. He worked 40-years in the field of environmental and sustainable development in UNEP and other international organizations, academia, private sector, as well as freelance consulting.
Mr. Abdel-Kader contributed to key global policy documents such as the Global Environment Outlook Series and the Global Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. He led and coordinated the Environment Outlook for the Arab Region, Arab Region: Atlas of our Changing Environment, Vulnerability Assessment of Water Resources to Climate Change in West Asia, and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report for the Arab Region, and several other documents.
Mr. Abdel-Kader is a strong advocate for utilising the digital world to benefit the environment and is always looking for trending ideas and innovations to bring to the environmental field. He was part of the team who fostered the idea of the Eye on Earth Summit.
Regional Programme Manager, Knowledge Management Programme Centre for Environment & Development for the Arab Region and Europe – CEDARE
Dr. Ahmed Abdelrehim has 25 years experience in the field of Environmental Assessment, GIS, Remote Sensing and Decision Support Systems. He holds a BS.C and post graduate of Civil Engineering from University of Alexandria and a Ph.D. in Environmental Decision Support Systems from Newcastle University, United Kingdom. Dr. Abdelrehim was also a visiting scholar in Arizona State University and Ohio State University.
He is currently managing the Knowledge Management Programme at the Centre for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE). He gave input in the formulation and implementation of CEDARE's activities on environmental assessment and space technology applications. The main emphasis was on assessment of the state of the environment, development of scenarios, geographic information system, decision support systems and other related spatial information applications such as remote sensing and climate change. He conducted policy research/studies and provided technical assistance to more than 25 countries.
In the field of Environmental Assessment, Dr. Abdelrehim was in charge of developing the North Africa State of the Environment (SOE) for Global Environment Outlook and Africa Environment Outlook reports. He is currently the chairman of the Africa Data Working group. At the regional level, he was part of the management team from UNEP and Arab League that developed the first Arab Environment outlook Report (EOAR). At the national level, Dr. Abdelrehim assisted in developing a number of national SOE reports. He also was the author of a number of global and regional Integrated Environmental Assessment training manuals including UNEP's Integrated Assessment Training manual. He has also developed the environmental scenarios for North Africa within Africa Environment Outlook. He was also in charge of developing water scenario for Africa. In the field of GIS and Remote Sensing, he was in charge of developing the regional GIS data for the Arab and Mediterranean region. He was in charge of developing the environmental assessment of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Dr. Abdelrehim has also contributed to the development of the first West Asia Map server. He finalized the development of North Africa and the Mediterranean GIS data server. He was the Regional Coordinator for Establishment of a Regional GIS Data for the Conservation of the Environment of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. This is in addition to numerous publications in the field of Environmental Assessment (EA), Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Multi criteria Decision Analysis (MDA), spatial analysis and public participation in environmental decision-making.
Head of Environment Statistics Division, Department of Statistics Jordan
Sona Abu Zahra, is a Head of Environment Statistics Division. She has a Master's degree in Environment Sciences and Management. Her experience is concentrated in data management, sustainable indicators, technical writing of environmental reports and analysis of different economic sectors in terms of emissions, policies and review. She is a dynamic leader with strong ability to manage time, human and monetary resources. She enjoys cooking for her beloved family.
Director and Regional Representative for West Asia, UNEP
Dr. Iyad Abumoghli is Director and Regional Representative for West Asia for the United Nations Environment Programme. Dr. Iyad holds a doctorate in biochemical engineering and has more than 30 years of experience in environmental management, sustainable development, strategic planning, human development, knowledge and innovation.
Dr. Iyad Abumoghli has worked with several international bodies at the global, regional and national levels. He represents UNEP in the region and leads the implementation of the Programme of Work of the UNEP team in West Asia, focusing on partnership building, regionalizing the sustainable development goals and integrating green economy concepts into national development planning, while contributing to an integrated approach to delivering with other UN organization services.
Environmental Specialist
Dr. Emad Adly is an environmental Specialist with significant experience in dealing with international agencies, governments, civil society, and grass-root organizations, media and NGOs. With more than 35 years of professional practice and extensive experience in fostering regional and international partnerships and fund raising-activities, Dr. Adly has extensive experience in issues related to sustainable development including environment, water and sanitation, climate change, disaster risk reduction, energy, biodiversity, Millennium Development Goals, Sustainable Development Goals and participatory development and governance.
He has served as General Coordinator of the Arab Network for Environment and Development (RAED) and as an International Board Member of the Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction for North Africa and West Asia. RAED is an International NGO, established in 1990.
Dr. Adly has initiated the process of involving the Civil Society Organisations in the Arab Region in the Hyogo Framework for Action and Disaster Risk Reduction process coordinated by UNISDR. He is also a member of the Steering Committee to support Major Groups and other civil society stakeholders with regards to the post-2015 development agenda and UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service.
Dr. Adly is the Chairperson of the Egyptian Sustainable Development Forum established by RAED's Secretariat in July 2012, acting as a "think tank" to facilitate a process of dialogue among different stakeholders and determine the policy gaps in relation to legislation, strategies and national planning to achieve sustainability. He is co-founder and Chairman of the Arab Office for Youth and Environment since 1978 and the National Coordinator of the GEF Small Grants Programme's since 1992.
Senior Manager - Ecosystem and Strategic Alliances, Socrata
Aditya Agrawal is a Senior Manager on the Ecosystem and Strategic Alliances Team at Socrata. In this role, Aditya supports the further development of the Open Data Network by working with partners and organizations to further enable and deliver value of open data from producer to consumer. This includes developing use cases, leveraging and building open standards, developing communities and working with a diverse set of stakeholders to ultimately enrich the data ecosystem with high value, easily discoverable open data that benefits government, developers, business applications and citizens.
In addition, Aditya also works on strategic partnerships with a variety of organizations including technology, civic and multilateral/NGO partners. He has a passion for issues related to sustainability and resilience and is working to demonstrate how open data and performance can be applied to this domain.
Director General of the UAE Space Agency (UAE-SA)
H.E. Dr. Eng. Mohammed Nasser Al Ahbabi is recognised globally as a Space Industry expert, known for his leadership and strategic planning skills. He together with the UAE-SA chairman H.E. Dr. Khalifa AlRomaithi were instrumental in highlighting the benefits of a Space Agency to the UAE and setting it up in record time. He also helped establish strategic projects including the innovation and development centre for the UAE Armed Forces, CeO, as well as the Yahsat project for which he was the project manager of its military division. He is a board member on the ICT fund and Yahsat Company.
Dr. Al Ahbabi obtained a PhD in communications from the University of Southampton from the United Kingdom, and a master's degree for the same university in communications before that. He completed a degree in electronic engineering from the University of California, in addition to many specialized military and government courses. Dr. Al Ahbabi has also won a series of honours and awards over the years.
Deputy General Director for Environmental Monitoring, Manager of eMISK, Environment Public Authority
Dr. Al-Ahmad graduated from Kuwait University in 1996 with a first class BSc degree in Geology. In 1997, he joined the Kuwait Environment Public Authority (KEPA) to work as a young researcher at the Department of Soil and Arid Lands. In 1999 he headed the Environmental Monitoring Division at the Director General Office. In 2009 he became the manager of the Environmental Inspection, Monitoring and Emergency Department where he established the Environmental Monitoring Information System of Kuwait (eMISK) as a unique repository system and database with GIS applications for authentic environmental data and information about Kuwait. In 2008-2012, Dr. Mohammad Al-Ahmad attended the Department of Waste Management and Material Flow at Rostock University in Germany where he received his MSc and PhD in Environmental Engineering (Waste Management). In 2014 Dr. Mohammad was appointed as the Deputy General Director for Environmental Monitoring Affairs at the Kuwait Environment Public Authority.
Dr. Mohammad Al-Ahmad is an active member of several national scientific and technical committees as well as NGOs and societies. In 2000 he became a member of Kuwait Journalist Association. Dr. Mohammad Al-Ahmad is the founder and chairman of the Employees Union at KEPA (In 2005-2008). In 1996 he joined the Kuwait Environmental Protection Society (KEPS- The 1st environmental NGO in the Arab Region) and in 2010 he was elected as Chairman of the Board. In 1999-2002 he was the Managing Director of "Al-Majarra Scientific Magazine" at Kuwait Science Club. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of "AlBea'a Magazine" – A dedicated environmental monthly magazine issued by KEPA.
Dr. Mohammad Al-Ahmad was immensely involved in the formulation and the writing up of the new Environmental Protection Law No 42/2014 and its bylaws and executive orders. During his years of work, Dr. Mohammad Al-Ahmad authorized more than 200 scientific reports and supervised a large number of research projects and environmental pollution studies on air, water, soil and waste. To date, he has more than 50 presentations at national and international scientific meetings and conferences and is the main author and coauthor of many scientific papers in national, regional and international journals. Dr. Mohammad Al-Ahmad received several national, regional and international awards and prizes, including; The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS2015), The Arab League e-Government Web Award (2012), The Kuwait Electronic Award (2012), ESRI Special Achievement Award in GIS (2010), GCC Award on Best Environmental Practices (2008), the British House of Commons Environmental Award (2003).
Director of Sustainability at Masdar, Director of Zayed Future Energy Prize
In her role as the Director of Sustainability at Masdar, Dr Nawal Al-Hosany leads a team responsible for developing Masdar's sustainability standards and policies. She is also mandated to oversee the processes of sustainability auditing, monitoring and reporting. In 2011, Dr Al-Hosany assumed the post of Director of the Zayed Future Energy Prize, where she has since overseen the implementation of the objectives, mandate and strategic direction of the prize.
Dr-Al Hosany is a board member of Masdar Investment LLC and of the Emirates Authority for Standardization and Meteorology. She is also an Adjunct Professor and member of the External Advisory Board at the Masdar Institute of Sciece and Technology.
In her commitment to remain at the forefront of the social science and sustainable development landscape, she has participated in numerous continuing professional development courses and continually seeks opportunities to stay updated on latest project management methods, as well as leadership, planning and decision-support mechanisms.
Dr Al-Hosany has been published globally in international journals and newspapers, including the International Journal of Management of Environmental Quality, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Renewable Energy, and International Journal of Renewable Energy Engineering.
Throughout her career, Dr Al-Hosany has been an active member of various boards in the UAE and around the world including the Advisory Panel for the Momentum for Change initiative of the UNFCCC, the Troika Plus of Women Leaders on Gender and Climate Change; the Climate Justice Dialogue Advisory Committee (an initiative of the World Research Foundation), and the Energy Efficiency Global Forum.
Dr Al-Hosany has also served as Sherpa to the UN Secretary General High Level Group for 'The Sustainable Energy For all' initiative for its Principle, HE Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Chief Executive Officer of Masdar.
In 2011, Abu Dhabi Magazine cited Dr. Al-Hosany as one of the 40 most influential Emiratis who have helped shape the emirate. She has also received several medals and accolades for her professional achievements, including a Chevening Fellowship from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Emirates Business Women Award in the Professional and Career Achievements category.
Prior to assuming her current roles, Dr Al-Hosany held senior leadership positions with the General Headquarters of the Abu Dhabi Police, including Head of Design and Studies in the Engineering Department. In 2007, she became the first-ever female Deputy Director in the Abu Dhabi Police.
Dr Al-Hosany graduated from the Faculty of Engineering at the UAE University and obtained her PhD from Newcastle University in the UK. She is also credited as one of the first two Emirati women to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest free-standing mountain in the world at 5,895 meters above sea level.
Programme Officer, Knowledge Products and Support, IUCN
Natasha Ali joined the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in February 2015 as Programme Officer, Knowledge Products and Support. Her role involves fundraising for the IUCN Knowledge Products, development of projects to integrate IUCN's flagship Knowledge Products (and related data sets), and influencing policy in the various biodiversity-related conventions. IUCN's Knowledge Products include the Red List of Threatened Species, the World Protected Areas Database (Protected Planet), the Red List of Ecosystems and the Key Biodiversity Areas programme.
Formerly, Natasha was a scientific researcher and policy adviser at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2001 – 2014), providing advice to and capacity-building for the UK government, other governments and scientific partners – specializing in the international multi-lateral biodiversity conventions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and its related Strategic Plan (2011 – 2020, Aichi Targets), CITES, the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the post-2015 sustainable development goals.
Keynote Speaker
Director General International Union for Conservation of Nature
Inger Andersen, a Danish national, is the Director General of IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Inger Andersen has been passionate about environmental sustainability and conservation since the beginning of her career. Prior to assuming this role in January 2015, she was the Vice President of the Middle East and North Africa at the World Bank, and was responsible for leading the Bank's strategy as well as policy and operational engagement with the Region during a time of complex and challenging historic transition.
Inger joined the World Bank in 1999, and her work has focused on water, environment, and sustainable development with special focus on Africa and Middle East. In 2010, she was named Vice President for Sustainable Development at the World Bank and Head of the CGIAR Fund Council. In this position, she led the Bank's work with developing countries to provide key infrastructure, enhance food security, promote environmental sustainability, develop social accountability, provide support for climate change mitigation and resilience, and support countries in disaster risk management. In 2012, following the Arab Spring, Inger was appointed Vice President of the Middle East and North Africa Region. In addition to overseeing the Bank's lending portfolio, she mobilized substantial government and donors resources for fragile and conflict states and development priorities.
Inger Andersen began her career working for an NGO in Sudan in 1982 providing support to rehabilitation and dryland management in the post-drought emergency. In 1987, after five years in Sudan, she joined the UN Sudano-Sahelian Office in New York. With the establishment of the Global Environment Facility, Inger Andersen was appointed UNDP's Coordinator for the Arab Region in 1992, a position she held until 1999 when she moved to the World Bank. Upon joining the World Bank, Inger Andersen worked in the Environment Vice Presidency on water resources and regional seas issues with special emphasis on large and contested river basins. She subsequently worked in managerial positions in the World Bank's Africa and Middle East Regions, managing the sustainable development programmes and projects.
Attorney-at-Law and Environmentalist
Danielle Andrade is a Jamaican Attorney-at-Law with ten years' experience in environmental law and governance issues in the Caribbean. She previously served as Legal Director of the Jamaica Environment Trust, a non-governmental non-profit organization, and is an elected representative of the public to the Latin America and Caribbean process for a regional instrument on Principle 10.
A past British Chevening Scholar, Mrs. Andrade-Goffe holds a Master's degree in Environmental Law from Queen Mary University of London, with specialisation in Climate Change Law and Policy, International Environmental Law and Advanced Administrative Law.
She is currently a consultant in environmental policy, litigation, advocacy, legislative review and research, environmental governance and environmental law education.
Steering Committee member, Global Island Partnership (GLISPA)
Ryan Argentieri serves as a Steering Committee member for The Global Island Partnership (GLISPA). Founded in 2006, GLISPA works on behalf of island nations, coastal regions and territories to build resilient and sustainable communities. GLISPA works with both local and international stakeholders to build on what is working in each respective region, particularly in "bright spot" areas that have the potential to be scaled and replicated. As a member of the Steering Committee, Ryan was responsible for implementing the organization's open data platform for measuring impact and mitigation measures internally and in select project regions. She also leads the organization's fundraising efforts.
Ms. Argentieri holds an MA in International Relations and Negotiation from the University of San Diego and an MBA from Johns Hopkins with a specialty in Environmental Finance. She also earned a certification in Multi-Track Citizens' Diplomacy from the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM).
She is Principle and Founder of Silver Mountain Solutions, a global consulting and advisory firm that conducts comprehensive operational and strategic assessments of businesses, non-profits and independent entities. The firm specializes in projects and initiatives that involve multiple stakeholders across a variety of locations and disciplines. Previously, Ryan was responsible for International Government Affairs and Integrated Building Solutions in emerging markets for United Technologies Corporation (UTX).
Director of the Mesoamerican Reef Leadership Program at the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature
Maria Eugenia Arreola is the Director of the Mesoamerican Reef Leadership Program (MAR Leadership) at the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature (FMCN). MAR Leadership seeks to accelerate conservation impacts in the MAR ecoregion by empowering emerging leaders to implement high impact projects that address the main threats facing the region's coastal and marine ecosystems.
Maria also collaborates with the Kanan Kay Alliance as the Coordinator of the Capacity-Building Strategy. The Kanan Kay Alliance is a multi-sector initiative working towards establishing an effective network of no take zones in Quintana Roo, Mexico to allow the recuperation of artisanal fisheries.
Maria has more than 15 years of experience designing and coordinating capacity-building programs in the environmental field. Prior to joining FMCN in 2009, she worked eight years at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (in Mexico City) and UNEP's Headquarters (Nairobi). In UNEP, Maria coordinated the development of integrated environmental assessments (GEO) and developed capacity building tools. Maria Eugenia holds a BS in International Relations and a Master's degree in Environmental Management Systems.
Acting Head of Office, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) UAE
Ziad Ayad is the Acting Head of Office at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the United Arab Emirates. He started his career with UNHCR in 2007 at UNHCR's headquarters in Geneva before eventually moving on to Amman, Beirut and Ankara. He also served as UNHCR's media spokesperson in Tunisia during the Libya emergency in early 2011. Prior to joining UNHCR in 2007, Ziad held short functions with the European Union, the Canadian government and the private sector.
Ziad was educated at the University of Toronto and the Diplomatic Academy of London. He was born in Cairo and is of Palestinian-Canadian origin.
Keynote Speaker
Secretariat Director Group on Earth Observations
Barbara J. Ryan is Secretariat Director of the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) located in Geneva, Switzerland. In this capacity, she leads the Secretariat in coordinating the activities of nearly 90 Member States and 77 Participating Organizations who are striving to integrate Earth observations so that informed decisions can be made across nine Societal Benefit Areas including agriculture, biodiversity, climate, ecosystems, energy, disasters, health, water and weather.
Before assuming this position in July 2012, she was the Director of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Space Programme. She had responsibility for the space-based component of the WMO Global Observing System (GOS), coordinated space-based assets to meet the needs of WMO Members in the topical areas of weather, water, climate and related natural disasters, and also served as the technical focal point for WMO's activities with GEO.
Before joining WMO in October 2008, she was the Associate Director for Geography at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Reston, Virginia where she had responsibility for the Landsat, remote sensing, geography and civilian mapping programs of the agency. It was under her leadership that implementation of the Landsat data policy was reformed to release all data over the internet at no additional cost to the user — an action that has resulted in the release of more than 12 million Landsat scenes to date.
As the 2007 Chair of the international Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) she led the space agency response to the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) satellite requirements for sustained measurement of the GCOS Essential Climate Variables (ECVs). She holds a Bachelor´s degree in Geology from the State University of New York at Cortland, a Master´s degree in Geography from the University of Denver, and a Master´s degree in Civil Engineering from Stanford University.
Lawyer, Director and founding member of Instituto Internacional de Derecho y Medio Ambiente (IIDMA)
Ana Barreira is a Lawyer as well as Director and founding member of Instituto Internacional de Derecho y Medio Ambiente (IIDMA) where she has mainly developed her professional activity in diverse fields of environmental law and policy since its foundation. She started her professional activity at the Environmental Law Department of Allen & Overy in London in 1993. In 2001-2002 she worked as senior legal advisor for the 2002 Spanish European Union Presidency, focusing on the World Summit for Sustainable Development preparatory process. Since 2005 she has been the attorney for Oceana Europe, an international NGO specialized in the protection of the marine environment litigating on access to environmental information on fisheries, mercury pollution and marine protection issues. She has worked in projects related to environmental law and policy as well as on projects on legal drafting and law implementation in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, México, Portugal, Republic of Montenegro, Republic of Serbia and Slovakia. She has participated in international negotiations and has been extensively published on environmental law issues. Ana is a member of the IUCN Environmental Law Commission and holds two LL.Ms (Master of Laws) degrees: in Environmental Law from London University (1993) and in International Legal Studies from New York University (1996).
Secretary General – Pan American Institute of Geography and History
Rodrigo Barriga-Vargas is a Polytechnic Engineer in Geography, Bachelor in Engineering Sciences from the Military Polytechnical Academy of Chile, Master in International Business Management from the University Gabriela Mistral of Chile and Doctor in Geography, Landscape and Environment from the University of Barcelona, Spain. He was Director of the Military Geographical Institute of Chile, Vice President of CP-IDEA (now UN-GGIM: Americas), and has taught at the technical university level in Geodesy, Photogrammetry, GPS Processing, Photo Interpretation, among other subjects. His most recent publication is Chapter 7 of the book "Fundamentals of Spatial Data Infrastructures", entitled "Almacenamiento de la información geográfica". Within the PAIGH, he has held the presidency and vice presidency of the Cartography Commission, and head of the Working Group II "Geocentric Datum" of the SIRGAS Project. During the 20th General Assembly (Uruguay, 2013), he was elected Secretary General of the Pan American Institute for Geography and History.
Urban Research Officer, ICLEI World Secretariat
Kathrine Brekke is the Urban Research Officer in charge of maintaining and developing the research management activities at the ICLEI World Secretariat. With a background in Economics and Development Studies and a Masters in Urban Governance, her areas of interest include capturing good local government practices; local government data and sustainability performance assessment; holistic urban productivity and resource management in cities; multi-level governance and public policy; cross-sectoral and institutional integration; international development; and climate change governance.
At ICLEI she has coordinated various international research projects, including resource efficiency in cities (Global City Survey conducted with UNEP for the GI-REC), case studies series on Renewable Energy Policies in Cities (with IRENA, International Renewable Energy Agency), and on the Urban NEXUS approach to integrated urban policy, planning and design (with GIZ and The Next Practice Ltd).
She oversees the ICLEI Case Studies series as well as other ICLEI publications and global reports. The Urban Research team led by Kathrine also supports ICLEI's global strategy and advocacy work with researching and preparing policy briefs and documents.
Head of Science and Knowledge, IUCN
Thomas Brooks heads Science and Knowledge at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), based in Gland, Switzerland. His responsibilities include scientific support to the delivery of knowledge products (such as the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species), maintaining IUCN interaction with peer scientific institutions, and strengthening the Union's culture of science.
Originally from Brighton, UK, he holds a B.A. (Hons) in Geography from the University of Cambridge (1993) and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Tennessee (1998). He has previously worked for The Nature Conservancy (1998–1999), Conservation International (1999–2010), and NatureServe (2010–2012). His background is in threatened species conservation (especially of birds) and in biodiversity hotspots (he has extensive field experience in tropical forests of Asia, South America and Africa). He has authored 224 scientific and popular articles, including 103 indexed in the ISI 'Web of Science'.
Mathematician, Educator, and Software Professional
Dr. Steven F. Browdy is a mathematician, educator, and software professional who has been involved in the management, architecture, design, and development of many highly technical projects and major systems since 1980. His work includes satellite telemetry, instrumentation control, command and control systems, data acquisition systems, modeling and simulation, data brokering, registry design, data modeling, standards and interoperability, and semantics.
Dr. Browdy is involved in many large-scale Earth science initiatives including the Eye on Earth GNON Foundational Infrastructure effort, the NSF EarthCube effort, and the GEOSS effort.
Dr. Browdy enjoys many leadership roles in support of the GEOSS work; in particular, Chair of the Standards and Interoperability Forum, Manager of the Standards and Interoperability Registry, and Lead of the Design and Interoperability Component of Task IN-05 of the GEO Work Plan.
Founder and Director NGO Aquasis
Alberto A. Campos is founder and Director of the NGO Aquasis, whose mission is to develop activities and research for biodiversity conservation and responsible use of natural resources in the Northeast of Brazil, encouraging changes in attitude to building a sustainable society.
Since 1994, the NGO has been conducting long-term conservation processes with several bird and marine mammal species, and has successfully reduced the risk to two critically endangered animal species. The NGO also promotes the creation of public and private protected areas and restoration of critical habitats to safeguard ecosystem services.
Mr. Campos has received three Conservation Leadership Awards and in 2010 received the prestigious Future for Nature Award.
Director and Senior Research Scientist, CIESIN, The Earth Institute, Columbia University
Dr. Robert Chen is director of CIESIN, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, a research unit of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York. For the past two decades, he has managed the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), a unique source of interdisciplinary, open access geospatial data and information focused on human-environment interactions. In fall 2014, he served on the United Nations Independent Expert Advisory Group on the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development. He is now one of three co-chairs of the new Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) thematic group on data for sustainable development.
A geographer by training, Dr. Chen's research includes work on data integration and stewardship, disaster risk assessment, sustainability indicators, and climate change adaptation and vulnerability. He currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the U.S. National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), the Governing Council of the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan, and the Council of the American Geographical Society. He also co-manages the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Data Distribution Center and is a co-chair of the Data Sharing Working Group of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). From 2004 to 2012, he served as Secretary-General of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) of the International Council for Science (ICSU). He is a member of the Scientific Leadership Team of Terra Populus, an interdisciplinary data project led by the University of Minnesota. He is currently co-investigator on two projects led by ImageCat, Inc. on hazard exposure assessment and on the Columbia-led Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast (CCRUN). He recently helped to develop the innovative immersive exhibit, Connected Worlds, at the New York Hall of Science.
Director of Research, French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)
Franck Courchamp is Director of Research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He works at University Paris XI, where he leads a group of research, "Biodiversity Dynamics", on conservation biology focused at the population and community levels.
Franck completed his PhD thesis in Lyon, France, on the epidemiology of Feline AIDS. He then did a first postdoc at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of UCSD, where he worked on the effects of invasive species on trophic relationships, followed by a second postdoc in Cambridge, UK, on the inverse density dependence. In addition to these two ongoing topics, he now also works on the overexploitation of rare species and on the effects of climate change on biodiversity.
Franck has published close to one hundred scientific studies, and three books, two of which are directed to the general public. He has presented his work in over 50 international conferences. He is also active in popularisation, notably with several documentaries or short animation projects. He has been awarded the Silver Medal of the CNRS and elected as a Member at the European Academy of Science.
He is currently Visiting Scholar at the University of California Los Angeles as a Fulbright Fellow.
Founder of Cousteau Divers and Project Hermes & IUCN Goodwill Ambassador
Pierre-Yves is the youngest son of Jacques-Yves Cousteau. He holds three masters degrees, in Biochemistry, Space Science and MBA. He works for the International Union for Conservation of Nature and is the founder of Cousteau Divers and Project Hermes.
Programme Officer, Space Applications Section of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs
Mr. Lorant Czaran has been a Programme Officer in the Space Applications Section of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, supporting both the Programme on Space Applications and UN-SPIDER since 2012. He is well known across the UN community for his commitment towards innovative geospatial solutions in support of the UN system work. Mr. Czaran's long career with the UN started in 1996, and since then he has worked at UNEP/GRID-Arendal in Norway, at the UN Headquarters (Cartographic Section) on UNGIWG coordination and Security Council affairs, and later at the Department for Peacekeeping Operations where he helped produce the first in-house digital satellite imagery-based topographic maps at large scale (for the UN Disengagement Observer Force in the Golan Heights, Syria) and worked on international boundary demarcation mapping projects such as Cameroon-Nigeria or Eritrea-Ethiopia.
Mr. Czaran also served as the Map Centre Manager for ReliefWeb/UNOCHA before joining UNOOSA in 2008, first as the Head of the UN-SPIDER Bonn Office where he was instrumental in facilitating support with space technologies during the response to the major Haiti earthquake in 2010. Mr Czaran is an acting representative of the United Nations in specialized international bodies such as the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), ISO/TC211 and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).
Mr. Czaran holds the equivalent of a Master degree in Geography and Russian Language from the Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj, Romania, and was a research fellow at Collegium Budapest Institute for
Advanced Studies during the beginning of his PhD studies. Born in 1969, he is married and has two daughters.
Deputy Director, Data Archiving and Networked Services
Ingrid Dillo holds a PhD in history. She is a generalist who over the last twenty-five years has mainly been active in the field of policy development.
After a period as senior policy researcher at Research voor Beleid in Leiden she worked for many years as a senior policy advisor at the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands. Ingrid is now Deputy Director at DANS (Data Archiving and Networked Services). Among her areas of interest are research data management and the certification of digital repositories.
Ingrid is active in the Knowledge Exchange. She is also a member of the international Board of the Data Seal of Approval (DSA). Within the Research Data Alliance Ingrid is actively involved in a number of groups. She co-chairs the RDA/WDS Interest Group Certification of Digital Repositories, and the RDA/WDS Interest Group Publishing Data Cost Recovery for Data Centres. Ingrid is an active member of the Repository Audit and Certification DSA-WDS Partnership Working Group. Furthermore, DANS was the main host of the RDA Plenary 4 in Amsterdam. Ingrid was a member of the organising committee for this meeting. She was also involved in the organisation of Plenary 5 in San Diego.
Senior Fellow at the Global Research Institute of the University of North Carolina and an Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute
Felix Dodds is a well known sustainable development advocate having written or edited 11 books including One Only Earth with Maurice Strong and Michael Strauss. He is a Senior Fellow at the Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina and an Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute in Boston. In 2014 he co-director of the Nexus Conference on Water Energy Food and Climate Change and was, from 1992 to 2012, Executive Director of Stakeholder Forum. He writes a successful blog on sustainable development at the international level and is also an International Ambassador for the City of Bonn.
Director and Chief Executive, Innovative Learning Network Ltd.
Karl Donert is an expert Geographer with a national and international profile, a strong track record in initiating and establishing innovative projects, as well as leading major networking activities. A member of Academia Europea.
Karl is Director of the European Centre of Excellence: digital-earth.eu and adjunct faculty at the Centre for GeoInformatics at Paris Lödron University, Salzburg. Karl is President of EUROGEO (European Association of Geographers) and a UK National Teaching Fellow, the highest award an academic can receive from their peers. He is active in European policy making as a member of the Council of Europe groups on Education & Culture, a former Hon. Vice President of the Geographical Association, a Fellow of Academia Europea, the European Scientific and Research Academy, the Royal Canadian Geographical Association and Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers.
Karl is Director and Chief Executive of Innovative Learning Networks Ltd, a UK SME specialising in education and training, with respect to professional and academic networking, project development, research partnerships and project management. Karl is an inspirational speaker, a European leader in learning and teaching geography and in the use of ICT and digital media in education. He acts as a consultant to many organisations, working in this context to increase networking potential and raise the profile and quality of learning and teaching activities as well as research.
Karl has extensive experience in major international educational developments. He is an expert in the use of new technologies in learning and teaching in education, teacher training, universities and in schools. He was coordinator of the HERODOT Thematic Network for Geography in Higher Education, the largest Bologna disciplinary network, is initiator of the digital-earth network on geo-media and the School on the Cloud network examining future perspectives in Cloud-based education. He has participated in more than 100 other international projects mainly concerned with the innovative uses of geo-ICT, geo-media and open education. He has written and published on the tole and value of networks and networking
Executive Director of the Centre for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE)
Ms. Ebeid assumed her current role, an international diplomatic position, in January 2004. Prior to that, she was the first Special Peace Envoy of the Secretary General of the Arab League. Ebeid was formerly Egypt's first Minister of the Environment to head the newly created Ministry in 1997, for a period of five years, and the first woman minister to hold this position in the Arab World. One of her most notable achievements was declaring the River Nile free from polluted industrial wastewater discharge.
Ebeid has a long-standing professional record with the United Nations in the field of international development cooperation. She has also pursued academia with her position as a visiting professor at George Washington University, USA.
She is likewise the chairperson and board member of various prestigious institutions and the holder of more than fifty international and national awards.
Foreign Affairs Officer in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science (OES)
Dr. Fernando R. Echavarria has worked as a Foreign Affairs Officer in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science (OES) since 1997. His work focuses on international science and technology issues, with an emphasis on geospatial and geothermal technologies. He represents the U.S. Department of State in the National Science and Technology Council's Subcommittee for Disaster Reduction (SDR), a federal interagency body with more than 25 U.S. agencies represented, which provides science and technology guidance on how the U.S. government can reduce disaster risks and promote resiliency. He has led several public private partnerships on geospatial science and technology in support of sustainable cities. These U.S. government projects have been showcased at large international meetings such as: the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002); The World Conference on Disaster Reduction (Kobe, 2005); the World Summit on the Information Society (Tunis, 2005); the World Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio, 2012); and the Sixth World Urban Forum (Medellin,2014). In 2003 he helped co-organize the Eastern Africa Geothermal Market Acceleration Conference at the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. Dr. Echavarria has degrees in energy resources engineering and remote sensing from Stanford University, Florida Atlantic University and the University of South Carolina. He has held teaching positions at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, George Washington University and the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service Institute. His publications have appeared Alternative Energy Africa, Ambio-Swedish Academy of Sciences, Geo Carto International, International Journal of Remote Sensing and Revista Geográfica-IPGH, among others.
Programs Director, Royal Marine Conservation Society of Jordan
Ehab Eid is a Jordanian with a biological science background. He holds a Masters degree in Conservation, Access and Management of Species in Trade from the International University of Andalucía in Spain. His thesis was entitled 'Reviewing the Implementation of CITES Convention in Jordan from 1979-2008'.
His first job saw him working as a Research Assistant at the Marine Science Station for four years. This enabled him to study the marine environment of the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea. After this role he started a new affiliation with the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature where he held several positions, the major one being the Head of the Research and Survey Section. During the period spent at RSCN, Mr. Eid was the responsible for conducting research and monitoring programs on mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and to a lesser extent on birds and macro-invertebrates. In addition to this, he managed several projects focusing on species conservation and protected areas management.
Currently, he is working as the Programs Director at the Royal Marine Conservation Society of Jordan, where he heads three programs; Marine Conservation, Outreach & Advocacy and Sustainable Development. He has undertaken research in Jordan, Lebanon, Oman and Saudi Arabia and has published several peer-reviewed articles on marine and terrestrial fauna from Jordan and KSA. In addition to this role Mr. Eid is also involved in project management, climate change and protected areas management planning. In addition, he plays an active role leading several training courses aiming to inspire a new generation of conservationists from the Middle East. The courses aim to educate on different subjects including but not limited to biodiversity, research skills and protected areas management. Mr. Eid is also a member of several species survival commissions at the IUCN and a member of their World Commission on Protected Areas.
President, Liberal Forum Egypt
Yomn El Hamaky is the President of Liberal Forum Egypt – the NGO focused on building youth capacity for employment, enhancing SMEs, the economic empowerment of women and the poor, and civil education. She is also Economic and Technical Advisor to Ethraa Company which focuses on training feasibility studies and researches, as well as financial and technical consultancies.
Prior to this, Yomn was the Vice President of the Economic Committee at the El Shoura Council, Egypt, and Professor of the Economics Faculty of Commerce at Ain Shams University.
She holds a PhD. In Economics, an MSc In Economics and a BSc in Accountancy from the Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.
Minister of UAE Environment and Water
In 2008, H.E./Dr. Rashid Ahmed Mohammed Bin Fahad was appointed as minister of UAE environment and water. He was born in 1964 in the emirate of Dubai. In addition to his ministerial position, he has been holding the position of chairman of Emirates Standards Authority since 2008. H.E./Dr. Rashid obtained Ph. D. in civil engineering (Environment hygiene) from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland (UK) in 2001. He also holds Masters Degree (Ms. Sc.) in Ecology from the UAE University-Al Ain, where he graduated in 1994. In addition, he holds bachelor degree (B. Sc.) in chemical engineering from North Eastern University, Boston-USA in, where he graduated in 1989.
H.E./Dr. Rashid Ahmed Mohammed Bin Fahad has already held the positions below:
In addition, His Excellency is also a member of Zayed International Award for Environment and board member of American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM International).
Participatory Governance Topic Area, Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe
Mrs. Tsvetelina Filipova is a highly skilled international environmental lawyer possessing more than 13 years of professional experience in environmental law and international project management. Mrs. Filipova is heading the Participatory Governance Topic Area at the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC www.rec.org) which encompasses a few major portfolios of projects including environmental civil society support; access to information, public participation in environmental decision-making and access to justice; environmental mediation; and PRTR.
Mrs. Filipova has thorough experience in capacity building and institutional strengthening, compiling handbooks for implementation of EU legislation and international environmental agreements, and writing and editing publications.
Senior Expert for Biodiversity and Ecosystems, Secretariat Group on Earth Observations
Gary is with the secretariat of the Group on Earth Observations, based in Geneva, Switzerland, where he is a Senior Expert for Biodiversity and Ecosystems. He recently started a two year secondment there, after working in the NASA Ecological Forecasting Program for some years.
His PhD is in Biology with a focus on plant architecture and its consequences on temperature, light, and carbon uptake. He is on the Management Committee of the GEO Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), a global effort to coordinate and enhance biodiversity observation systems. Previously he conceptualised the Model Web, to increase access to and interoperability of models and their outputs. Prior to working in the Ecological Forecasting program he was part of the ASTER instrument Science Team where, among other things, he conceptualised and led the development of TerraLook, a service that makes new and historical images of Earth available and accessible to users not familiar with remote sensing.
Gary has a background in ecology and systems engineering.
Italian Economist and Statistician
Enrico Giovannini is an Italian economist and statistician, and member of global think tank and centre of innovation and initiative, the Club of Rome. Enrico became a full professor of economic statistics at the Rome University "Tor Vergata" in 2002. From 28th April 2013 to 22 February 2014 he was Minister of Labour and Social Policies in the Italian Government. From August 2009 to April 2013 he was President of the Italian Statistical Institute (Istat). From January 2001 to July 2009 he was Director of Statistics and Chief Statistician of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where he established the World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Politics and launched the Global Project on the Measurement of Progress in Society, which fostered the setting up of numerous worldwide initiatives on the issue "Beyond GDP". He is Senior Fellow of the LUISS School of European Political Economy, Visiting Fellow at the European Political Strategy Centre of the European Commission, vice president of the High Level Group on Competitiveness and Growth of the European Council, Co-Chair of the Independent Experts Advisory Board on Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, and is a member of the boards of several Italian and international institutions.
He was member of the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Committee, established by the French President N. Sarkozy, President of the Global Council of the World Economic Forum on the "Evaluation of Societal Progress" and of the Conference of European Statisticians, body of the UN Economic Commission for Europe. In October 2014, the President of the Italian Republic made him "Cavaliere di Gran Croce al Merito della Repubblica", the highest ranking honour of the Italian Republic.
He is the author of more than 90 articles and four books on economic and statistical topics.
Senior Vice President, Public-Private Partnerships at The Weather Company
Mary Glackin is the Senior Vice President for Public-Private Partnerships for The Weather Company where she oversees the company's relationships with members of the weather enterprise, including national and international government agencies, academia and other private sector weather providers. Through The Weather Channel (weather.com) and Weather Underground (wunderground.com) brands, The Weather Company provides millions of people every day with the world's best weather forecasts. Through WSI, the company delivers professional weather services for the media, aviation and energy sectors. Mary also serves as Commissioner of the American Meteorological Society's Commission on the Weather, Water and Climate Enterprise where she works to enhance communication among the public, private and academic institutions working to provide weather, water, and climate services nationally and internationally. She also serves on the Visiting Committee of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center providing advice to the Center director on the Centers programs and plans.
Ms. Glackin retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), where from 2007 to 2012 she was Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Operations in Washington D.C. As such, she was responsible for the day-to-day management of operations for oceanic and atmospheric services, research, and coastal and marine stewardship. Prior to this she held a variety of leadership positions at NOAA including representing NOAA to the U.S. Climate and Global Change Research Program from 2002-2007.
She is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the National Academy of Public Administration, as well as a member of the National Weather Association and of the American Geophysical Union. Her accomplishments have been recognized with the Charles Brooks Award for Outstanding Services to the American Meteorological Society, the Federal 100 Information Technology Manager Award (1999), the Presidential Rank Award (2001, 2009), and the Department of Commerce Silver and Bronze Medal. Ms. Glackin holds a BS degree from the University of Maryland.
GeoInformation for Sustainable Urban Management and Resilience Project Manager, Association of American Geographers
Marsha S. Goldberg, Ph.D. is the Association of American Geographers project manager for the GeoInformation for Sustainable Urban Management and Resilience (GeoSUMR) project. This project, undertaken by a public-private partnership and funded by the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi through the Eye on Earth Community Sustainability and Resilience Special Initiative, is designed to promote the use of geospatial tools and information by decision-makers in intermediate-sized cities in the developing world. The primary outputs of the project are: (1) a five-day workshop in Casablanca, Morocco in October 2014 providing both hands-on training in the use of geospatial technology and information, and a forum for the exchange of information on applications for addressing urban issues; and (2) a Web Portal providing a centralized location for workshop materials as well as a mechanism for facilitating communication and networking among workshop participants. The Workshop content includes discussion and analysis of a map of Casablanca being developed by Ecocity Builders and members of the Casablanca community. Dr. Goldberg has organized similar workshops in Amman, Jordan and Cairo, Egypt.
Dr. Goldberg has a doctorate in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. Her career has focused on the environmental and social impacts associated with a wide range of infrastructure projects. She managed environmental impact assessment projects for the U.S. Department of Energy, Argonne National Laboratory, the U.S. Department of State, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Information and Communication Technology Project Manager, SIIEM
Christopher "Bong" Grajo is the focal person of SIIEM in the Philippines. He is an Information and Communication Technology project manager who specializes in emerging and disruptive technologies for humanitarian use. Bong and his Team work as an information-exchange platform among government agencies, local and international non-government organizations, faith-based groups, private and business sectors, and the affected population before, during, and after disasters.
In 2012 he founded Project ERIC or the Emergency Response Integration Center, a volunteer non-profit organization that seeks to gather and systematize information for the use of decision-makers and emergency responders before. ERIC had a baptism of fire in Typhoon Bopha in December of the same year. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan revealed the serious need for availability and accessibility of accurate updated and comprehensive data for emergency management. Building on the lessons painfully learned in past operations, Bong and his ERIC Team succeeded in setting up in 2014 the Info-Aid Project, the information systems that support decision-makers at the National Emergency Operations Center.
This year, 2015, they are building Project E.M.I.R. or the Emergency Management Information Response; an information-ecosystem intended to empower local communities to manage their own data sets and information infrastructure relative to disaster risk-reduction.
Bong holds a Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy and Master's Degree in Pastoral Management both from the San Jose Major Seminary and the Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. He is also an alumnus of the Asian Institute of Management (Makati, Philippines), the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (Bangkok, Thailand), the Asia-Pacific Telecommunications (Tokyo, Japan), and the Pacific Endeavor Program (US-Pacific Command,
In a disaster setting INFORMATION is as important and as crucial FOOD and WATER. In this light, ERIC's battle cry is INFORMATION IS AID.
Professor of Earth Observation Science at the University of Reading
Professor Gurney's research has primarily been on the use of Earth observation in hydrology, most recently as a member of the NASA SMAP Science Team. He has extensive experience of scientific leadership, as Director of the NERC Environmental Systems Science Centre and previously as Head of the Hydrological Sciences Branch at NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre. He is the co-chairman of the Belmont Forum Steering Committee for the Cooperative Research action on e-Infrastructures and Data Management for Global Change Research.
Host & Keynote Speaker
Secretary General Environment Agency Abu Dhabi
H.E. Razan Al Mubarak is Secretary-General of the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD). EAD is Abu Dhabi's environmental regulatory authority, established in 1996 with the objective of protecting and conserving the environment as well as promoting sustainable development. She is Managing Director of the Emirates Wildlife Society in association with the WWF (EWS-WWF) as well as the Mohamed Bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund (MBZ SCF). As Managing Director of MBZ SCF, H.E. Al Mubarak represents the Fund as part of Panthera's Board of Directors.
H.E. Al Mubarak also serves on the board of the Infra-structure Committee to the General Secretariat of Abu Dhabi Executive Council. She is also the chairperson of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Group (ADSG) Advisory Board.
H.E. Al Mubarak serves on the boards of the Global Footprint Network, African Wildlife Foundation, and the Al Ain Wildlife Park and Resort. She is also a member of the Board of Advisors of Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation.
H.E. Al Mubarak holds an MSc in Public Understanding of Environmental Change from the University College London, UK and a BA in Environmental Studies and International Relations from Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA.
Professor of Geographic Information Science at University College London (UCL)
Professor Muki Haklay is a Professor of Geographic Information Science at University College London (UCL). He is the founder and Co-director of the UCL Extreme Citizen Science group, which is dedicated to the development of technologies and methodologies to allow any community, regardless of their literacy, to use scientific methods and tools to collect, analyse, interpret and use information about their area and activities. The group has developed a range of technologies that can be used for participatory science and mapping, including the Sapelli data collection suite and the GeoKey framework for the capture and management of participatory mapping information. Professor Haklay is also co-founder and director of the social enterprise 'Mapping for Change' and is recognised as an international expert in participatory mapping and science, usability and Human-Computer Interaction aspects of geospatial technologies, and public access to environmental information.
He is the author and co-author of over 200 academic papers, including reports for the World Bank GFDRR programme on Crowdsourced Geographic Information In Government, and for the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars on Citizen Science and Policy from a European Perspective. Professor Haklay is also a board member of the Citizen Science Association and core member of the European Citizen Science Association. He holds a PhD in Geography (2002, UCL).
Chief Scientist and Vice President for Conservation Science at NatureServe
Dr. Healy Hamilton is currently Chief Scientist and Vice President for Conservation Science at NatureServe. She is a biodiversity scientist with broad interests in the evolution and conservation of the diversity of life. Her current research focus is global change biology, with an emphasis on forecasting the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems for natural resource management and conservation.
Dr. Hamilton is committed to public understanding of global change and explores data visualization approaches to improve ecological literacy. In her spare time, she studies the taxonomy, evolution and conservation genetics of seahorses and their relatives.
She obtained her Master's degree at Yale University and her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, and for both degrees she conducted extensive fieldwork in South America. Dr. Hamilton is President of the Society for Conservation GIS and serves on the Science Committee of the National Park Service Advisory Board. She is a Switzer Foundation Environmental Leadership grantee and a former U.S. Fulbright Scholar.
Global Director of Food, Forests & Water, WRI
Craig is the Global Director of Food, Forests & Water at the World Resources Institute (WRI). Craig is responsible for guiding overall programmatic strategy, focus on results, financial development, and staff capacity. Craig has co-developed a number of the Program's project work including Global Forest Watch, Forests and Landscape Restoration, Forests and Landscapes in Indonesia (formerly Project POTICO), Forest Legality Alliance, the Food Loss and Waste Protocol, and more. He is a co-author of the current World Resources Report, Creating a Sustainable Food Future. He has been the lead author of a number of WRI publications including The Corporate Ecosystem Services Review, Southern Forests for the Future, the Corporate Guide to Green Power Markets series, and the Energy and Environment Tax Reform series.
Prior to becoming a program director, Craig managed WRI's Green Power Market Development Group, a coalition of a dozen Fortune 500 companies that helped pioneer corporate energy markets in the United States and that won a U.S. EPA Innovation Award. In collaboration with The Brookings Institute, he also led research in tax reform policies that would benefit both the economy and the environment.
Prior to joining WRI in 2002, Craig was a management consultant in Europe and the United States with McKinsey & Company.
Craig earned an MSc in Environmental Change & Management from Oxford University in the U.K. While at Oxford, Craig also earned an MA (Oxon) in Philosophy, Politics, & Economics with an emphasis on environmental economics while on a Rhodes Scholarship. Craig has a BA in Philosophy from Georgetown University.
In his spare time, Craig enjoys the outdoors, herpetology, planting trees, and Nebraska football (particularly when the Cornhuskers win).
Head of Fund Management, Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund
Nicolas is Head of Fund Management at the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, an Abu Dhabi-based philanthropic foundation that provides support to species conservation initiatives throughout the world. He has been with the Fund since it began operations in March 2009. Prior to that he spent several years at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in a research, management and advisory capacity. He has also been a member of the Award Selection Committee of the Conservation Leadership Programme since 2010.
Deputy Director, Global Biodiversity Information Facility
Tim Hirsch began his career as a journalist, working for 20 years with the BBC where he was environment correspondent helping to bring issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution to public attention. As an independent science writer, Tim has helped the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the Convention on Biological Diversity and other bodies produce documents aimed at translating complex scientific issues into language suitable for a lay audience. He was lead writer on both the third and fourth Global Biodiversity Outlook in 2010 and 2014 respectively.
In 2011, Tim joined the Secretariat of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) where as deputy director he leads a team engaging a global community in the mobilisation and use of freely-accessible digital data on biodiversity.
Sr. Information Scientist and Project Manager for Information International Associates, Inc.
Gail Hodge has been involved with scientific and technical information for more than 35 years. She is a member of the GNoN Foundational Infrastructure Team, where she worked on the semantics portion of the architecture and investigated relevant technologies. Gail currently supports the US Environmental Protection Agency's metadata registry to improve the description of data dictionaries and datasets, and the collection and development of relevant terminologies. She has been involved in numerous environmental terminology and semantics initiatives including the EcoInformatics Initiative's Ecoterm working group and the Metadata OpenForum. As a Sr. Information Scientist and Project Manager for Information International Associates, Inc. (IIa), she has supported many other federal science agencies including the US Geological Survey, NASA and the U.S. National Agricultural Library. She has also done work for UNEP and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Gail holds a Masters in Information Science from Drexel University.
Product Architect, Planet Labs
Chris Holmes started his career as lead developer of GeoServer and then founded OpenGeo, providing commercial support for a suite of open source geospatial software projects. He currently works at Planet Labs, a startup that builds and operates the largest constellation of earth imaging satellites, with
101 successfully launched to date. At Planet Labs Chris serves as the Product Architect, where he sits at the nexus of technology and business, leading product management and strategy. He also sits on the boards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), the Eclipse Foundation and Brave New Software, and serves as an advisor to CartoDB.
Chris was previously a Fulbright Scholar in Zambia, served on the board of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association and was a founding board member of the Open Source Geospatial
Serves on the Board of The Trust for Sustainable Livelihoods, the Global Islands Partnership Steering Committee, and on the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
Over the past 25 years, Dr. Floyd Homer has led international and national programmes related to forests/reforestation, wetlands and coral reef conservation. Activities included the preparation of management plans for protected areas, biodiversity strategy and action plans, national environmental management strategies, training programmes, and technical advice to Governments and intergovernmental agencies that work in the Caribbean. He has contributed to strengthening the capacities of government agencies, community groups and NGOs in 18 countries in the region to manage the natural resources on which livelihoods depend.
Dr. Homer has worked with the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, the United Nations Development Programme, World Wildlife Fund-UK, Department for International Development-UK, the United States Agency for International Development, the Canadian International Development Agency, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. He has done work related to several UN Multilateral Environmental Agreements including negotiating and drafting international documents.
He has served on Boards and Steering Committees of regional/international agencies such as the Caribbean Conservation Association, Bureau of the Subsidiary Body for Technology and Technological Advice to the Convention on Biological Diversity, IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (Regional Vice Chair-Caribbean), Biodiversity Conservation Inc. (Chairman), and the Global Water Partnership-Caribbean. He currently serves on the Board of The Trust for Sustainable Livelihoods, the Global Islands Partnership Steering Committee, and on the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
Professor of Environmental Sciences and Director, Office of Sustainable Eco Innovation, Zayed University
Currently, Prof. Fares Howari is serving as a Professor of Environmental Sciences. Prior to this, he served as Professor and Chair of the Department of Applied Sciences and Mathematics at Abu Dhabi University as well as a Director of Abu Dhabi University Center of Excellence of Environment, Health and Safety (CoEHS). He is a water resources and environmental scientist with research development and administration expertise and a PhD degree in Environmental Sciences and Engineering from the University of Texas.
He served as a Coordinator of Environmental Sciences Program at the University of Texas, PB. Prior to that he joined the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy (CIEEP) as program coordinator, and as an Environmental Scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin. Before joining the University of Texas at Austin, Prof. Howari worked as an Associate Professor at United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). At UAEU, he served in the Executive Committee for the Water Resources Graduate Program, supervisor for the Environment Society, joined dozens of committees, taught several courses, successfully obtained several grants and conducted numerous consultations. Dr. Howari worked for about two years at Texas A and M University where he worked as a research scientist on the development and application of computer models to assess environmental contamination problems and conduct risk assessments necessary for Impact Assessments and baseline assessments for scoping and EIA reports. During the progressive of his professional career, he has developed distinguished academic and project coordination skills.
Dr. Howari has valuable experience in management, strategic planning and administration, and also in creative leadership. He has also worked as an international environmental volunteer in Jordan, US-Mexico border, UAE, and other places. He gained a wide international experience in the area of environmental geosciences, water resource management and planning, resource development, and project coordination in the Middle East.
Dr. Howari was the General Secretary of the 6th International Conference of the Geology of the Middle East, held in Al Ain, and served as a board member of the Gulf Seismic Forum, Abu Dhabi Emirates in 2004. He was the Coordinator of CIEEP's Conference on Water Policy and Associated Technological Challenges in Arid Regions, held in Kuwait. He also chaired and organised the featured plenary session "Water Challenges and Opportunities in the Middle East" in conjunction with the US-Arab Economic Forum, in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Howari developed a national and international reputation in his area and has participated in more than 70 international technical meetings across continents.
Dr. Howari has a broad and interdisciplinary grasp of environmental-energy issues and their technical, policy, human and social dimensions. He has published 100+ publications in refereed journals, conference proceedings and technical reports.
CEO and Chairperson, Global Environment Facility
Naoko Ishii has served as the CEO and Chairperson for the Global Environment Facility (GEF) since June 2012. Prior to that Ms. Ishii was the Deputy Vice Minister of Finance, where she was responsible for Japan's international financial and development policies, and for its global policies on environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity. She led the Japanese delegation at the Transition Committee for designing the Green Climate Fund.
For nearly half of her career, Ms. Ishii has served in international assignments outside of Japan, including at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. At the World Bank, Ms. Ishii was the Country Director for Sri Lanka and the Maldives (2006-2010). She also served as the World Bank's country program coordinator for Vietnam (1997-2001), project manager at Harvard Institute for International Development (1996-1997), economist at the International Monetary Fund (1992-1995) working for Africa and Asia, as well as visiting fellow at Center for International Affairs at Harvard University (1984-1985).
Ms. Ishii also taught sustainable development and environment at Keio University. She has published numerous papers and several books, two of which were awarded by Suntory Prize (1990) and Okita Memorial Prize for International Development Research (2004). She is the inaugural recipient of the 2006 Enjoji Jiro Memorial Prize. She holds BA and Ph.D. from University of Tokyo.
Keynote Speaker
Vice President, Science & Research - WRI
Janet Ranganathan is the Vice President for Science and Research at the World Resources Institute, an action-oriented global research organization that works in more than 50 countries, with offices in the United States, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia and Europe. She plays a lead role in ensuring that WRI's research is robust and informs the Institute's influence strategies. She works closely with the Managing Director to strengthen the impact of research across WRI's six programs: Food, Forest, Water, Climate, Energy and Cities.
Janet leads WRI's Information into Actionstrategy, which combines open data platforms, information and communication technologies, transparency, and human networks to drive more sustainable management of the planet's resources. She is also an architect and co-author of the current World Resources Report, Creating aSustainable Food Future.
During her tenure, Janet has held diverse positions across WRI's programs. She has rolled out numerous initiatives to address the root causes of poverty and environmental degradation. Janet founded and directed WRI's People and Ecosystems Program, where she launched two major initiatives on Ecosystem Services and Forest Landscapes. She founded and directed the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative, an international multi-stakeholder partnership convened by WRI and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to develop international greenhouse gas accounting and reporting standards. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol is now the international accounting and reporting standard for business and numerous national and state greenhouse gas programs. Janet also served in WRI's Business and Climate programs.
Janet serves on the boards of Ceres and the Universityof Michigan Graham Institute. She is a member of Mars's Science Advisory Committee and Sustainability Working Group. She serves as a member of the International Programme Advisory Committeefor the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation Programme supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
Prior to joining WRI Janet worked on business and environmental issues in the U.K. both as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire and ina regulatory capacity with the Department of Environment and Hertfordshire Waste Regulatory Authority. Janet was also a Senior Manager in the British National Health Service, serving at the Royal Marsden and Royal Brompton Hospitals. Janet received a BSc. (Hons) from Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, London in 1983, and a MSc. with distinction in Environmental Technology from Imperial College in 1990. Janet was born and raisedin Cornwall, England. She is married to Kumar andhas two daughters, Angela and Serena.
First African American Woman in Space. Currently Leading 100 Year Starship (An initiative to assure the capability for human interstellar space travel to another star is possible within the next 100 years). Founder and President of Two Medical Technology Companies.
Dr. Mae C. Jemison is currently leading 100 Year Starship (100YSS) an initiative seed funded by DOD's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to assure the capability for human interstellar space travel to another star is possible within the next 100 years. She also is founder of the technology consulting firm, The Jemison Group, Inc. that integrates the critical impact of socio-cultural issues when designing and implementing technologies, such as their projects on using satellite technology for health care delivery in West Africa and solar dish Stirling engines for electricity generation in developing countries.
Dr. Jemison, the first woman of color in the world to go into space, served six years as a NASA astronaut. She flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, STS-47 Spacelab J(apan) mission in September 1992 and was NASA's first Science Mission Specialist performing experiments in material science, life science and human adaptation to weightlessness.
Started after she left NASA, The Jemison Group also explores and develops stand-alone science and technology programs and companies. BioSentient Corporation, a medical technology devices and services company focused on improving health and human performance through physiologic awareness and self-regulation is such a company.
A strong, committed global voice for science literacy, in 1994 Jemison founded the international science camp The Earth We Share™ (TEWS) for students 12-16 years old from around the world, and founded and chairs the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, a 501(c)3. TEWS-Space Race launched summer 2011 to improve science achievement in Los Angeles area students underserved and underrepresented in the sciences. Over four years its goal is to directly impact up to 10,000 middle school students and train 600 teachers. In October 2006 the Foundation developed the program Reality Leads Fantasy—Celebrating Women of Color in Flight that highlighted women in aviation and space from around the world. Dr. Jemison serves as national advocate for Bayer Corporation's award winning Making Science Make Sense program.
An environmental studies professor at Dartmouth College, Jemison taught sustainable development and technology design and ran The Jemison Institute for Advancing Technologies in Developing Countries. She was an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.
Dr. Jemison is a member of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine and is: on the Board of Directors of Kimberly-Clark Corp., Scholastic, Inc. and Valspar Corp.; a Trustee of Morehouse College; Board of Texas Medical Center; and served as Chair, Texas State Product Development and Small Business Incubator Board; Chair, Greater Houston Partnership Disaster Planning and Recovery Task Force; a member Board of National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. Dr. Jemison is an inductee of National Women's Hall of Fame, National Medical Association Hall of Fame and Texas Science Hall of Fame. Among many honors, awards and honorary degrees she received the National Organization for Women's Intrepid Award, the Kilby Science Award and in 1999 was selected as one of the top seven women leaders in a presidential ballot national straw poll
Prior to NASA, Jemison was Area Peace Corps Medical Officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia for two and a half years overseeing the healthcare system for Peace Corps (and State Department in Sierra Leone). Throughout Jemison has worked internationally including in a Cambodian refugee camp and with the Flying Doctors of East Africa. A general practice doctor in Los Angeles, Jemison earned a B.S. degree in chemical engineering and the requirements for an A.B. degree in African and Afro-American Studies at Stanford University and her M.D. from Cornell University.
Dr. Jemison is a highly sought after speaker on issues of health care, social responsibility, technology and motivation and has provided commentary for the BBC, McNeil Lehrer Report, ABC Nightline, NPR and CNN. In Find Where the Wind Goes, she writes for teenagers about growing up on the south side of Chicago, cultivating her aspiration to be a scientist, experiences as a medical student in Africa and her history-making journey into space. She appeared on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, hosted the Discovery Channel's series World of Wonder and was chosen one of People Magazine's "World's 50 Most Beautiful People" in 1993. Dr. Jemison resides in Houston and loves cats.
Research Manager, Wadi Wurayah National Park, Emirates Wildlife Society – World Wide Fund
Jacky Judas joined the Emirates Wildlife Society – World Wide Fund (EWS – WWF) in December 2012, as a wildlife consultant. Since July 2013 he has worked as the Research Manager of Wadi Wurayah National Park, the first Mountain protected Area of the United Arab Emirates. His main objectives are to develop and coordinate wildlife monitoring and research programs in order to implement an effective conservation strategy.
After a Masters in land management at Lille University (France), Jacky spent a year in the French Austral and Antarctic Territories studying albatrosses and penguins, and then four years in the tropical rain forest of French Guiana to complete his Ph.D. researching the ecology of the collared peccaries for the French National Museum of Natural History. In 1998, Jacky joined the National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) of Saudi Arabia, where he started to work on Houbara Bustard conservation before joining the National Avian Research Center of Abu Dhabi near Sweihan in 2004. He worked as a Field Research Assistant from 2004 to 2009, before becoming Regional Coordinator of Research and Conservation Programmes on the Asian Houbara Bustard in Asia and Middle-East, and finally as manager of the Ecology and Conservation department at NARC up to October 2012.
Environmental Specialist at European Investment Bank
Bartholomew Judd is an Environmental Specialist within the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Union's bank and the largest multilateral borrower and lender by volume.
Bartholomew is responsible for the development and implementation of the EIB's policies and performance standards, and carrying out environmental assessments of the EIB's investment projects and programmes.
Previously Bartholomew worked as an Environmental Specialist for Société Générale, France; as an Environmental Coordinator for Sakhalin Energy, Russia; and as an Environmental Scientist for the consultancy Environmental Resource Management (ERM); Australia. He has a Masters in Environmental Science from the University of Sydney, Australia, and a Bachelors in Geography from Leicester University, England.
Programme Officer - Protected Areas programme, UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre
Diego Juffe-Bignoli is Programme Officer for the Protected Areas programme at the UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). Diego has 12 years of professional experience, five in the agribusiness sector and seven in conservation of nature.
Prior to joining UNEP-WCMC, he worked for over five years at the International Union of Conservation of nature in several roles related to the development and maintenance of biodiversity and conservation of knowledge products such as the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and Key Biodiversity Areas. Today, his work focuses on protected areas, more specifically on report writing, scientific research, spatial analyses, and protected areas data compilation and quality control for the World Database on Protected Areas – the most comprehensive global database of marine and terrestrial protected areas.
Recently, he played a leading role in the production of the Protected Planet Report 2014, a key reference for tracking progress towards global targets for protected areas. He holds a bachelor degree in Agronomy from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) and a Master's degree in Environmental Management of Protected Areas and Countryside from the University of London.
Chief, Major Groups and Stakeholders Branch, UNEP
Alexander Juras worked from 1987 – 1992 as a research fellow at the Bonn-based Institute for European Environmental Policy, where his work focused mainly on environmental protection in a transboundary context and environment and civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. He was the author of the first ever published comprehensive Directory of Non-governmental Organisations in Central and Eastern Europe.
In 1992, he joined the newly-established Regional Environmental Centre for Central and Eastern (REC) where he occupied various positions, most recently Deputy Director until 2005. His responsibilities at REC included the supervision of the NGO support program, a major provider of assistance to the emerging civil society in Central and Eastern Europe, REC's Information Program and the establishment and supervision of REC's Network of Country Offices in 16 countries.
In 2006, he joined as a Deputy Director the Regional Environmental Centre for Central Asia (CAREC) which covers the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In 2008 he became the Deputy Director of UNEP's Division of GEF Coordination.
In March 2010 he took over the position of Chief of UNEP's Major Groups and Stakeholder Branch in the Department for Regional Cooperation (DRC). In 2014, the Branch became part of the Secretariat of the Governing Bodies of UNEP.
In the context of Eye on Earth, Alexander Juras is the Chairperson of the Access for All Special Initiative and leads a sub-project under this initiative that focuses on the implementation of the UNEP Bali Guidelines for the Development of National Legislation on Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.
Technical Coordinator, Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE)
Tuntiak Katan was born in the indigenous Tuutinentsa Shuar community, Morona Santiago Province, in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. Since 2000, he has worked on various social, cultural, and environmental projects, among the 11 cultures in the Amazonia region of Ecuador and other indigenous peoples of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.
He completed his training in Biology of Conservation and Management of Natural Resources at a program through Missouri Botanical Garden and studied Applied Ecology and Environmental Administration at San Francisco University, in Quito, Ecuador.
Tuntiak is a member of the Inter-provincial Federation of Shuar Centers, FICSH, and he works for the Inter-provincial Federation of Shuar Centers throughout indigenous Shuar territories. He has researched and studied the Shuar culture, language and holistic management of Shuar territory throughout the past 15 years.
Since 2006, he has worked as both Investigator and Co-Investigator on environmental, anthropological, and linguistic projects. Based on his expertise in linguistic, anthropological, and environmental sciences, his interest lay in investigating, documenting, and advocating for Amazonian languages and cultures while implementing development strategies congruent to the vision of indigenous peoples and rooted in their cultural and environmental rights.
Regional Director at Clinton Climate Initiative
Jackson Kimani is the Regional Director, Africa with the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) of the Clinton Foundation. Mr. Kimani is an experienced manager of community development projects in Africa, with experience in integrated rural development and land use planning. In 2008, he set up the CCI programs in East Africa for the Clinton Foundation and initiated joint planning with multiple government, community and NGO partners in those countries to develop systems for national measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) for carbon within a framework of national development priorities. This effort has advanced significantly particularly in Kenya where the government, with financial support from the Australian Government and oversight from the CCI, is implementing a System for Land-based Emissions Estimation in Kenya (SLEEK) programme to meet national development goals and international reporting obligations. Mr. Kimani leads this effort working closely with government counterparts.
Mr. Kimani has experience working with rural communities to develop large-scale avoided deforestation, reforestation, and agroforestry projects to meet broader land use planning goals in Rwanda and Kenya.
From 2006 to 2008 Mr. Kimani served as a Deputy Director, CFO and Procurement Director for the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative (CHDI), a $100M Initiative focused on effecting economic development in rural communities. In these positions, he was part of the leadership team that designed and launched the overall CHDI program and established the Malawi and Rwanda operations. He was also instrumental in developing the farm inputs strategy for the Agricultural sector under the Economic pillar of Kenya's Vision 2030, the national long-term development blueprint that was launched in 2008.
Mr. Kimani first joined the Clinton Foundation as a Consultant where he participated in building Africa-relevant fact bases and models for fertilizer production, use and transport. Prior to joining the Foundation, he was a corporate finance professional working in the United States managing financial operations for a business unit of a Forbes 400 leading logistics and transport company.
Mr. Kimani is an MBA graduate of the University of Wisconsin (Oshkosh). He also holds an Economics degree from the University of Wisconsin (Green Bay).
Director of Seeing a Better World Program, DigitalGlobe
Taner Kodanaz leads DigitalGlobe's 'Seeing a Better World' programme, committed to leveraging geospatial technologies and services to address significant global challenges. He works extensively with global development organisations including United Nations, World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and World Resources Institute to catalyze and implement strategies that support developing countries and reach people most in need.
Taner is a recognized thought leader and explores high-impact solutions that drive actionable outcomes addressing food and nutrition security, infrastructure development, environmental sustainability and human rights.
Prior to DigitalGlobe, Taner was head of Philanthropic Alliances at Promethean, a global interactive technology company where he created and executed novel strategies for leveraging philanthropic partnerships with for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.
Regional Technical Advisor for Conservation International, a TED speaker, and Founding Director of the non-profit ConservationDrones.org
Lian Pin Koh obtained his Bachelor and Master's degrees from the National University of Singapore in 2003. He received his doctorate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 2008. He then moved to Zurich for his post-doctoral training at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). In 2011, Lian Pin was appointed a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor and in 2014 he moved to the University of Adelaide where he was appointed Associate Professor and Chair of Applied Ecology & Conservation. He was recently awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (Level II).
Lian Pin's research focuses on addressing emerging environmental and socioeconomic challenges facing tropical developing nations, including the threats of intensifying land-use conflicts to natural ecosystems and wildlife. Lian Pin is also Regional Technical Advisor for Conservation International, a TED speaker, and Founding Director of the non-profit ConservationDrones.org.
Senior Lecturer, Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University
Dr. Ida Kubiszewski is a Senior Lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University. Prior to this she was an Assistant Research Professor and Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Solutions, at Portland State University. She is also a UN negotiator on climate change, following adaptation and loss & damage, for the country of the Dominican Republic at the Conference of Parties (COP) in Warsaw, Poland in November 2013 and in Lima, Peru in December 2014.
Dr. Kubiszewski is the founding managing editor and current co-editor-in-chief of a magazine/journal hybrid called Solutions, launched January 2010. Solutions is an outlet for discussions focusing on solutions to the complex problems we are now facing in the context of whole systems design for a sustainable and desirable future. She is also the Managing Editor of Reviews in Ecological Economics, published annually by Springer, providing in-depth reviews of the most timely and important issues in the field of Ecological Economics.
Dr. Kubiszewski is a co-founder and former-Managing Editor of the Encyclopaedia of Earth, an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. Written by scholars, professionals, educators, and experts who collaborate and review each other's work, it provides a much needed peer reviewed, trusted source of information for students, educators, scholars, professionals, as well as the general public.
Dr. Kubiszewski is the author or co-author of over a dozen scientific papers and 5 books. She is a Fellow at the National Council for Science and the Environment, on the board of the Veblen institute (Institut Veblen), and sits on the steering committees or advisory boards of various organizations including the Ecosystem Service Partnership, and the Environmental Information Coalition.
Ida received her B.A. in Astronomy and Physics from Boston University and her M.A. in Energy and Environmental Analysis through the Centre for Energy and Environmental Studies also at Boston University. She received her Ph.D. through the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics and a certificate in Ecological Economics in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. Her dissertation topic was "Searching for the Sweet Spot: Managing Information as a Good that improves with Use."
Director of Environment Information Management at the Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi
Anil Kumar has over two decades of experience in information management and implementing geospatial systems & solutions.
Anil's interests include Spatial Data Infrastructures, Decision Support Systems, Business Intelligence, Remote Sensing, Enterprise Architecture, Knowledge Management and more. He is currently the Director of Environment Information Management at the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD). His responsibilities
include ensuring strategic alignment of business, information and technology, and leveraging geospatial technologies in decision making. Prior to joining EAD, Anil had worked with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and the Centre for GIS, Qatar.
Anil holds a Master's Degrees in Marine Geology, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and Post Graduate Certification in Business Administration.
Head of the Environmental Systems Laboratory, Central European University, Budapest
Viktor Lagutov has been actively involved in Eye on Earth activities since 2011. He is currently the Facilitator of the Water Security Special Initiative, the Chair of the Environmental Education Special Initiative, and is leading the ISEPEI Project (In-Service ICT Training for Environmental Professionals), one of the original Eye on Environmental Education projects.
Head of the Environmental Systems Laboratory at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy at Central European University, Budapest, Hungary (CEU), Viktor holds a Master's Degree in Applied Mathematics and an MSc and a PhD in Environmental Sciences and Policy. Viktor has extensive teaching and research experience in environmental modelling and spatial analysis (GIS) with a particular focus on aquatic ecosystems and watershed approach to environmental security. Viktor combines teaching and research activities at CEU with practical environmental protection projects. He is a founder of several nongovernmental environmental organizations in Russia working towards sustainable development and integrated water management in transboundary river basins, including the Azov Sea Centre for Watershed Cooperation and the Ural River Basin Project, among others. Viktor is also a Board member of the Freshwater Specialist Group of the World Society for Conservation Biology.
Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, AECOM Technology Corporation
Gary Lawrence is Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer for AECOM Technology Corporation, an $8-billion global provider of professional technical and management support services. In this role, Mr. Lawrence leads AECOM's s ustainability efforts by managing AECOM's extensive resources and skills in sustainability for projects across the enterprise. He is also an AECOM spokesperson and thought leader on sustainability issues.
Prior to joining AECOM, Mr. Lawrence served as the urban strategies leader at Arup. Previously, he led Sustainable Strategies and Solutions Inc. and served on the faculty of the University of Washington's College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He was also planning director for the City of Seattle, where he led development of one of the world's first comprehensive plan dedicated to sustainability.
His 20 years of global sustainability experience also include serving as advisor to U.S. President Clinton's Administration Council on Sustainable Development, the U.S. government at the United Nation's Habitat II, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Brazilian President's Office, the British Prime Minister's Office, the European Academy for the Urban Environment in Berlin and the Organization for Economic and Community Development in Paris on matters of sustainable development, economics and environmental policy. His writing and lectures have helped shape sustainability theory, policy and practice throughout the world.
During his 30-year-plus career in public and private policy and management, his leadership skills have contributed to various global initiatives engaging in research and practice to mitigate climate change and adaptation strategies.
Manager, Water at Skoll Global Threats Fund
Sylvia Lee has 15 years experience in the climate and water sector and she currently leads the climate resilience and water programme at the Skoll Global Threats Fund. Prior, she worked at the World Bank based in Kathmandu, Nepal where she focused on transboundary water issues and climate change adaptation and resilience building. Sylvia also led the Water Initiative at the World Economic Forum based in Geneva, Switzerland. Sylvia is an engineering graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and McGill University.
Deputy Director, Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
Marc Levy is Deputy Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), a unit of Columbia University's Earth Institute. He also teaches in Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs and directs the new Environment, Peace and Security Certificate Program. He is a political scientist utilizing interdisciplinary research to understand how humans can better manage complex, interlinked systemic risk, and is well known for his work on environmental security, on global environmental governance, and on sustainability indicators.
He has served on several committees of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and played leadership roles in several international assessments, most recently as a Lead Author on the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change Fifth Assessment chapter on Human Security.
Executive Director of CyberTracker Conservation NPC
Louis Liebenberg is the Executive Director of CyberTracker Conservation NPC. He is an Associate of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and a Laureate of the Rolex Awards for Enterprise. He is an expert tracker and the author of The Art of Tracking (1990), A Field Guide to the Animal Tracks of Southern Africa (1990), Practical Tracking (2010) and The Origin of Science (2013). His academic papers on persistence hunting and human evolution have gained wide recognition. The CyberTracker software has gained international recognition and is used worldwide by indigenous communities, in national parks, scientific research, citizen science, environmental education, forestry and farming. He initiated the CyberTracker Tracker Evaluation system to revitalise traditional tracking skills and to develop the art of tracking into a modern profession. More than 4,000 trackers have received tracker qualifications in Africa, North America and Europe.
Spatial and Landscape Ecologist
Dave Loubser is a New Zealander with over 30 years' experience as a spatial and landscape ecologist. Dave has experience working globally, specifically in Africa, Oceana and the Middle East. He has primarily worked in the forest sector, focusing mainly the field of climate change mitigation trough forestry.
Dave was involved in setting up the information systems for New Zealand's response to the Kyoto protocol and worked on the forestry component of the New Zealand emissions trading scheme. He was also the first Director of the New Zealand Geospatial Office, the lead geospatial agency in the New Zealand Government.
In Africa Dave has worked to establishing 3 REDD+ projects and implementing a number of Climate Adaptation and payment for ecosystem service activities. In 2011 Dave acted as a consultant to the first Eye on Earth Summit leading a working group on "content and user needs" and coordinating the special initiative "Oceans and Blue Carbon", an area of particular interest to Dave.
Director of Community Engagement at Ushahidi
Angela Oduor Lungati is a technologist, community builder and an open source software advocate. She creates and manages programs for diverse global communities, and is passionate about building and using appropriate technology tools to create impact in lives of marginalised groups.
She's a first class honors' graduate from Strathmore University, with a Bachelor's degree in Business Information Technology. She currently serves as Director of Community Engagement at Ushahidi, a non-profit technology company, born in Kenya, which builds tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering barriers for individuals to raise their voices. Ushahidi also partners with leading foundations and organisations to increase access to information, empower citizens and protect marginalized communities.
She is also a co-founder and Director of Community Building at AkiraChix, a non-profit organisation that nurtures generations of women who use technology to develop innovations and solutions for Africa. AkiraChix provides training, mentorship and outreach programs to increase the number of skilled women in technology and positively communities, one woman at a time.
Angela curates numerous physical and online trainings, workshops and conferences, and is a frequent international public speaker at events such as ReCampaign, Mozilla Festival, SXSW, BIARI (Brown International Advanced Research Institutes) among others. She is a 2013 GoodxGlobal Fellow, an O'reilly OSCON – Github Scholarship recipient and was recently named a finalist for the 2014 Most Influential Women in Business and Government Awards by CEO Communications.
Researcher of the Center for Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies (CPTE- INPE, Brazil)
Dr. Machado has experience in Meteorology, with emphasis in Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere, working mainly in the following subjects: convection, climatology, convective systems and nowcasting. He has a B.Sc in Meteorology from the University of São Paulo (1981), a Masters in Meteorology from the University of São Paulo (1984), a Diplôme d´études Approfondies Oceanologie Meteorologie – Universite of Paris VI at Pierre et Marie Curie (1989), and a PhD in Meteorology and Oceanography from Universite of Paris VI in 1992 (Michel Desbois).
Dr. Machado was previously a visiting researcher of the NASA/GISS and the LMD/France. Currently he is Professor of the PhD Programme at INPE, and ex-Coordinator of the CPTEC of the National Institute of Space Research. He is a former Chairman of the Expert Team in Satellite Application of the WMO, a member of the GEWEX Radiation Panel and the International Commission on Clouds and Precipitation and rapporteur of the WMO Space Program in the RAIII. Dr. Machado is the coordinator of the CHUVA Project and co-Pi of GoAmazon and ACRIDICON and co-Chair of the Satellite Data Requirements for Region III and IV.
Advisor, Environmental Health Exposures at WHO
Mazen Malkawi is an Advisor on Environmental Health Exposures, at the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Center for Environmental Health Action (CEHA) in Amman, Jordan. Mr. Malkawi holds a Diploma in Water and Environment Information Management from the Free University of Brussels (1998), M.Sc. in Water Resources and Environmental Engineering from the Jordan University of Science and Technology (1988), and B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from the University of Jordan (1985).
Mr. Malkawi started his career as a Hydrologist and Monitoring Engineer at the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, King Talal Dam (1985-1987). During this period he was responsible for monitoring the hydrological behaviour of the King Talal Dam as well as the water quality of the reservoir. He then spent time as a teaching assistant at the Jordan University of Science and technology (1987-1988) in water and environmental engineering subjects.
Since 1988, Mr. Malkawi has served at different positions in the WHO Centre for Environmental Health Action (CEHA). Most recently in 2012 he started coordinating several regional programmes related to monitoring and controlling exposures to environmental risk factors in the 22 countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region.
Head of International Sales - Public Sector, T-Systems International GmbH
Jurry de la Mar has started and lead various strategic projects with European Institutions for T-Systems in Europe. Since 2008 he has had responsibility for the Galileo Satellite Navigation and Copernicus Earth Observation programmes within T-Systems, delivering a range of ICT and security services.
In 2011 he was one of the initiators, together with ESA and AZO, to create the Copernicus Masters – The Earth Monitoring Competition that awards prizes to innovative solutions for business and society, based on Earth observation data. He has also been a member of the Supervisory Board of Cesah GmbH, the Centre for Satellite Navigation in the State of Hesse, Germany since 2009. Cesah is an incubation centre focused on space technology, which has supported more than 60 companies in starting business.
From 2000 till 2003 he was located in Singapore as Head of Deutsche Telekom's sales and operations in the South East Asia and India region. Before that he led the international sales support division for enterprise networks in Germany. He joined Deutsche Telekom group in 1994 as account manager, after beginning his professional career with Siemens where he held various international positions in the medical division in Germany, Netherlands and Sweden; spanning from product management to sales and operations.
He holds a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics and a Master in Informatics, both from Free University in Amsterdam. Born in the Netherlands, Jurry grew up in Africa and Asia, and has developed a strong multi-cultural background from living and working in various countries.
UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, UK
Corinne has an academic research background in fisheries biology and spatial ecology, and has taken part in a number of research surveys on-board oceanographic research vessels, in the English Channel, North and Mediterranean seas. After completing her PhD at the University of Wales, Swansea, UK, on the behavioural ecology of marine turtles in 2003, she spent five years at Canterbury Christ Church University (UK), first as a postdoctoral researcher, and then as a lecturer. She then moved to a research position at the 'Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer' (Ifremer) in Boulogne-sur-mer (France). Prior to moving back to the UK, she was a postdoctoral fellow under the European Union's Marie Curie scheme at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research in Heraklion (Greece).
Corinne's role in the Marine Programme (which she joined in 2012) is to provide oversight, support and scientific lead to technical projects at the science-policy interface. Her areas of expertise include marine biodiversity (European and global scales), spatial ecology (species and habitat distribution mapping and modelling), and policy (European and International instruments). She has extensive knowledge of global coastal and marine datasets of biodiversity importance, and is passionate about making biodiversity data relevant to a range of decision-makers. For instance, she has recently worked on developing a global map to aid the identification and screening of "Critical Habitat" for marine industries. As deputy work package 6 leader of the "European Biodiversity Observation Network" (EU BON) project, she is working towards bridging the gap between biodiversity data and policy needs. Previously, she supported the European Commission in the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, through identifying linkages and overlaps between reporting requirements for various marine policy instruments, so as to formulate options for streamlining and harmonisation.
Bruce is a qualified town and regional planner currently based in Ireland, who has worked in both the public and private sectors in South Africa and Ireland over a span of four decades. For the past 14 years he has worked in the Irish Department of Environment, Community and Local Government where he has been directly involved in spatial data matters, chairing the Irish Spatial Data Work Group, representing Ireland on the INSPIRE Expert Group and project managing the establishment of an award winning national planning information services (Myplan.ie).
For a two year period, Bruce was a Senior Advisor in Spatial Data Infrastructures to the World Bank. For four years until May 2015, Bruce was the President of EUROGI, the European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information. He is currently a member of the EUROGI Executive Committee, and has been the President of IRLOGI, the Irish Organisation for Geographic Information.
Bruce has considerable experience regarding promoting new ideas and initiatives within the spatial information field, particularly through his years in the private sector where he established and built five new companies (the largest having 36 staff), as well as his years as Presidents of both EUROGI and IRLOGI. Through his involvement in both organisations he has extensive experience in networking in a wide variety of sectors, and with people of all types and level.
Bruce has participated in the Eye on Earth initiative since the first Summit and is a member of the Global Network of Networks and Access for All Special Initiatives groups.
UNEP Chief Scientist and Director of the Division of Early Warning and Assessment
Professor Jacqueline McGlade is currently UNEP Chief Scientist and Director of the Division of Early Warning and Assessment. She is on leave from University College London, where she is Professor in Environmental Informatics in Earth Sciences. Prior to this she was Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, Director of the Centre for Coastal and Marine Sciences of the UK Natural Environment Research Council, Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Warwick, Director of Theoretical Ecology at the FZ Jülich and Senior Scientist at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in the Federal Government of Canada. She has held a number of key participatory and advisory roles including as Board Member of the Environment Agency for England and Wales and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Trustee of the Natural History Museum, and is a member of a number of environmental prize juries.
Her activities and research continue to be focused on the dynamics of ecosystems and planetary systems, sustainable development and the governance of natural resources, environmental informatics with particular reference to the development of smart systems for environmental monitoring and observation, socio-economic transitions and policy analysis. She has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, articles, books, plus government reports and legal submissions to the International Court of Justice and produced and presented award winning feature films (Planet RE:think, One Degree Matters, Our Arctic Challenge), TV (Blue Revolution, Power of Nature, The Next Big Thing, Chaos) and radio series (Ocean Planet, Learning from Nature, King John's Treasure). As founder of her own software company, she has developed many software systems, games and applications particularly in the area of fuzzy logic and decision-making under high uncertainty (including SimCoast, Flood Ranger).
Professor McGlade is a fellow of two learned societies (FLS and FRSA), has received international prizes, honours and honorary degrees in the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Monaco, Romania, Sweden, UK, the USA and various global and regional institutions and professional associations. She was the GSDI Global Citizen 2013.
Her educational degrees include BSc (Hons) Marine Biology, Biochemistry and Soil Science, University College of North Wales; PhD Aquatic Sciences and Zoology, University of Guelph, Canada; MA University of Cambridge.
President and CEO, PlanetiQ
A geographer and remote sensing scientist by training, Ms. Miglarese has been active in the geospatial industry for nearly 30 years. Prior to joining PlanetiQ, she was a Principal with Booz Allen Hamilton, where she grew the firm's geospatial solutions and services business in the Defense, Security and Federal Civilian markets. Before Booz Allen, she was President and CEO of EarthData International (now Fugro EarthData), a U.S. and international airborne mapping, remote sensing, and geographic information system (GIS) services company. She spent 18 years in government service, including as Chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) Coastal Services Center, where she directed the organization's remote sensing and GIS programs for 10 years. She also represented NOAA to the intelligence community during the commercialization of satellite imagery. She began her career in the private sector as an environmental consultant specializing in regulatory compliance for the Clean Water and National Environmental Policy Acts. Throughout her career Ms. Miglarese has worked for numerous state agencies and held several board and advisory positions in leading geospatial associations. She has a B.S. and M.S. in geography from the University of South Carolina and was named Alumni of the Year in 2015.
Executive Director, Ecocity Builders
Kirstin Miller is an international speaker and presenter on ecocity design, technology, development and citizen participation. She serves as Executive Director for San Francisco Bay Area based NGO Ecocity Builders, where she leads the organization's program development, global initiatives and activities. Ecocity Builders works locally and internationally to establish access to ecocity knowledge, integrating experiences from a diverse range of perspectives. They link separate knowledge pools through joint research, consulting services, and partnerships. Kirstin is a Board Member of the International Ecocity Conference Series Committee and a jurist for the Katerva Awards.
Chief Executive Officer, Vizzuality
Craig Mills is the Chief Executive Officer of Vizzuality – a design studio pushing the edges of what is possible with data visualisation for the environment and human development. Craig has been involved in almost every sector of the Eye on Earth Community, working previously as a Modeller for the UK government fisheries agency and Head of Informatics at UNEP-WCMC.
These days Craig leads Vizzuality in building some of the best known and innovative applications on the web, helping organisations such as World Resource Institute, NASA, Google, the World Bank and the European Space Agency and European Environment Agency reach and delight more people.
Craig believes that a combination of great design, applied science, quality data and jaw-dropping user experience is where the Eye on Earth community can change human behaviour to sustain our planet.
Chief, Environmental Geoscience Division – Geoscience Australia
Dr. Stuart Minchin is currently the Chief of the Environmental Geoscience Division of Geoscience Australia. The Environmental Geoscience Division includes the National Earth and Marine Observations, National Geospatial Information and Groundwater groups. The Environmental Geoscience Division of Geoscience Australia is the centre of expertise in the Australian Government for environmental earth science issues and the custodian of national environmental geoscience data, information and knowledge.
Stuart has previously been responsible for the Environmental Observation and Landscape Science
(EOLS) research program in CSIRO (Australia's national science agency) which supports decision-making for natural resource management and investment. The EOLS research program focused on Environmental Earth Observation, Soil and Landscape Science and Advanced Environmental Information Systems.
Stuart has a strong track record in many areas of environmental science, particularly in the water resources management area. He has an extensive background in the management and modelling of environmental data and the online delivery of data, modelling and reporting tools for improved natural resource management. Stuart has represented Australia in key international forums including serving as Co-Chair of the Science and Technology Committee of the Intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations and also currently serves on the Editorial Board of the international Journal "Ecological Indicators".
Scientific and Technical Officer, Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Secretariat
Ms Mlisa holds an MSc in GIS and Remote Sensing from the University of Stellenbosch. She has over 12 years experience developing Earth observations and geospatial techniques for hydrogeology and earth science applications. In her current role at the GEO Secretariat she is facilitating the implementation of AfriGEOSS, a trans-continent initiative to coordinate and reinforce synergies among national and/or regional Earth observations efforts in Africa and globally. AfriGEOSS will identify opportunities and put in place measures to enhance Africa's participation in, and contributions to, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). In addition Ms Mlisa is responsible for the coordination of capacity building initiatives in GEO, which aim to build infrastructure, institutional and individuals' capacity to foster use of Earth observation for informed decision-making.
Member of the International Relation Unit of the Environment Agency
Mrs. Sabah Nait is a member of the International Relation Unit of the Environment Agency, Austria (umweltbundesamt). She is in charge of the co-ordination of EU and international projects, co-operation with international organisations and supporting the implementation of internationally assumed commitments, as well as co-ordination and development of institution-building partnerships especially in the European Neighbourhood countries.
She has several years of experience in the field of Environmental Assessment report and indicators development.
Head of the Florence Division of the Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research (CNR-IIA) of the National Research Council of Italy
As head of the Florence Division of the Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research (CNR-IIA) of the National Research Council of Italy Stefano coordinates the team developing and operating the Discovery and Access Broker (DAB) of GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems). He co-founded the Earth and Space Sciences Informatics (ESSI) Division of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), and remained the president of the division for five years. He is a member of the GEO Infrastructure Implementation Board (IIB) and served as co-chair of the GEO Science & Technology Committee. He chairs the Brokering Interest Group of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and is a member of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee. For OGC, he co-chairs the Earth Systems Science Domain WG and the NetCDF-CF Standardization WG. He has taught at the Universities of Padua (Italy), Jena (Germany), and Florence (Italy), and is a visiting professor at the Steven Institute of Technology (NJ) USA.
Senior Director, Strategic Solutions, DigitalGlobe
Dr. Kumar Navulur has over 25 years of experience in the geospatial industry. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University on using geospatial information for environmental sustainability and has experience in using geospatial information for sustainable agriculture development, including precision agriculture.
He is the author of the book entitled "Multi-Spectral Image Analysis for Object Oriented Paradigm", and currently serves as adjunct professor in the Universities of Colorado, Denver, where he advises doctoral students. He has been invited to speak at several international conferences.
WHO Director for the Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health
Dr Maria P. Neira was appointed Director of the Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland in September 2005. Prior to that, she was Vice-Minister of Health and President of the Spanish Food Safety Agency. She has previously held senior positions in WHO as Director of the Control, Prevention and Eradication Programme on Communicable Diseases and as Coordinator of the Global Task Force on Cholera Control. Dr Neira began her career as a field physician and medical coordinator working with refugees in the Salvador and Honduras and later as a public health adviser in Mozambique and Rwanda.
Dr Neira is a Spanish national, and a medical doctor by training. She specialized in Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases and also obtained an International Diploma in Emergency Preparedness and Crisis Management. Among her many distinctions, Dr Neira has been awarded the Médaille de l'Ordre national du Mérite by the Government of France and is a member of the Academy of Medicine, Asturias, Spain.
Founder, OpenOceans Global
Carl Nettleton is the founder of OpenOceans Global, a non-profit, non-advocacy group dedicated to assembling a cross-sector ocean community with the goal of archiving, aggregating and creatively presenting the world's ocean data. OpenOceans Global links people to the world's oceans by sharing information that will lead to more informed decisions.
Carl is also the president of Nettleton Strategies LLC, a San Diego, California, public policy firm. Nettleton Strategies specializes in forming complex community collaborations and handling high profile issues involving government, media, businesses and communities. A key strategy implemented in this work is facilitated mapping – the use of advanced geographic information system (GIS) technology to create location-based consensus and create opportunities for collaboration and conflict resolution.
Carl also serves on the National Advisory Council and is the volunteer co-director of the San Diego Chapter of Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), a national group of business leaders who promote sound environmental policy that builds economic prosperity.
For more than 25 years, Carl has played a major role in addressing large infrastructure-related regional issues including the airport, water, waste water, and storm water. He has also served as the chief executive of two other ocean environmental organizations and has held multiple executive positions in public, non-profit, and for-profit sectors. Carl regularly moderates or participates in local, regional and international panels addressing water, energy, the oceans, and climate.
Education for Employment
Globally recognized as youth employment expert, Salvatore manages the relations of Education for Employment across Europe. He has created a wide network of organisations that believe in youth potential and is a regular consultant to the Ministries of Labour and Education and Youth, as well as private companies, on how to link CSR activities with youth programs.
Mr. Nigro served as Director of the Advocacy Department of the Glocal Forum where he collaborated in one of the largest awareness campaigns for children and youth in history titled "We Are the Future", and has also worked with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He holds a BA in International Political Science and an MA in International Studies from the LUISS University in Rome, and an MBA with distinction from the International University of Malta.
Project Manager for the In-Service ICT Training for Environmental Professionals Project
Emily is a project manager for the ISEPEI Project (In-Service ICT Training for Environmental Professionals), an Eye on Environmental Education project hosted at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. She has been participating in Eye on Earth activities since 2013.
Emily holds a Master's degree in Environmental Sciences, Policy, and Management from the Erasmus Mundus MESPOM program and a Bachelor's degree in Accountancy from Bentley University in Waltham, MA, USA. Being involved in a number of international projects, she has extensive experience in the potential use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in various aspects of environmental management and policy. In addition, Emily is involved with the Hungarian Green Building Council and is an accredited LEED Green Associate.
Member of Parliament of Emuhaya Constituency in Kenya
Hon.Dr, Wilber Khasilwa Ottichilo is currently the Member of Parliament of Emuhaya Constituency in Kenya and has a PhD in Environmental Science. He was first elected to Parliament in 2008 and then re-elected again in 2013.
Prior to joining politics, he held the following positions including
In Parliament he is a Member of the following Committees and Caucuses:
Since joining Parliament, he has moved numerous Motions and Bills on education, science and technology, the latest Motion and Bill being on Promotion of Renewable Energy and Climate Change respectively. Lastly he consulted widely for various UN bodies and international agencies and NGOs and has published numerous papers in international journals and magazines.
Geospatial Technologist of Google
Ed Parsons is the Geospatial Technologist of Google, with responsibility for evangelising Google's mission to organise the world's information using geography. In this role he maintains links with Universities, Research and Standards Organisations which are involved in the development of Geospatial Technology.
Ed is currently co-chair of the W3C/OGC Spatial Data on the Web Working Group. He was also the first Chief Technology Officer in the 200-year-old history of Ordnance Survey, and was instrumental in moving the focus of the organisation from mapping to Geographical Information. He came to the Ordnance Survey from Autodesk, where he was EMEA Applications Manager for the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Division.
Ed earned a Masters degree in Applied Remote Sensing from Cranfield Institute of Technology and holds a Honorary Doctorate in Science from Kingston University, London. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Ed is married with two children and lives in South West London.
Executive Manager, Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP)
Stuart Paterson is the Executive Manager of the Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP), a capacity building initiative which is a collaboration between three renowned international conservation organisations – Fauna & Flora International, BirdLife International and the Wildlife Conservation Society. CLP provides grants, training, internships and mentoring which enable early career conservationists to conduct research on threatened species and sites, and work with stakeholders and decision-makers to deliver successful conservation outcomes. Stuart is responsible for CLP's strategic development, identifying opportunities for collaboration and managing a team which implements the programme's activities across the partnership.
He has 11 years' experience working in the conservation sector, the majority of which have focused on capacity development and he has facilitated and delivered training workshops in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
He holds a BA in Latin American Studies from the University of Liverpool and a MSc in Environmental Management from the University of Nottingham.
Director of ESRI Venezuela
Born in Venezuela, Ms. Giusti De Perez studied architecture at Universidad del Zulia before going on to gain a Masters in Architecture and City Planning, from the Urban Design Program at University of Pennsylvania.
For the past 15 years Ms. Giusti De Perez has worked on developing urban design projects, upgrading poor neighborhoods in several Venezuelan cities.
In 2008 working with Ramon Perez R, she co-authored Analyzing Urban Poverty: GIS for the Developing World, published by ESRI Press. The book promotes the use of GIS models for urban redevelopment using its capabilities to identify real sustainable solutions for improving the quality of life for poor communities.
Managing Director, Swiss federal institute of technology Lausanne (EPFL)
Michele is Managing Director and senior advisor to the president of EPFL. As such, he serves a passionate group of EPFL researchers in physics and computer science pursuing the frontier of humanities and technology, and advises on faculty engagement and other priority areas of the School. Prior to EPFL, he was a Fellow and a director at the World Economic Forum, where he led academic partnerships, and worked in development aid in Mozambique, Afghanistan, and Brussels. Michele grew up in Rome in a jewellery family business, studied History at Università Roma Tre and Development Studies at the London School of Economics. He is passionate about early education, films, sailing and Italy. He lives in Geneva with his wife Marina, a professional photographer, and their three kids.
President of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR)
Daranee Petsod is President of the U.S. based Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees. The organization seeks to inform, connect, and catalyze philanthropy to advance the contributions and address the needs of the world's growing and increasingly diverse immigrant and refugee populations. She has worked on immigration and social and economic justice issues for more than 25 years.
Prior to joining GCIR in 1998, she was a program and communications consultant for foundations and nonprofits. Ms. Petsod previously held leadership positions at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and was a program officer at the Field Foundation of Illinois, Inc. and the Sophia Fund, one of the first women's funds in the United States. She has served on the boards of the Donors Forum and the Heartland Alliance, both in Chicago, and the Asian American Justice Center in Washington, D.C. Ms. Petsod has authored, co-authored, and edited numerous research reports on a range of immigration issues, as well as opinion pieces on the role of philanthropy in supporting immigration and immigrant integration issues. She earned an M.A. in social policy from the University of Chicago.
Chief of UNEP's Environmental Education and Training Unit
Mahesh Pradhan is Chief of UNEP's Environmental Education and Training Unit (EETU), providing support across UNEP's seven thematic priorities, namely Climate Change, Ecosystems Management, Disasters and Conflicts, Environmental Governance, Toxic Chemicals and Hazardous Wastes Management, Resource Efficiency, and Environment under Review.
Mahesh primarily oversees UNEP's engagement with the higher education community in disseminating UNEP's knowledge products amongst relevant stakeholders in academia, while also ensuring their involvement in the development of UNEP's knowledge products and other reports. This is facilitated through the Global Universities Partnership on Environment and Sustainability (GUPES), which aims to promote the integration of environment and sustainability concerns into teaching, research, community engagement, the management of universities including greening of university infrastructure/operations, as well as to enhance student engagement and participation in sustainability activities both within and beyond universities. Currently, over 520 Universities are affiliated with UNEP's global GUPES network, with strong participation of Universities from developing regions, namely Africa (MESA), Asia-Pacific (RUC-AP), and Latin America and the Caribbean (GUPES-LAC and ARIUSA).
More recently, Mahesh supported the delivery of UNEP's first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Ecosystems and Disasters, which had close to 12,000 enrolments across 180 countries. This MOOC was developed in collaboration with the Cologne University of Applied Sciences, the Centre for Natural Resources and Development, with partial funding through the Eye on Earth – Environmental Education Special Initiative.
Policy Advisor on Sustainable Development, UN Women
Seemin Qayum is a UN Women's Policy Advisor on Sustainable Development. Her areas of interest within the broad domain of gender and sustainable development are the articulation of sustainable livelihoods, access to energy and resources, community and landscape resilience and the continuum from unpaid care to decent work. She co-coordinated the production of the 2014 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development: Gender Equality and Sustainable Development, and is currently a co-lead author of the first Global Gender and Environment Outlook, UNEP's flagship assessment.
Prior to joining UN Women she was advisor and consultant in the fields of environment, development, gender and culture for UNDP, Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Ford Foundation and Asia Society, among others.
Recent publications include Cultures of Servitude: Modernity, Domesticity, and Class in India (with Raka Ray, Stanford University Press, 2009); Multi-Stakeholder Decision-Making: A Guidebook for Establishing a Multi-Stakeholder Decision-Making Process to Support Green, Low-Emission and Climate-Resilient Development Strategies (UNDP, 2012); and The Bolivia Reader: History, Culture, Politics (co-edited, in progress with Duke University Press).
Senior Specialist - Outreach, Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi
Gayatri Raghwa, Senior Specialist – Outreach, Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi, is a well-known practitioner in the field of environment education. Her current position entails strategizing, developing and designing programmes on environment education and education for sustainable development that are implemented in Abu Dhabi schools and colleges/ universities.
A gold medalist at the postgraduate degree course in geography, Gayatri also completed an M.Phil. degree from the Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University, with specialization on 'The Human Impact on the
Environment'. Since then she has been ardently committed to spreading education and awareness about the environment. She taught Geography for several years at university and high school levels before devoting all her time to being an environment educator at the Agency.
She has co-authored several publications and resource materials on environmental education and is a member on many national and international panels associated with environment education and high schools.
Founder, Climate Girl
Parrys Raines is an environmental educator, blogger, film/maker and international speaker. She founded Climate Girl at the age of 14 to educate youth from around the world about the environment. Climate Girl is focused on solutions, a catalyst for change, politically neutral, passionate, optimistic, realistic and educational. The aim for Climate Girl is to inspire, engage and activate individuals, communities, businesses and schools to become agents of change. Climate Girl is being built into a global platform for youth to share their stories on how they are overcoming environmental issues within their community. This sharing of information among young people is to allow young people to collaborate and distribute their knowledge more easily. Parrys aspires to increase the environmental intelligence of her generation.
Parrys is an advocate of intergenerational communication and intergenerational equity. She advises and encourages businesses to become sustainable and has been a three time key note speaker at three UNEP environmental conferences (TUNZA). She is an ambassador for various organisations and is on the board of the Sustainable Innovation Forum and on her university's Environmental Advisory Committee.
She is currently studying law with the aim of becoming an environmental lawyer as she is interested in climate justice which is the connection between human rights and the environment.
Geographer - Board director @what3words
Steven is an accidental geographer. He got involved with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) in the early 90s and has been working with global location projects since that time. After spending 10 years building an international software company called 1Spatial he worked for a global, non-profit, standards development organization focussed on location; authoring a guidance document on standards relevant to the EU INSPIRE Directive. He was then Managing Director of the international division of Great Britain's national mapping agency, Ordnance Survey. Today he's a Board director of a small British organisation called what3words that's trying to change how addressing works globally. www.what3words.com/about
Steven is also a senior consultant for the World Bank (open standards and mapping) and a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Future Cities at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, UK. He's a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). You can follow him on Twitter @steven_ramage
Acting Assistant Laboratory Director for Water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Dr. Brenda Rashleigh is an aquatic ecologist and Acting Assistant Laboratory Director for Water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Health and Environmental Effects Laboratory in Narragansett, Rhode island, USA. In her research, she uses statistics and modeling to understand the relationship between environmental stressors and the health and integrity of the aquatic systems. She has served as a Board President for the Georgia River Network; President of the Upper Oconee Watershed Network; Embassy Science Fellow in Pretoria, South Africa; Past President of the Society for Conservation Biology Freshwater Working Group; and Vice Chair of the Federal Interagency Steering Committee on Multimedia Environmental Modeling.
Dr. Eugenie Regan works at UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) in the Ecosystem Assessment Programme. She plays a leading role in the expansion and delivery of UNEP-WCMC's work to provide authoritative information about biodiversity and ecosystem services, in a manner that is useful to decision makers who are driving change in environment and development policy.
Working primarily in support of national governments and inter-governmental processes and with a wide network of international partners, Eugenie oversees a portfolio of projects at the science-policy interface on biodiversity indicators, monitoring, and assessment, including the work of the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Open Geospatial Consortium
Mr. Reichardt is President and CEO of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), an international voluntary consensus standards organization comprised of over 510 industry, government, academic, research and
NGO organizations. The OGC is devoted to facilitating a global forum and social process for advancing open standards and best practices to make it easier to share, manage, access, integrate and apply geospatial information for improved decision making. OGC standards are implemented in technologies and communities of use worldwide to enable interoperability across different processing platforms, applications, systems, networks, organizations and jurisdictions.
Mr. Reichardt is an accomplished cartographer, having held a variety of geospatial production and technology innovation positions with the US Federal Government from 1980-2000. In 1998, Mr. Reichardt was selected to work on Vice President Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government program, to implement a series of local, state and federal pilot initiatives to demonstrate the power of digital maps / geospatial information and tools to improve program coordination across levels of government. He also served under assignment to the US Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) to develop an international program of awareness building and training to encourage the implementation of local, regional and national Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs).
Mr Reichardt currently holds appointments to the OGC Board of Directors, the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association Board of Directors, The National Academy of Science Mapping Science
Committee, and the Building Smart Alliance Board of Direction. From 2011 to 2013, Mr. Reichardt was appointed by the Secretary of the Interior to serve on the US National Geospatial Advisory Committee, a Federal Advisory Committee comprised of industry, government and academic professionals to provide advice and recommendations to the US Government on geospatial management programs and advancement of the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure.
Former CEO UK National Mapping Agency, Former Deputy Chairman UK Statistics Authority, Fellow of the National Academy of Science
Professor David Rhind began his career as a physical scientist and Geographic Information Systems and computer mapping pioneer. Subsequently he acquired social science, management and information policy expertise. He was CEO of Ordnance Survey, Britain's National Mapping Authority, and then President of City University London. Afterwards he was a Non-Executive Director of the Bank of England and Chairman of a large hospital trust then Deputy Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority responsible for the regulation of all government statistics. He remains Chairman of the Nuffield Foundation and has recently co-authored the 4th edition of the best –selling Geographical Information Science and Systems textbook. Rhind is a Fellow of the national academy of science and of the equivalent for the arts and humanities.
Executive Director of the Association of American Geographers (AAG)
Dr. Richardson heads up the AAG, a scholarly and research association of 11,000 members dedicated to the advancement of geographic research, scholarship, and education, as well as to fostering global understanding and developing new applications of geography and GIScience to meet the pressing needs of society and the world.
Dr. Richardson has led a highly successful organizational renewal at the AAG during the past twelve years. He expanded its international membership greatly, developed many new research initiatives and international outreach programs, and created a financial turn-around for the AAG. He has built very strong academic, publishing, and financial foundations for the AAG and for geography's future.
Prior to joining the AAG, Dr. Richardson had founded and for 18 years was the president of GeoResearch, Inc., a private scientific research company specializing in geographic research and technology, including geographic information science and systems (GIS), spatial modeling, and Global Positioning Systems (GPS). Richardson and GeoResearch developed and patented the world's first real-time interactive GPS/GIS systems, leading to significant changes in the ways in which geographic information is now collected, mapped, integrated, and used within the field of geography, as well as in society at large. This technology is now at the heart of a wide array of real-time interactive mapping, navigation, mobile computing, military, and location-based business services, and large-scale mobile asset management applications of many industries ranging from electric utilities to transport, and from governmental planning and disaster response activities to environmental and natural resources management.
Dr. Richardson and GeoResearch continued to pioneer the development of new real-time interactive geographic technologies and their original applications internationally for more a decade following their invention, through extensive research programs and hundreds of large-scale implementation projects worldwide. He sold the company and its core patents in 1998.
Dr. Richardson holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and a Ph.D. in Geography from Michigan State University. His current research interests focus on the geospatial dimensions of health and disaster management, and on geography and GIS's evolution as international resources and tools for economic development and global understanding.
Director of the Statistics Division, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
Dr. Riecan took up his current post at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia in January 2009. In this capacity he is primarily responsible for managing the UN-ESCWA's programme of assisting countries of the Arab region in developing capacity of their statistical systems. He also leads UN-ESCWA's efforts on collection and dissemination of statistical data about the region.
Dr. Riecan worked previously in multiple positions at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe focusing on various statistical topics including macroeconomic statistics, population and housing censuses and migration statistics. The primary focus of his work was on statistical infrastructure including data and metadata models, data quality, data dissemination and communication, use of administrative registers and records for statistical purposes and related fields. Dr. Riecan's academic career focused on mathematical statistics, notably on regression models applied in biology, medical research and mechanical engineering.
Dr. Riecan holds a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, his thesis focused on applications of the Kolmogorov Consistency Theorem.
Director for Global Policies & Sustainability, European Environmental Bureau (EEB)
Leida is a Dutch national and has a background in cultural anthropology with more than 30 years of experience in international development cooperation and sustainability. For many years, she has facilitated and coordinated the global NGO community to realise their active engagement in United Nations processes on Sustainable Development and Environment. For that reason she was heavily involved at the Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 (Johannesburg) and at Rio+20 in 2012 (Rio de Janeiro), including all the preparatory meetings.
She is currently Organising Partner for the UN, where she coordinates the input of the global NGO society in the process on Sustainable Development Goals (follow up of the MDGs) and governance for sustainable development. She is the European Focal Point for civil society in Europe in the 10 year Framework on Sustainable Consumption and Production (UNEP), and she is the representative for the Environmental NGOs at the OECD.
Prior to Sustainable Development, she worked in international cooperation for 15 years, with special focus on rural development in Latin America (Bolivia). She was responsible for the implementation and evaluation of several rural development programs in Bolivia and advised in the establishment of local credit systems and local food processing. For four years, she was the coordinator of the platform of four development NGOs, working together in one joint program. Afterwards, she was appointed as coordinator of a Flemish platform for Sustainable Development (VODO), where she worked for eight years with her team on innovative and integrating tools to promote Sustainable Development. After that she became the Executive Director of ANPED (Northern Alliance for Sustainability), an international NGO network that merged with the EEB in 2014. Leida was also coordinator of an international think tank on ecological debt and environmental justice.
She always combines scientific research work, activists' approaches, field experiences and policy work. She has written many articles and chapters of books on sustainability and speaks Dutch, English and Spanish.
Professor, Center for Ecology of the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Investigations and Founder, Provita
Jon Paul Rodríguez is Professor at the Center for Ecology of the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Investigations (Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas ―IVIC), and also a founder, past Board Member (1987-2001, 2009-2012) and President (2001-2008, 2013-present) of Provita, a Venezuelan conservation NGO established in 1987. He holds an undergraduate degree in biology from Universidad Central de Venezuela (1991), and a PhD.in ecology and evolutionary biology from Princeton University (1999).
In 2005, he was selected by the Jeune Chambre Internationale, Zulia, as one of Venezuela's Ten Outstanding Young People for his environmental achievements (18 to 40 years old), and in 2007, he was awarded the National Prize for Best Science, Technology and Innovation Article in the Natural Sciences (shared with Jennifer K. Balch and Kathryn M. Rodríguez-Clark). He also received the Society for Conservation Biology's Distinguished Service Award in 2010, and the Premio Fundación Empresas Polar "Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury" for lifetime achievements in basic scientific research in 2013.
In 2009, he was appointed Deputy Chair of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (SSC-IUCN) and Leader of the Ecosystem Red List Thematic Group of the Commission on Ecosystem Management of IUCN. His work focuses on understanding patterns in the spatial distribution of threatened species and ecosystems, as well as the underlying causes of these patterns, and the development of policy guidelines for biodiversity conservation. He is author or co-author of more than 165 publications, including the Red Book of the Fauna of Venezuela, the Red Book of the Terrestrial Ecosystems of Venezuela, and peer-reviewed articles in international scientific journals.
Founding Member, The Access Initiative
Andrea Sanhueza is a founding member of The Access Initiative. She has been actively involved in the Latin America and Caribbean process for a convention on Principle 10 since 2012 and was elected representative of the public in March 2015.
Andrea has 25 years' experience working on democracy issues such as transparency, public participation and governance and has coordinated several networks at both regional and global levels. Andrea works as a consultant for the Organization of American States and the InterAmerican Development Bank on access to information and public participation guidelines.
Founder and Technical Director of emapsite.com and Environmental GIS Consultant
Justin Saunders is Founder and Technical Director of emapsite.com, a business-to-business enterprise that provides a revolutionary GIS and internet mapping service to environmental and engineering professionals.
With over 27 years of GIS and remote sensing expertise working on international projects, Justin is considered one of the leading experts in environmental geospatial applications worldwide.
Since graduating from Purdue University in 1986 and completing a Masters in Applied Remote Sensing from Cranfield Institute of Technology, Justin has worked in over 25 countries with both government and private sector organisations, advising and promoting the use of spatial and earth observation data using a wide range of software, sensors, platforms and applications.
Justin is currently working in Malawi with the World Bank providing technical geospatial expertise to a major development project, Shire River Basin Management Project, and is "modernising" the Department of Surveys. In January 2015, major floods hit Malawi and Justin was actively involved in supporting the government and international relief operations using geospatial data to assess the extent of damage and assist delivery of food and medicines to the affected areas. Justin is also working on an FAO project in Saudi Arabia using GIS to identify suitable sites for marine aquaculture taking into consideration commercial, technical and environmental issues. Justin is married with two children and lives in South West France.
Secretary-General of CITES
John Scanlon has served as the Secretary-General of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) since 2010. He has had a unique range of experience with environment and sustainable development policy, law and governance at all levels. His work experience has been gained in the private sector, in government, with the United Nations and with international organizations, as a leader, manager, professional adviser and legal practitioner.
John holds a Bachelor of Laws (1983), Master of Laws (Environmental) (1995), and is an accredited mediator (1996). He was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his service to environmental law nationally and internationally in 2011
Co-Founder and President, Planet Labs
Robbie Schingler is the Co-Founder and President of Planet Labs. Prior to Planet Labs, Robbie spent 9 years at NASA, where he helped to formulate the Small Spacecraft Office at NASA Ames Research Center and was Capture Manager for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Robbie had two tours at NASA Headquarters. He served as NASA's Open Government Representative to the White House; and the White House recognized NASA as a model for openness in government. Robbie also served on the founding team as Chief of Staff for the Office of the Chief Technologist at NASA – where he incubated a $650M Space Technology Program that focused on advanced technology.
Robbie received an MBA from Georgetown University, a Masters of Science Space Studies from the International Space University, a BS in Engineering Physics from Santa Clara University, and was a 2005 Presidential Management Fellow.
Learn more about Robbie and Planet Labs at www.planet.comand follow him and our Twitter for updates at @schingler and @PlanetLabs
Executive Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
Guido Schmidt-Traub is Executive Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as climate change advisor to the Africa Progress Panel secretariat and was CEO of Paris-based CDC Climat Asset Management, an investment company regulated by the French financial markets regulator. From 2008-2010 Guido was Director and Partner at South Pole Carbon Asset Management in Zurich, a leading developer of greenhouse gas emission projects. Prior to managing the MDG Support Team at UNDP (2006-2008) he served as Policy Advisor and then as Associate Director of the UN Millennium Project in New York, which was tasked with developing a concrete action plan for the world to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Earlier Guido was Partner at IndexIT Scandinavia, a private equity fund for early-stage technology companies, and consultant at McKinsey & Company in Germany. Guido holds an M.Phil. in Economics from Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar) and a Masters in physical chemistry from the Free University Berlin. He resides in Paris with his family.
Program Manager and Senior Software Engineer, UNISDR
Julio Serje (P.Eng, M.Sc) is a UNISDR Program Manager and senior software engineer with over 20 years' experience in disaster and risk information systems, in both the public and private sectors, and long standing experience within the UN System.
In past years Julio has focused on the development and application of Information Technology to Disaster and Risk management, Climate Change, Environment and related areas in the form of applied GIS work and Disaster & Risk Information Systems and Methodologies. One of the most important focus areas in his career has been Disaster Loss and Damage databases which represents a low-cost, high impact strategy to systematically account for disaster losses.
In the past few years he has also worked actively with a large team of scientists to build the new UNISDR Global Probabilistic Risk Assessment, thereafter working closely with governments in the implementation and usage of these systems in practical risk reduction processes and in its policy applications.
Director, Environmental Democracy Practice – World Resources Institute
Dr. Lalanath de Silva has over 30 years of experience in the fields of environmental, human rights and international law. He was a public interest lawyer for over two decades and co-founded two leading NGOs in Sri Lanka. He has worked as Legal Consultant to Sri Lanka's Ministry of Environment and as Legal Officer in the Environmental Claims Unit of the UN Compensation Commission. He was the Director of the Access Initiative and is currently the Director of the Environmental Democracy Practice at the World Resources Institute.
He has a PhD from the University of Sydney, Law School, an LL.M from the University of Washington, Law School, Seattle and graduated from the Sri Lanka Law College with honors.
Chief of Knowledge Management and Outreach Services with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)
Mr. Silva is responsible for issues related to the use of new information and communication technologies, including those that are web-based, to conduct international trade in specimens of CITES-listed species. This includes development of CITES electronic permits and certificates and the establishment of Single Window environments. He is also in charge of developing the CITES Virtual College, where members of the CITES community are able to gain better understanding and awareness of the Convention through e-learning. Other tasks include implementation of regional capacity-building projects, coordinating knowledge-management activities and promoting the use of new Internet technologies to help implement the Convention.
He was previously with the Convention on Biological Diversity where he was responsible for the implementation of the Clearing-House Mechanism and for the technical implementation of the Biosafety Clearing-House under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. Before joining the United Nations, Marcos was a Programme Officer with the NAFTA Commission on Environmental Cooperation where his duties included the development of the North American Biodiversity Information Network. He holds a PhD from McGill University and was an Adjunct Professor with the Department of Distance Education for many years.
Founder and COO, i2 institute for imagination and ingenuity
Hayat Sindi is the founder and Chief Operating Officer of i2 institute for imagination and ingenuity.
Ms. Sindi is also a member of the Advisory Board of the UN secretary General, a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for science education in the Middle East and member of the consultative assembly of Saudi Arabia.
Initiatives Manager, USEPA Office of International and Tribal Affairs.
Mr. Sonntag currently manages a variety of initiatives for the USEPA Office of International and Tribal Affairs.
From 1999, Mr. Sonntag was a co-convener of the Ecoinformatics International Technical Collaboration process with partners including USGS, DOE, CDC, NSF, United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the European Environment Agency (co-convener),European Commission Directorates General for Environment and Research, Joint Research Centre (JRC), OECD. Ecoinformatics primary topics include advanced computer science and data system interoperability, indicators and global assessments including sustainability and environmental observations systems.
Mr. Sonntag has been engaged in the Eye on Earth process since 2010 and served as a co-chair for Capacity Building during the preparation process for the 2011 Eye on Earth Summit.
He is currently the USEPA lead for the UN General Assembly process regarding the post-2015 development agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals and targets. He has also served as EPA desk-office for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
Mr. Sonntag is currently the U.S. delegate to the Working Party on Environmental Information.
Mr. Sonntag is a member of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Data Management and International Working Groups and serves on the Standards and Interoperability Forum.
He participates as a member of the UNEP Advisory Committee for the Division of Early Warning and Assessment, and has been a principal US government representative for the development of the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO6) and the global environmental assessment system, UNEP Live.
Mr. Sonntag served as Principal Liaison to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Environmental Health and was responsible for managing the development of USEPA and CDC partnership activities under the terms of the MOU signed by USEPA and HHS in 2007 to promote and improve public and community access to integrated chronic disease data and environmental information.
Mr. Sonntag joined the USEPA during the Administration of President Clinton in the Office of Reinvention and has served at USEPA for 18 years. He played a leading role in the development of USEPA, State and Tribal environmental data standards and the Environmental Information Exchange Network during his first years at USEPA. He has extensive contacts with international organizations and governments.
President, The Ocean Foundation
Mark J. Spalding has been the President of The Ocean Foundation since its founding 10 years ago. Under his leadership, it has grown exponentially from a $200,000 to $6 million/year budget, and he has prioritized its focus on steering the human relationship with the sea to a brighter future through diverse, carefully chosen
strategies and projects.
Mark drove the design and establishment of the Alaska Oceans Program, the Shipping Safety Partnership, the Loreto Bay Foundation and the St. Kitts Foundation. Mark is the advisor to the Rockefeller Ocean Strategy (an unprecedented ocean-centric investment fund), and designed the first-ever blue carbon offset program, SeaGrass Grow.
Mark was recently appointed by the UN to its Pool of Experts for the UN World Ocean Assessment. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Blue Economy, at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. From 1994 to 2003, Mark was the Director of the Environmental Law and Civil Society Program, and Editor of the Journal of Environment and development, at UCSD's Graduate School of International Relations & Pacific Studies (IR/PS). In addition to lecturing at IR/PS, Mark has taught at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD's Muir College, UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, and University of San Diego's School of Law. He was a research fellow at UCSD's Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, a Sustainability Institute – Donella Meadows Leadership Fellow and a SeaWeb Senior Fellow.
He holds a B.A. in history with Honors from Claremont McKenna College, a J.D. from Loyola Law School, and a Master in Pacific International Affairs (MPIA) from IR/PS. He is a graduate of the British School of Motor Racing.
Mark's deep connection with the ocean began as a young boy growing up in the Central Valley of California; each time he crested the coastal range and the Pacific came into view, it was like a breath of fresh air.
Associate Scholar, Leiden University and Adjunct Professor, Central European University
Stephen Stec is adjunct professor at Central European University and Associate Scholar at Leiden University. He is the author of numerous publications on sustainable development and environmental law, including Putting Rio Principle 10 into Action: An Implementation Guide for the UNEP Bali Guidelines. He has worked with or consulted for many international organizations and has taught at universities in the USA, France, Italy, China and Kazakhstan. In 2007 he was a co-recipient of the Rule of Law Award.
Keynote Speaker
Executive Director United Nations Environment Program and Undersecretary General of the UN
The United Nations General Assembly unanimously elected Mr. Achim Steiner as Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme in 2006, for a four-year term, and again 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.
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.
Director, Conservation Strategy & Performance at WWF International
PJ leads a team at WWF International, responsible for developing global conservation strategy, monitoring programme impact and performance, lesson learning and sharing, and capacity building for programme cycle management. He has a PhD in zoology and strives to link conservation science to conservation action.
His recent research interests include the use of biodiversity indicators in conservation monitoring, the drivers of species extinction, strategic planning approaches, and human-wildlife conflict mitigation. Previously he worked with the WWF Africa and Madagascar Programme for eight years where his responsibilities included project development, policy and advocacy, and managing flagship species programmes.
Before joining WWF International, PJ worked for Conservation International in Côte d'Ivoire, for WWF in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and for Scottish Natural Heritage in the UK's only true wilderness, the Highlands of Scotland.
Chair of the Species Survival Commission, IUCN
Simon Stuart is the Chair Species Survival Commission (SSC) at the International Union for conservation of Nature, based at the Bath office, and has undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of Cambridge, with fieldwork in Tanzania and Cameroon. He has over 25 years of experience with the IUCN and the SSC.
Simon started work on the African Bird Red Data Book in 1983. He joined the IUCN Secretariat in 1986, and was Head of the Species Programme (1990-2000), Acting Director General (2000-2001), Head of the Biodiversity Assessment Unit (2001-2005), and Senior Species Scientist (2005-2008). He was elected as Chair of the SSC at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona in October 2008, and elected for a second term as Chair of the SSC at the IUCN World Conservation Congress on Jeju island in South Korea in 2012.It is Simon's job to provide vision and leadership for the SSC in particular, and for the IUCN family on species issues more widely. He chairs the regular meetings of the SSC Steering Committee, and represents the SSC on IUCN's Council.
Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach and Earth Engine
Brian Sullivan is a Program Manager with Google Earth Outreach and Earth Engine, a team dedicated to leveraging and developing Google's infrastructure to address global environmental, health & humanitarian issues through partnerships with nonprofits, educational institutions, and research groups.
His most recent project, Global Fishing Watch, is producing the first interactive view of industrial fishing at a global scale. Through satellite technology and a big data approach, it aims to empower all stakeholders, including governments, the entire fishing supply chain, research institutions, and the general public with new tools to better inform sustainable practices and management policies.
Earlier in his career, Brian focused on business intelligence and strategic partnerships at Google, served as a management consultant in financial services, and managed digital divide programs in West Africa. He holds a
Bachelor and Master's degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
His love of technology is tempered with the opposing and complementary need to spend time in nature.
Lead Account Manager, Nonprofit and Global Organizations, Esri
Dr. Terborgh has a B.S. in Forestry, and both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Geography, specializing in geographic information systems (GISs). She has 25 years of experience working with GIS in the areas of urban management, humanitarian assistance, food security, and sustainable resource management.
Dr. Terborgh joined Esri in 1996 and is currently the Lead Account Manager of the NonProfit and Global Organizations team focusing on GIS solutions for Aid and Development. Prior to this, she was a Research Associate at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in Geneva, Switzerland. During 2004-2005, she served as the Senior GeoInformation Consultant to the Information Solutions Group (ISG) team at The World Bank Group in Washington, DC.
Dr. Terborgh has served as the Chair of the Societal Impacts Committee and the Industry Advisory Council of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association, on the Board of Directors for Sustainable Waste Resources International, and is a former member of the US National Section of the Pan-American Institute for Geography and History (PAIGH). She is an active member of the Essex Junction Lions Club in Vermont, where she leads efforts to provide vision screenings of children (as part of Lions Kidsight USA), the elderly, and low income residents in Vermont. Dr. Terborgh is married and the mother of two young boys.
Vice Chancellor of the University of Gibraltar
Professor Daniella Tilbury is Vice Chancellor of the University of Gibraltar. She is internationally recognised for her expertise in leadership, learning and institutional change for sustainable development. She is the recipient of several research awards including the Macquarie Innovation Award for Research (Australia 2007) and a Marie Curie International Research Fellowship (European Commission 2009). Her institutional change efforts at the University of Gloucestershire were also recognized with a Green Gown Award in 2011.
Daniella has substantial experience as a higher education advisor and has assessed strategic higher education initiatives for government agencies in Australia, New Zealand, China, Morocco and Europe. Recently, she led a large HEFCE QAA funded 'Leadership, Governance and Management' project on embedding sustainability into quality assurance processes in higher education (2010-12) and a Higher Education Academy study into flexible learning and new pedagogical ideas (2013). She leads the University Educators for Sustainable Development Project (UE4SD), a project generously funded by the European Commission that brings together 53 Universities across Europe, to embed sustainability into teaching and learning.
She was awarded a PhD (University of Cambridge, St Catharine's College) in the early 1990s and has since developed an extensive portfolio of evaluation work. She acted as lead evaluator for projects funded by the European Union, United Nations, World Conservation Union (IUCN), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), British Council, and several government agencies organizations. She chaired the UNESCO Monitoring and Evaluation Expert Group on Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014). She also led the IUCN-UNESCO Asia Pacific ESD Indicators Project on Monitoring and Evaluation: the UNESCO Intercultural Understanding in Asia Project and evaluated the WWF China-MOE Education for Sustainability Initiative.
Ocean Conservationist
Jim Toomey is an award-winning ocean conservationist who created the popular comic strip Sherman's Lagoon, which appears in 20 countries and six languages. The strip's underwater theme explores environmental issues in a way that appeals to adults and children alike. Sherman the Shark inhabits a sunny lagoon in the South Pacific, relishing his tropical paradise with other ocean friends. Sherman's Lagoon combines two of Jim's life-long passions: art and the sea.
In addition to creating the daily comic strip, Jim is an award-winning videographer. He produces ocean conservation videos that combine on-camera hosting with animations of his undersea characters.
Jim has a degree in mechanical engineering from Duke, a Master of Arts from Stanford, and a Masters of Environmental Management also from Duke. He has given talks at a variety of venues, from his April 2010 TED Talk, to the Royal Society in London, to Harvard University to his children's kindergarten class. Jim has been featured in many of his client newspapers, as well as Wired Magazine, and National Public Radio.
Associate Director, GW Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute
Dr. Toregas is the Associate Director of the GW Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute. His research interests include cyber security curriculum and work force development; the organizational placement of the cyber security function in major organizations and the impact of cyber insurance on security; collegiate cyber competitions; the intersect of policy and technology in the public sector; and aspects of Social Equity in public administration.
Professor Toregas led the non-profit Public Technology Inc. organization for more than 35 years, advocating the creation and deployment of new innovative technologies for local governments in partnership with the private sector. He lectures extensively in 6 continents about the impact of the digital age on government, and is the IT advisor for the Montgomery County MD County Council, where he provides analysis support for more than $200 million investments in technology services.
He is the facilitator for several Eye on Earth Special Initiatives, as well as the Content Manager for the Ecocity World Summit 2015 in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Dr.Toregas holds PhD and MS degrees in Environmental Systems Engineering and a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.
Creator, Mapstory.org
Chris is the creator of MapStory.org, the atlas of change that everyone can edit. MapStory, as a companion to Wikipedia, is a new dimension to the global data commons that empowers a global user community to organize and share their knowledge about the world spatially and temporally. Beyond being Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the MapStory Foundation, Chris is a Councilor of the American Geographical Society, sits on the Board of the Open Geospatial Consortium, the Board of the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, and has served on the National Geospatial Advisory Committee for the US Secretary of Interior. In a previous life, Chris was the CEO of a geospatial technology firm from startup to acquisition by ERDAS, where he served as SVP for the Americas and National Programs. Chris has his BA, MA and PhD from Columbia University.
Scholar at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
Paul F. Uhlir, J.D. is a Scholar at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, DC and a consultant in the area of international data policy and management. He is immediate past Director of the Board on Research Data and Information, and of the US Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA), both at the NAS. Paul was employed at the NAS from 1985-2015, first as a senior staff officer for the Space Studies Board, where he worked on solar system exploration and environmental remote sensing studies for NASA, and then as associate executive director of the Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications. He also ran the Office of International S&T Information for eight years, where he organized projects and meetings on scientific data throughout the world. Before joining the NAS, he worked in the general counsel's office at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Department of Commerce. Paul has university degrees in world history, foreign relations, and law.
President, International Institute for Sustainable Development
Scott Vaughan is International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) President. He has been Canada's Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development; Director, Department of Sustainable Development, Organisation of American States (OAS); Visiting Scholar, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Head of Economics, NAFTA Environment Commission; and Counsellor, World Trade Organization (WTO).
At the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Vaughan initiated the UNEP Finance Initiative and UNEP's work on trade and environment. Early in his career, he worked at the head office of the Royal Bank Financial Group. Vaughan holds post-graduate degrees from the London School of Economics, the University of Edinburgh and Dalhousie University, and an undergraduate degree from Mount Allison University.
Recent and current affiliations include co-chair of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment (CCICED) Special Study on Environmental Accounting and Auditing in China; co-convener of the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) E15 Task Force on Trade and Natural Resources; member, Future Earth Engagement Committee, UNEP International Advisory Council for the
Advancement of Justice, Governance and Law for Environmental Sustainability, member of the Environmental Leadership Council, Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, and member of the Blue Ribbon Panel, GLOBE 2016.
President, Global Footprint Network
Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D., is co-creator of the Ecological Footprint and President of Global Footprint Network (www.footprintnetwork.org) – an international sustainability think-tank focusing on bringing about a sustainable human economy in which all can live well, within the means of one planet. It proposes using the Ecological Footprint – which measures how much nature we use and how much nature we have – as a tool for bringing ecological limits to the center of decision-making everywhere.
Mathis has worked on sustainability on six continents and lectured at more than a hundred universities. From 2011-2014 Mathis was also a visiting professor at Cornell University.
His awards include the 2015 IAIA Global Environment Award, the 2013 Prix Nature Swisscanto, the 2012 Blue Planet Award, the 2012 Binding-Prize for Nature Conservation, the 2012 Kenneth Boulding Memorial Award, the 2011 Zayed International Prize for the Environment, an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern, a 2007 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, a 2006 WWF Award for Conservation Merit, and the 2005 Herman Daly Award of US Society for Ecological Economics.
Environmental Education and Training Specialist, Environmental Education and Training Unit (UNEP)
Brian Waswala is an Environmental Education and Training Specialist at EETU (UNEP), where his work focuses on promoting environmental education and training for sustainable development. He is actively involved in the Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability in African Universities (MESA) regional network and the development of the African Environmental Education and Training Action Plan
Brian has worked with wildlife and environmental education and conservation government agencies, and non-profit organizations in Kenya. In addition to his environmental education work, he has made significant contributions to ecosystem management in Kenya such as the mapping of Kenyan wetlands (The Kenya Wetland Atlas), the gazzettement of Tana River Delta as a Ramsar site, and on issues of savanna and wetland ecosystems during his tenure at Kenya Wildlife Service as an ecologist.
Brian has mentored a number of environmental science students and communities at Technical University of Kenya, the University of Nairobi, Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, Friends of Nairobi
National Park, and the National Museums of Kenya (Kisumu) among others.
He holds a Master of Science degree in Environment and Natural Resource Management and a Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife Conservationand Management from Makerere University (Uganda) and University of Nairobi (Kenya) respectively.
Secretary General, European Environmental Bureau
Jeremy Wates is the Secretary General of the European Environmental Bureau, Europe's largest federation of environmental organizations comprising over 140 member organizations from more than 30 European countries, with a combined membership of around fifteen million environmentally concerned citizens.
Prior to taking up his present post in May 2011, Jeremy served for more than a decade as Secretary to the Aarhus Convention with the Geneva-based United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. The Aarhus Convention is the world's most far-reaching international treaty on access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice in environmental matters.
During the 1990s, Jeremy led the campaign by the European ECO Forum, an NGO coalition, to persuade governments to start work on a treaty on environmental democracy and then coordinated the input from civil society organizations into the official negotiations over the text of what was to become the Aarhus Convention. In the 1980s, Jeremy founded the Irish environmental organization Earthwatch, the Irish member of Friends of the Earth International, and led the organization for more than a decade.
Jeremy holds an MA Honours Degree in Philosophy and Social & Political Sciences from Cambridge University, UK. His permanent home is in West Cork in the south-west of Ireland where in the '80s and '90s he combined his environmental activism with small-scale organic farming and where he and his wife brought up their four children in their early years.
In 2011, Jeremy was awarded the David Brower Lifetime Achievement Award.
PwC Global Lead Director, AR!SE Initiative
Scott is an international adviser, speaker and facilitator focused on articulating the information asymmetries and perverse incentives that currently inhibit the transformation needed to achieve global and corporate sustainable development and systemic resilience. He works with clients to improve education and understanding of the impact of systemic risks and to change measurement and valuation frameworks used by investors, corporates and governments to shift from valuing inputs to valuing impacts and to shift from managing disasters to managing risks.
Scott's focus is on helping his clients, both private and public sector, to optimize their decisions through the integration of all relevant information into core decision making processes, essentially supporting the process of internalizing externalities.
Scott is the PwC global lead Director on the AR!SE Initiative working with the UNISDR and the other private sector members of AR!SE to make all investments risk-sensitive by integrating risk information into management decision making processes and systems. He also has numerous other related roles as a member of the Global Steering Group for resilience.io working with The Ecological Sequestration Trust, as private sector liaison to the Knowledge Systems for Sustainability Collaborative, as a member of the UN SDSN Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data and in supporting the World Economic Forum Climate Risks in the Financial System working group.
He is a Chartered Accountant and has worked at PwC for almost 20 years in Sydney, New York, London, Tokyo and Geneva, where he is currently based.
Technical Director, Five Oceans Environmental Services
Simon Wilson started his career as a marine biologist with a particular focus on coral reefs and their management. About ten years ago he participated in a hotel development project on an small island in the Maldives which forced him to think seriously about a wide range of sustainability issues such as energy and water production, waste management, the project's social context and the sustainability of the supply chain. That small island became a metaphor for the sustainability challenges of the planet and lead Simon to become fascinated in all aspects of sustainability.
Marine ecology is still an important part of his technical expertise toolkit, but over the last ten years Simon has also been increasingly involved in environmental impact assessment and management, biofuels, green buildings, renewable energy, ecological conservation and management. He holds degrees in zoology (BA), coastal zone management (MSc) and coral reef ecology (PhD), and is currently technical director of Five Oceans Environmental Services LLC.
Associate with the Environmental Democracy Practice, World Resources Institute
Jesse Worker is an Associate with the Environmental Democracy Practice at the World Resources Institute. He manages the Environmental Democracy Index, one of the first seed-funded projects of the Eye on Earth Access 4 All Special Initiative. The Environmental Democracy Index (EDI) is the first-ever publicly available, online platform that tracks countries' progress in enacting national laws to promote transparency, access to justice, and citizen engagement in environmental decision making. He also contributes to WRI Cities' urban governance work and has previously helped lead institutional assessments for climate change adaptation.
Prior to joining WRI, Jesse worked as a climate change policy advocate as well as a Project Manager for an energy efficiency program evaluation. He has also worked in Senegal and Jamaica on community-based natural resource management and climate change adaptation.
He speaks French as well as English. Jesse holds master's degrees in Environmental Science and Public Policy from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in Anthropology and African studies from Indiana University.
Co-Founder & CPO at Crowdicity
Nick is the Co-Founder & CPO at Crowdicity, a crowdsourcing platform for social ideas. Crowdicity is driving open innovation into the heart of large corporates, municipal authorities, NGO's and government agencies around the world. In 2013 the United Nations International Telecommunications Union utilised Crowdicity for the BYND2015 project to crowdsource input from the youth of the world about the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It resulted in the creation of the first ever crowdsourced declaration to be granted official status by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Director of the Spatial Information Systems Lab at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California San Diego
Ilya Zaslavsky is Director of the Spatial Information Systems Lab at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California San Diego. His research focuses on distributed information management systems and spatial and temporal data integration. Zaslavsky received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington (1995), and earlier a Ph.D. equivalent from the Russian Academy of Sciences (1990). He has been leading design and technical development in several large cyber-infrastructure projects supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, including the national-scale EarthCube and Hydrologic Information System. He is a co-chair of the OGC/WMO Hydrology Domain Working Group which develops international standards for water data.
Regional Expert in Environmental & Ecological Systems
Fatma Zohra Zerouati holds a degree in ingenious of state in ecology and environment from the University of Sciences and Technologies in Algeria. She started her career as a journalist specialising in environmental issues from 1992 -2001 with publicly-owned Algerian Television. Here, she worked as pioneer of the emissions on the environment on television, radio and newspaper, and was also presenter of several programs on television and radio.
Fatma was Founder and President of the National Federation of the Environmental Protection in 2000; member of the board of directors of the Observatory of the Environment from 2009-2013; member of office of the Arab Network for the Development and the Raed Environment, coordinator of Raed in Algeria; and member of the African Network for Water and Cleansing ANEW representing of North Africa from 2007-2012. She participated in the Social World Forums in Knowing with the Socio-Economic National Council in Dakar in 2011 and Tunis in 2013, the Weeks of Water in Kigali in 2010 and Durban in 2011, and the top of ground RIO+20 IN 2012.
CEO, BirdLife International
Patricia is the Chief Executive Officer of BirdLife International. BirdLife International is the world's largest nature conservation Partnership, with 120 BirdLife Partners worldwide. Previously Patricia was the Executive Director of the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) a global multi-donor fund enabling civil society to participate in and benefit from conserving some of the world's most critical ecosystems. CEPF is a joint initiative of l'Agence Française de Développement, Conservation International, the European Union, the Global Environment Facility, the Government of Japan, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the World Bank. During Patricia's tenure, CEPF granted more than $170 million in more than 80 countries and territories located in 23 biodiversity hotspots around the world, leveraging an additional $320 million for conservation in these areas reaching out to more than 1,900 civil society.
Prior to leading CEPF, Patricia managed the Conservation Stewards Program in CI, which is dedicated to the provision of incentives to local and indigenous communities in tropical countries in exchange for their commitment to protect biodiversity. Before that, Patricia was the Policy and Economics Director of CI's Andes Program, working on the development of economic initiatives and sound policy making for the five Andean countries (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú and Bolivia). An Ecuadorian national, Patricia holds a master's degree in Environmental Management and Natural Resource Economics from Duke University, and has worked with the Ecuadorian Park System, the World Bank and the World Resources Institute.
Location: Plenary Room.
Speakers: H.E. Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak; H.E. Anwar Gargash; Achim Steiner; H.E. Rashid Ahmed Mohammed Bin Fahad.
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This plenary session will provide an overview of the key political and societal agreements and ambitions for a transition to a sustainable future. It will highlight the opportunities and challenges we face regarding data, information and knowledge. An increased evidence and knowledge base is required to support policy and decision makers in delivering on these commitments and in tracking progress. Never before has the world had the need for – and access to – so much data and information enhanced through rapidly evolving technologies and multi-stakeholder engagement. Achieving sustainable development is not possible without all of society playing its role. This requires leadership, partnership and accountability from the UN, governments, the private sector and civil society.
Location: Plenary Room.
Speakers: H.E. Mohammed Al Ahbabi; Thani Al Zayoudi; Naoko Ishii; Mathis Wackernagel; Pierre-Yves Cousteau; Robbie Schingler.
Download Presentations:
Mathis Wackernagel – Eye on Earth Feet on the Ground
Pierre-Yves Costeau – The Ocean is our Future
This session will:
• Showcase the general successful practice/experience in data quality control and assurance from the perspective of various stakeholders
(providers, users, third-parties, etc.)
• Identify the major challenges facing data quality for decision-making in the context of crowd-sourcing and citizen science
• Create a common understanding of data quality in the context of decision-making
Location: Room A1a
Speakers: Felix Dodds; Kathrine Brekke; Nawal Alhosany; Robert Gurney; Ingrid Dillo; Prof David Rhind; Marcos Silva.
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Katherine Brekke – Data for & from local governance
Nawal Al Hosany – Masdar: Realizing a knowledge economy
Robert Gurney – A Place to Stand: e-‐Infrastructures and Data Management for Global Change Research
Ingrid Dillo – Data Archiving and Networked Services
David Rhind – Dialogue between decision makers and data providers: the big questions
This session will draw on examples from the application of standards in biodiversity conservation data generation, including documentation of point biodiversity occurrences, assessment of extinction risk, identification of important sites, and evaluation of invasive species risk. The session will add value by building awareness of the key biodiversity data and its important role towards advancing sustainable development, as well as bringing together diverse groups in support of bridging the science to policy gap.
Location: Room A1b
Speakers: Richard Jenkins; Franck Courchamp; Natasha Ali; Healy Hamilton; Tim Hirsch; Ackbar Joolia; Gary Geller; Majid Al Qassimi.
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Franck Courchamp – The IUCN SSC Global Invasive Species Database: overview and potentialities
Natasha Ali – Development of a Standard for Identification of Key Biodiversity Areas
Healy Hamilton – Filling the data gaps: Comparing national vs. global metrics using the Biodiversity Indicators Dashboard
Tim Hirsch – What lived where and when
Ackbar Joolia – The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: A barometer of life
Gary Geller – The GEO Biodiversity Observation Network: Better systems for improved decision making
This session will discuss environmental data management strategies in the Arab region to support sustainable development indicators and enhance the environmental policymaking process in the Arab region.
Location: Room A2
Speakers: Ahmed Abdelrehim; Asma Aba Hussein; Najib Saab; Adel Farid Abdel-kader; H.E. Nadia Makram Ebeid; Iyad Abumoghli; Fathia Abdel Fadi; Mohammed Dawood Al-Ahmed; H.E. Taher Al Shakhashir; Yasser Osman; Shahira Wahbi.
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Adel Farid Abdel Kader – Session on Arab Region Environmental Data Challenges [Video 1]
Asma Al Hussein – Arabian Gulf University [Arabic]
Fathia Abdel Fadil – Challenges in data collection and data gap
Mohammed Dawood Al-Ahmed – eMISK (Environmental Monitoring Information System of Kuwait) [Arabic]
Najib Saab – Arab Forum for Environment & Development (AFED)
What demand is there for data to support indicators of progress towards the emerging Sustainable Development Goals and the broader post-2015 agenda? This session will explore this demand by drawing from existing expertise and processes such as the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership, with reference to a wide range of environmental and related governance, economic, and social indicators.
Location: Room C2
Speakers: Constanza Martinez; Eugenie Regan; Guido Schmidt-Traub; Simon Stuart; Peter James "PJ" Stephenson; Tanya Bryan.
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Constanza Martinez – Integration of SD dimensions in the SDGs framework
Eugenie Regan – Connecting demand and supply: the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership
Guido Schmidt-Traub – Measuring progress towards sustainable development: Priorities to meet the data demand
Simon Stuart – Considerations for indicator development
Peter James (PJ) Stephenson – Overcoming the challenges to conservation monitoring: lessons for global indicator frameworks
Tanya Bryan – The importance of data on marine ecosystems for and beyond Goal
The purpose of this session is to learn from the international donor community – international development banks, international development agencies, foundations and others – how data is and can be used in their decision-making processes.
Location: Room A2
Speakers: Barbara J. Ryan; Tom Cummings; Sylvia Lee; Jackson Kimani.
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Sylvia Lee – Skoll global threats fund
Jackson Kimani – System for Land-based Emissions Estimation in Kenya (SLEEK)
Tom Cummings – How Data is and can be used in Foundation and Activist decision making processes
People need to have access to data and information that affect their daily lives and their well being to be able to pressure policy makers to take action and to empower them to take their own action.
Location: Room A1b
Speakers: Jacqueline McGlade; Hayat Sindi; Maria Neira; Seemin Qayum; Joni Seager; Parrys Raines.
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Jacqueline McGlade – Transforming the world of data & statistics
Joni Seager – MISSING OUT: top 3 ways to not include gender disaggregation in health & environment data
Iman Nuwyhed – Health And Ecological Sustainability In The Arab World
This session will explore the demand for environment-related data from the private sector, in terms of managing risk, ensuring access to capital, and strengthening social licence to operate. It will span sectors including extractives and conglomerates, business intelligence, banking and financial services, and environmental consultancies. Optimal strategies for making such data available, including provision of tools and data licensing, will also be discussed.
Location: Room M
Speakers: Martin Sneary; Leon Bennun; Bartholomew Judd; Simon Wilson; Ehab Eid; Scott Williams.
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Bartholomew Judd – Environmental Data for Business Performance
Simon Wilson – Demand, Issues and Steps Towards a Solution
Scott Williams – Scaling up to meet demand in a world of non-linear systemic disruption
Location: Plenary Room.
Speakers: Jacqueline McGlade, Marguerite Nyhan.
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Marguerite Nyhan – Airscapes Singapore [Data visualization winner] [Video 1] [Video 2]
The purpose of this session is to set the tone and direction for the "data supply" theme of the 2nd day of the Summit. The speakers will focus on the revolution in data – the logarithmic explosion both in terms of data volume and of data sources. Most importantly, the keynote addresses will highlight the undiscovered potential of these new resources and providers to contribute to informed decision-making about environmental, social and economic challenges faced by politicians, businesses, governments, scientists and ordinary citizens.
Location: Plenary Room.
Speakers: Barbara J. Ryan; Muki Haklay; Christopher Tucker; Mary Glackin; Philemon Mjwara; Mae Jemison.
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Barbara Ryan – Data Revolution – Data Supply Side
Philemon Mjwara – Unleashing the Power of Earth Observations
Muki Haklay – Extreme Citizen Science – bridging local & global
Mary Glackin – From Big Data to Better Decisions: How Weather Data is Making People Safer and Businesses Smarter
Christopher Tucker – Empowering Policy Makers with Open Data about Our Changing World [Video]
Mae Jemison – Out of Relative Obscurity…A Data Revolution [Video]
This session will examine the fundamental problems from a socio-technical perspective – what are the practical realities that lead to our current sub-optimal state of affairs.
We will then introduce the principles of a Global Network of Networks to deal with these underlying problems with an evolutionary approach to leverage and improve the best available practices to create more useful environmental informatics capability at all scales of operation.
Location: Room A1a
Speakers: Bruce McCormack; Rob Atkinson; Steven Browdy; Ahmed Abdelrehim; David Stanners; Rodrigo Barriga-Vargas; Gail Hodge.
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Connecting networks to support environmental sustainability: What the Global Network of Networks can do for you!
Clearly identifying opportunities for the Eye on Earth community to support the urban SDG – goal 11. Without capacity building, to promote data accessibility, and application uses, urban communities will not be able to develop a sustainable, resilient and viable future.
Location: Plenary Room
Speakers: Fernando R. Echavarria; Kirstin Miller; Michele Petochi; Rosario Giusti de Perez; Carmelle J. Terborgh; Marsha Goldberg.
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Participating institutions, NGOs and organizations will explore the potential roles for civil society to assist decision and policy makers to improve environmental decision making processes through reliable data collected by civil society.
Location: Room A2
Speakers: Ayman Rabi; Emad Adly; Fatma Zerouati; Majda Abu Ras; Mufleh Abbadi; Salvatore Nigro; Yomn El Hamaky.
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Ayman Rabi – The Toolkit to Resilience Framework [Arabic]
Emad Adly – Civil Society & Information Technology
Fatma Zerouati – Fédération nationale de la protection de l'environnement (FNPE) [French]
Salvatore Nigro – Education For Employment (EFE) Building futures through employment
The past five years have witnessed the advent of "big data" enabled by technology innovations such as cloud computing. This session will explore the potential for this breakthrough to accelerate improved decision-making to advance sustainable development.
Location: Room C2
Speakers: Janet Ranganathan; Marc Levy; Louis Liebenberg; Gary Lawrence; Paul Van Gardingen; Craig Hanson.
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Marc Levy – Data Needs for the Sustainable Development Goals
Louis Liebenberg – Presentation
Gary Lawrence – What is the point of Big Data?
This breakout session will aim to achieve the following outcomes:
• Establish a special initiative on Data for SIDS (Eye on Islands)
• Engage a global group of SIDS stakeholders to take this initiative forward
• Express the challenges and opportunities facing SIDS institutions
• Compile a set of priority fiche project concepts around data issues
Location: Room A1b
Speakers: Aditya Agrawal; Floyd Homer; Corinne Martin; Aboud Jumbe.
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Aditya Agrawal – Island communities Open Data Program for Coastal Resiliency
Floyd Homer – The SAMOA Pathway -‐ data commitments and challenges
Corinne Martin – A Global Island Database (GID) to support the island community
Aboud Jumbe – Use of Data for Integrated Development Planning in the Western Indian Ocean Islands
Asha Singh – Data in SIDS : Findings, Challenges Opportunities and Response
The session will include an overview of the approaches and accomplishments of the Group on Earth Observations Global Earth Observation system of Systems (GEOSS), GeoScience Australia's DataCube and other data infrastructures. Presentations/discussion will focus on several significant components with regard to the GEOSS, such as Earth observation systems and data and information systems that can facilitate the delivery of data and information for informed decision-making. The session will also include approaches being used by the private sector to handle the increasing volume of data becoming available.
Location: Room C2
Speakers: Robert Chen; Stuart Minchin; Ilya Zaslavsky; Mark Reichardt; Brian Sullivan; Stefano Nativi.
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Stuart Minchin – Observing the Earth through Space and Time: The Australian Geoscience Data Cube [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3] [Video 4]
Ilya Zaslavski – Cross-domain information discovery and integration in the age of Big Data: the NSF EarthCube initiative
Mark Reichardt – Interoperability for Big Geo Data
Stefano Nativi – The GEOSS Common Infrastructure and the Discovery and Access Broker
This session will show the importance of data from Earth observations in SDG monitoring and how they can be integrated into other geographic data from various national statistical systems including those used by MDG monitoring. This will enable more relevant and focused measuring and monitoring of progress toward achieving various types of sustainability, be it economic, social or environmental within the SDGs framework.
Location: Plenary Room
Speakers: Barbara Ryan; Jaqueline McGlade; Robbie Schingler; Marc Levy; Pali Lehohla; Frederic Launay.
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Barbara Ryan – Data Integration – Effective Monitoring of the SDGs
Jacqueline McGlade – Transforming the world of data & statistics
Robbie Schingler – Imaging the Earth Daily
Marc Levy – #IntegrateData / Conclusion
How much investment is necessary to develop and – critically – maintain the delivery of authoritative knowledge products to inform decisions in sustainable development? This session will present examples of how such costs can be evaluated, showing that, while large compared to present investment, they are tiny relative to societal investments in other topics of comparable significance for improved decision-making.
Location: Room A2
Speakers: Tom Brooks; Richard Jenkins; Diego Juffe; Naomi Kingston; Ian May; Jon Paul Rodriguez.
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Tom Brooks – Understanding the costs of knowledge: cost of data generation and maintenance
Richard Jenkins – From the Wild to the Web: keys steps in delivering The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
Diego Juffe – The cost of knowledge Assessing financial investments in developing and maintaining biodiversity and conservation information
Naomi Kingston – Protected Planet [www.protectedplanet.com]
Ian May – Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs)
Jon Paul Rodriguez – Costs and benefits of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems
Water security is an inherently interdisciplinary and complex issue that is critical to consider for achieving sustainable development, human well being, and environmental sustainability. It is a central factor in biological, institutional, political, economic and social considerations and has an impact on local, regional, and global scales. Achieving the post-2015 SDGs will not be possible without a considerable focus on water.
Location: Room A1a
Speakers: Viktor Lagutov; Mark Sorensen; Mohammed Dawoud; Brenda Rashleigh; Lorant Czaran; Kirstin Miller; Philipp Saile.
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Decision-making in Water Security: Community strategy for success [Part 1]
Decision-making in Water Security: Community strategy for success [Part 2]
The session will look at how increased understanding of the role of data and mapping can support joint fact finding. Having distinct groups/people come together towards one common cause/action can be an efficient means towards creating an active and engaged society.
Location: Room M
Speakers: Carl Nettleton; Christian Neumann; Maria Arreola; Mark Spalding; Dave Loubser; Karl Donert.
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This session will present view points from three EoE Special Initiatives, namely Access for All, GNON and Education, on how each of them proposes to respond to developing the right enabling conditions with regard to access to information, citizen engagement and access to justice (Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration (1992) as affirmed by the EoE Abu Dhabi Declaration (2011)). These viewpoints will be presented in response to two case study problem statements drawn from a watershed and dam scenario that will be presented at the outset.
Location: Room C2
Speakers: Fares Howari; Jordan T Hastings; Lalanath de Silva; Ana Barreira.
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Fares Howari – Special Initiatives and Enabling Conditions
Jordan T Hastings – Legacy GeoData
In March 2015 the international Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) community approved the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. The Sendai framework includes seven, concrete global targets to monitor its implementation. The development of a DRR monitoring mechanism to measure the achievement of these targets and their alignment with other critical global initiatives, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), needs a concerted effort of all stakeholders.
Location: Plenary Room
Speakers: Costis Toregas; Julio Serje; Sona Abo Zahra; Jurai Riecan; Christopher Grajo.
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Julio Serge – Global Frameworks (Sendai, SDGs, UNFCCC) Opportunities for Eye on Earth?
Sona Abo Zahra – Challenges and Opportunities – Case of Jordan
With more than 7 billion mobile phones worldwide and with near global Internet connectivity, citizens anywhere are now capable of being the eyes and ears of the planet. This session will showcase successful approaches for engaging people to crowd-source data and contribute to citizen science, and how indigenous knowledge can be systematically integrated into decision-making.
Location: Room A1a
Speakers: Craig Hanson; Andrew Hill; Nick Wright; Brian Sullivan; Tuntiak Katan J.
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Craig Hanson – Global Forest Watch
Tuntiak Katan J. – Morona Santiago-‐Amazonía Ecuatoriana [French]
Jacqueline McGlade – UNEP Live, Our Changing Environment: Place by Place
This session will bring together disaster management, global network of networks, and access for all themes to foster an engaging and vital conversation on a critical international situation – the Syrian refugee crisis. The UN estimates that at least 6.5 million people have been displaced in Syria, with over 3 million having fled to neighboring countries. There are exigent data demands as the international community works to sustain these refugee populations. The Eye on Earth Summit would be an ideal location for a panel session to discuss potential solutions to help address this urgent data crisis
Location: Room A2
Speakers: Douglas Richardson; Ziad Ayad; Ivan B. DeLoatch; Daranee Petsod; Lorant Czaran.
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Douglas Richardson – Sustaining Communities in Upheaval: Geospatial Data Needs to Support Refugees and Vulnerable Populations
Ziad Ayad – Sustaining Communities in Upheaval – Geospatial Data Needs to Support Refugees and Vulnerable Populations
Ivan DeLoatch – Place-Based Solutions Using Spatial Data Infrastructures for Global Crisis and Disaster Management
Daranee Petsod – The Syrian refugee crisis & role for Philanthropy
For people to act on information, they need to understand it. Visualisation can increase that understanding. Bringing together leading experts and practitioners, this plenary will showcase innovations in data visualisation and application that advance sustainable development.
Location: Plenary Room.
Speakers: Janet Ranganathan; Craig Mills; Trista Patterson; Angela Oduor Lungati; Craig Hanson.
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Janet Ranganathan – Resource Watch SNEAK PREVIEW
Speaker: Jacqueline McGlade
Location: Plenary Room.
Speaker: Barbara Ryan.
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Citizen Science Finalist – Biocaching
Citizen Science Finalist – Hack the Rainforest
This plenary session will set the stage for the third day of the summit's theme of 'enabling conditions'. It will draw together the issues of data demand and data supply discussed on the first two days respectively, and place them in the context of the factors necessary to support effective and efficient synergy between the two. These include policy arenas, funding commitments, and capacity building. IUCN's Director General will open the session with a keynote, and then moderate a discussion among distinguished panel lists, all of who are global leaders on the above themes.
Location: Plenary Room.
Guest Speaker: Jim Toomey.
Speakers: Inger Andersen ; Enrico Giovannini; Patricia Zurita; Carmelle Terborgh; Jeffrey Sachs.
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Jim Toomey – Sepcial guest presentation [Video]
Patricia Zurita – BirdLife International [Video]
Carmelle J Terborgh – WebGIS Enabling Technology – Maximize the Impact of Your Data
To ensure the capability exists to foster use of Earth observations for improved decision-making we must consider human, scientific, technological, organizational and institutional resources and capabilities. These are crucial elements of capacity building as embraced by the Group on Earth Observations.
Location: Room A1b
Speakers: Andiswa Mlisa; Mae Jemison; Hon. Wilbur Ottichilo; Jurry de la Mar; Luiz Augusto Machado.
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Mae Jemison – An Inclusive Audacious Transformative Journey
Luiz Augusto Machado – User-Data Providers – A cooperation concept
This breakout session will aim to achieve the following outcomes;
• Reach a common understanding of Open Data Policies and their importance
• Recommend resources/best practices/capacity-buildings activities that legislative bodies, governments, public organizations and individuals can take advantage of to increase the adoption and implementation of Open Data Policies.
Location: Plenary Room
Speakers: William Sonntag; Simon Hodson; Leida Rijnhout; Chukwudozie Ezigbalike; Paul F. Uhlir, J.D.; Chuang Liu.
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William Sonntag – CODATA, Open Science Policies and Capacity Building
Leida Rinjhout – Policies, Partnerships and database "The role of citizen's knowledge"
Chukwudozie Ezigbalike – Towards an Open Africa Data
ConsensusChuang Liu – Implementation of Data Sharing Principles in Developing Countries
The goals of the session are three-fold: 1) to provide an overview of global trends in education as it relates to sustainable development and data-driven decision-making; 2) showcase achievements of the EE SI since its inception through its seed-funded projects; and 3) to formulate the future vision of the EE SI, based on a variety of stakeholder perspectives, from a range of geographical areas (e.g. Europe, Asia/Pacific, regional) and from a range of sectors (e.g. universities, private entities, non-profit organizations, and international organizations).
Location: Room C2
Speakers: Daniella Tilbury; Ed Parsons; Emily Nilson; Mahesh Pradhan; Brian Waswala; Gayatri Raghwa; Kirstin Miller; Viktor Lagutov.
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Emily Nilson – ISEPEI: In-‐Service ICT Training for Environmental Professionals
Mahesh Pradhan – Global Universities Partnership on Environment and Sustainability (GUPES)
Efficiency and accountability of policy development can be further enhanced through a more open access to environmental information and data as well as better conditions for public participation in environmental decision-making thus aiming for environmental governance improvement.
Major progress was achieved in this regards on the regional level since Rio Conference and especially after Rio+20 Conference on Principle 10 (access to information and public participation on environmental matters) promotion and implementation. Most recent development marks the Latin American and Caribbean regions Principle 10 process where 20 countries launched few months ago the negotiation of Principle 10 regional instrument.
Location: Room A1a
Speakers: Alexander Juras; Andrea Sanhueza; Danielle Andrade; Tsvetelina Filipova; Jeremy Wates; Carlos De Mi; Stephen Stec.
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Andrea Sanhueza & Danielle Andrade – ACCESS RIGHTS ARE KEY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: A LAC Convention on P10 can make the difference. [Video]
Tsvetlina Filipova – Building bridges between regions
Jeremy Wates – Promoting principle 10 with respect to environmental matters in the Middle East and North Africa region
Carlos De Miguel – Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
Stephen Stec – The Bali Guidelines An Effective Tool for Implementing Rio Principle 10 at the National Level
This session focuses on cross regional cooperation framework within the Eye on Earth Summit objectives and will highlight the need to create a platform among regions to exchange experiences in the field of data sharing, data harmonization and exchange of success stories. The session will include the data issues on a regional, sub regional or cross regional basis. Major environmental data networks will be invited.
Location: Room A2
Speakers: Frank Turyatunga; David Stanners; Shahira Wahbi; Sabah Nait; Ahmed Abdelrehim; Peter King; Rodrigo Barriga Vargas.
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Ahmed Abdelrehim – Arab Region Environmental Information Network
David Stanners & Sabah Nait – European Environment Information and Observation Network – Eionet
Peter King – Introduction to the Asian Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Network (AECEN)
Rodrigo Barriga Vargas – PAIGH – Regional innovative approaches for crossregional cooperation in knowledge sharing
Costis Toregas – North American experience Do we need to do it all?
Location: Plenary Room.
Monitoring the Earth from both above and below—from space and the ground—has revolutionized how we monitor and understand developments on the planet. This session will introduce "what's next" in terms of remote sensing (e.g. high-resolution/high-frequency satellites, remote-operated aircraft, and more) and local observation (e.g. mobile phones) as applied to sustainable development.
Location: Plenary Room.
Speakers: Craig Hanson; Taner Kodanaz; Kumar Navulur; Lian Pin Koh; Steven Ramage; Justin Saunders; Anil Kumar.
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Steven Ramage – ADDRESSING THE WORLD IN 3 WORDS [Part 1] [Video]
Steven Ramage – ADDRESSING THE WORLD IN 3 WORDS [Part 2] [Video]
Lian Pin Koh – Conservation Drones [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3] [Video 4] [Video 5] [Video 6]
Justin Saunders – MALAWI JANUARY 2015 FLOOD RESPONSE
Anil Kumar – Application of Geospatial Solutions in Wildlife Conservation
Sandrine Mathieu – From user needs to space-based solutions, a system approach
Environmental issues are fundamentally local ones, and so the mobilisation of environmental data in support of sustainable development decision-making requires the professional human capacity to collect data on the ground and in the water. This session will provide inspiring examples of building and maintaining such capacity to get "feet in the field" such as the Conservation Leadership Programme, Mohamed Bin Zayad Species Conservation Fund, and Save Our Species programme.
Location: Plenary Room.
Speakers: Stuart Paterson; Alberto Campos; Nicolas Heard; Jacky Judas; David Kuria; Jean-Christophe Vié; Ayesha Yousef Al Blooshi.
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Stuart Paterson – Feet in the Field: Supporting future conservation leaders
Alberto Campos – Feet in the Field to Prevent Extinctions
Nicolas Heard – The Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund: A UAE Conservation Organisation with Global Impact
Jacky Judas – Water Research and Learning Programme Wadi Wurayah National Park
David Kuria – Building Capacity for Conservation & Livelihoods improvement in Africa: The case of Kijabe Environment Volunteers
Jean-Christophe Vie – Mobilizing knowledge to guide wildlife conservation on the ground
Ayesha Yousef Al Blooshi – Feet in the Field Case study by: Environment Agency Abu Dhabi (EAD) Ayesha Al Blooshi, Director of Marine Biodiversity-‐EAD [Video 1] [Video 2]
Location: Plenary Room
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Location: Plenary Room
Speakers: Jacqueline McGlade; Barbara Ryan
Location: Plenary Room
Speaker: H.E. Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak.
Location: Room A1b
Environmental problems are complex, interdisciplinary, and sometimes new, having been created by new technologies, industries and new forms of social metabolism. This leads to uncertainties and inevitable ignorance. For this reason, an important stream of research focuses on the collaboration but also the conflicts between expert ''scientific'' environmental knowledge and local or indigenous knowledge, highlighting how the development and application of scientific knowledge is inherently a political process that expresses and exercises power.
Speakers: Leida Rinjhout, Jeremy Wates.
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Collaborative Research and Activist Knowledge for Environmental Justice
Proposed by: EUROGI
Location: Room M
GI and GeoTechnologies play a vital role in helping to understand environmental change processes, and also in the process of developing appropriate solutions to environmental problems and ways in which opportunities can be realised. It can also play an important role in monitoring change and facilitate environmental reporting. Technological change in a variety of fields is taking place at a rapid rate and many of these changes will impact on the emerging GI/GT environment. EUROGI has identified changes in 24 areas.
Speakers: Bruce McCormack.
Location: Room A2
UNEP and AGEDI have developed the National Reporting Toolkit that will shape the way countries report on the state of the environment. It aims to help government Ministries responsible for reporting on national, regional and global obligations, to collect, analyze and publish quality assured information in a timely manner.
Speakers: Jacqueline McGlade, Arno Scharl.
Location: Room A1b
The aim of this side event is to identify future perspectives for EoEE to develop as a fundamental cross-cutting component of the Eye on Earth initiative.
Speaker: Karl Donert.
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Karl Donert – Implementing Eye on Earth – Creating common educational perspectives
Location: Room M
The side event aims to present to participating decision makers and practitioners the utility of earth observation data, satellite imagery and derived gesopatial information together with related applications for early warning, mitigation and response in water-related disasters, but also in drought situations caused by lack of adequate water supply.
Speakers: Lorant Czaran.
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Location: Room C2
The side event will provide an overview of the state of Shared Environmental Information Systems (SEIS) in the Pan-European region with a focus on the Eastern European, Caucasus and Central Asian (EECA) countries. It will explain the processes in place to build a sustainable knowledge base for the region as well as the tools and technologies that are being used such as UNEP Live and the National Reporting System (based on work undertaken by UNEP, UNECE & EEA). It will highlight the use of this knowledge base to produce the GEO-6 Pan-European assessment. It will also focus on three key areas of the assessment which include One Health, Planetary Boundaries concepts and land abandonment. UNEP is preparing the 6th global report on the state of the environment. The objective of the session would be to briefly outline the process which is being followed to produce the Africa region report and to highlight some of the main environmental issues which have arisen from various sources, including the African Community of Practice (CoP). Between 50 and 100 people nominated by their national governments are participatns in the African CoP.
The Africa report will have three main sections, namely, the state of the environment, policy matters and an outlook section which will have a futures orientation.
Speakers: Franck Turyatunga.
Location: Room A1a
Speakers: Marc Levy, Rodrigo Barriga Vargas, Ivan DeLoatch.
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Ivan DeLoatch & Rodrigo Barriga Vargas – Enabling the Data Revolution in the Americas
GNON & Eye on Earth Community
Location: Room A1b
The objective of this side event is to give attendees a detailed understanding of what GNON is, how it is used, and what its value is without going into great technical detail. This is relevant to Eye on Earth, since GNON is a primary vehicle by which the benefits and goals of Eye on Earth will be delivered.
Speakers: Steven Browdy, Gail Hodge.
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Environment Agency Abu Dhabi & GPC Group.
Location: Room A1b
The objective of this side event is to convene Summit attendees with interest in water security and related matters and information sharing across the Gulf Region, to discuss the issues, opportunities and constraints and level of interest in information and knowledge sharing across this community, and to define possible channels and activities needed to catalyze future collaboration.
Location: Plenary Room
This side event will explain the general structure of the GeoSUR programme, as well as the coordinating role of the Pan American Institute for Geography and History and the role of the CAF – Development Bank of Latin America. It will also discuss the existing links with other networks of cooperation in the Region of the Americas, particularly the Joint Action Plan for the development of geospatial data Infrastructure in the Americas. Particular focus will be on how to replicate this model in the Arab regions and further afield.
Speakers: Rodrigo Barriga Vargas, Eric Van Praag, Virginia Fernandez, Santiago Borrero.
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Santiago Borrero – GeoSUR Program
Eric Van Praag – GeoSUR Program
Location: Room A1a
Universities play a vital role in promoting and instilling environmental best practices to academia, students and the communities. As capacity development institutions, it is increasingly important that global universities teach, conduct research and contribute to the global knowledge base across every aspect of sustainability. These can range from sustainable practices, photovoltaic engineering to ecological accounting. The Global Universities Partnership on Environment for Sustainability (GUPES) is a network of global universities that aims to promote the integration of environment and sustainability concerns into teaching, research, community engagement, greening of university infrastructure and operations, as well as to enhance student engagement and participation in sustainability activities both within and beyond universities. The network also promotes Environmental Education (EE) curricula and sustainable concepts in line with the Eye on Earth EE SI agenda.
Speakers: Mahesh Pradhan, Emily Nilson, Fares Howari, Brian Waswala.
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Green Campus – The Global Universities Partnership on Environment for Sustainability (GUPES)
Environment Public Authority (EPA) of Kuwait
Location: Room A2
The Environmental Monitoring Information System of Kuwait (eMISK) is an ambitious system initiated by the Environment Public Authority (EPA) of Kuwait. Among the main goals of eMISK are to raise awareness at all levels of Kuwait society of the values of the environment, and to place authoritative scientific information at the centre of decision-making. Beatona is the Kuwait official environmental portal that was developed and is managed by eMISK. This product aligns well with the main objectives of the Eye on Earth Summit as it aims to establish, build and maintain a comprehensive geo-environmental database of Kuwait along with an enterprise level GIS system for access, update and analysis of the environmental data. This geo-environmental database is available to decisions makers and stakeholders within EPA, outside agencies and to the public at large.
Speakers: Abeer Alabry, Hessa AlKhaled, Mariam AlSalem.
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Abeer Alabry – Environmental Monitoring Info System of Kuwait (eMISK)
Hessa AlKhaled & Mariam AlSalem – Environmental Monitoring Info System of Kuwait (eMISK)
UNEP & Major Groups partners
Location: Room C2
Bringing together citizen scientists to identify and develop how citizen and local science can contribute to enhancing our knowledge, understanding, monitoring and protection of the natural environment – linking the local data and knowledge with the global picture.
Proposed by: GNON & Eye on Earth Community
Location: Room M
Water availability, particularly surface water in relation to human settlement and arable land, is THE gating resource of the 21st century. An interactive "open water map" super-imposed on ecology and land use makes this point palpable and personal, as visitors will naturally zoom-in on the map to areas they know and directly see the water situation there.
U.S. Geological Survey
Location: Room A1a
The objective of this side event is to expose participants to a groundbreaking big data resource on standardized, global terrestrial ecosystems. Increasing the awarenes of the EoE community to the data and apps will mean they can easily find and access them, understands their richness and utility, and will be able to engage with the data providers in the development of upcoming analog global marine and global freshwater ecosystems.
Speakers: Eric Van Praag, Roger Sayre.
Location: Room A2
This side event will discuss the environmental data and information challenges in the West Asia region. It will provide an overview of the current situation, looking at data and information availability, indicators, public access, information policy and legislation, and the institutional capacity for managing environmental data and information. Participants will discuss the constraints and barriers to improving environmental data and information, the environmental data needs in the region to support sustainable development, regional and international cooperation, innovations and success stories, as well as opportunities for the future, including recommended priority areas.
Speakers: Peter King, Chuang Liu, Mir Matin, Ahmed Abdelrehim, Yasser El Sherif, Yasser Othman.
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Perspective from the regional GEO – 6 assessments in West Asia and Asia Pacific
Yasser Othman – Perspective from the regional GEO – 6 assessments in West Asia and Asia Pacific
Island communities are among the most threatened areas due to increasing affects from climate change. To better understand and evaluate potential responses from both governments and citizens, robust data and technology platforms are needed to improve access to useful information for more effective decision making. This side event will discuss the role of open data and governance in the context of developing island nations and resiliency.
Location: Room C2
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Location: Room A1a
UNEP and AGEDI have developed the National Reporting Toolkit that will facilitate the way countries report on the state of the environment. It aims to help government Ministries responsible for reporting on national, regional and global obligations, to collect, analyze and publish quality assured information in a timely manner.
Speakers: Alessandro Galli, Mathis Wackernagel.
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Location: Room A2
Speakers: David Stanners.
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Proposed by: Emirates Wildlife Society – WWF
Location: Room M
This side event, hosted by Emirates Wildlife Society – WWF, will feature a panel of experts from the Arabian region discussing the importance of data sharing for species conservation and overall conservation of the marine environment, which is a diverse, intricate and interlinked ecosystem.
You will hear of recent successes and exciting case studies and insights from the region and the experts' views on solutions that promote data sharing for species conservation, including the role of businesses, industries and other sectors. There will also be the opportunity to ask important questions about the role of conservation science in sustainable development and the benefits it can reap for society and the economy.
Speakers: Marina Antonopoulou, Himansu Das, Rob Baldwin, Suaad Al Haarthi.
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Why partnerships and data sharing are essential for impactful conservation of migratory species in the Gulf
Proposed by: UNEP
Location: Room A2
Launch of the "Implementation Guide for the UNEP Bali Guidelines for the Development of National Legislation on Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters"
Speakers: Achim Steiner, Lalanath DeSilva, Carlos De Miguel, Stephen Stec, Alexander Juras.
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Proposed by: UNEP – CEDARE
Location: Room A1b
The Atlas contains detailed mapping of how strategic interventions and innovations are improving the food security and livelihoods of mountain communities in different parts of Africa. The Africa Mountains Atlas uses hundreds of 'before and after' images, detailed new maps and other satellite data from 53 countries to show the problems facing Africa's mountain areas. It also includes examples of innovative and successful initiatives that are effectively harnessing the ecosystem services provided by the mountains.
Speakers: Franck Turyatunga.
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Proposed by: CEDARE
Location: Room A2
The Arab community environmental Observatory "MAWARED" is an effective tool that aims to connect a large number of Arab citizens for effective public participation in environmental decision-making. As a result, the system will make use of the revolutionary social media platforms for promoting real-time updates of our environmental developments, either positive or negative, throughout the Arab region. "MAWARED" will give governments, policy makers and citizens easy access to clear, comprehensible data in near real time. It will provide information on emerging environmental issues – from the global perspective to the view from the street – at levels of detail previously unseen.
Speaker: Ayman Solyman
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MAWARED Data Community Portal (In cooperation with Arab Ministries of Environment)
Proposed by: AFED
Location: Room A2
Presenting the first comprehensive online environmental portal in Arabic, making over 35,000 pages of environmental, science‑based references freely available to readers and researchers.
Speakers: Raghida Haddad, Charbel Mahfoud, Najib Saab.
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Proposed by: UNEP
Location: Room C2
Speakers: Jacqueline McGlade, Alexander Juras, Naysan Sahba.
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MyUnea.org – A new platform for mobilising stakeholders towards a healthy environment [Video 1]
Proposed by: AGEDI
Location: Room M
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Proposed by: WRI
Location: Room C2
Speakers: Jesse Worker, Lalanath De Silva, Danielle Andrade, Saif Hijazi.
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Exclusive Broadcast Partner
Launched in 2012, Sky News Arabia now broadcasts to more than 50 million households in the MENA region on satellite, cable as well as over the internet and mobile apps.
Exclusive Broadcast Partner
Launched in 2012, Sky News Arabia now broadcasts to more than 50 million households in the MENA region on satellite, cable as well as over the internet and mobile apps.
Exclusive Regional Business Media Partner
Launched in 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East has set a new benchmark for business publications in the region. It combines resources of bureaus in region with Bloomberg's newswire service to provide insightful and incisive analysis.
Exclusive Regional Business Media Partner
Launched in 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East has set a new benchmark for business publications in the region. It combines resources of bureaus in region with Bloomberg's newswire service to provide insightful and incisive analysis.
Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East features a mix of insightful local and international news, features and analysis, providing local leaders with business insights to compete, innovate and stay ahead.
With a print run of 24,850 copies, it offers an unmatched coverage of key markets in the GCC. Over 42% of its readers are Owner/Partner and C-Suite.
Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East is published fortnightly on the 1st and 16th of every month. The Arabic edition targeting key markets has been also been launched.
Building Green is a Greek magazine and communications platform that attempts to bring forth every aspect of Zero-Energy Building and Urban Space through an architectural approach, in order to become a source of information on sustainable architecture and the use of technology in the service of humanity.
Building Green is a Greek magazine and communications platform that attempts to bring forth every aspect of Zero-Energy Building and Urban Space through an architectural approach, in order to become a source of information on sustainable architecture and the use of technology in the service of humanity.
The magazine website, offers full coverage of all the latest news and state-of-the art products, aiming to offer a complete overview of all the greatest developments in the sectors of Sustainable Architecture and Energy Management.The website is promoted through the magazine, social media channels and an extensive Google Adwords campaign.
Cities Today is the only global magazine containing analysis, comment and best practices on sustainable urban development, connecting local governments with public and private sector solutions.
Cities Today is the only global magazine containing analysis, comment and best practices on sustainable urban development, connecting local governments with public and private sector solutions.
With an expert editorial advisory board comprising the World Bank, UN-Habitat, UNEP, and city associations ICLEI, C40, UCLG ASPAC, UCLG Africa, UCLG MEWA, Sister Cities International and FLACMA, the publication highlights the challenges facing city leaders and local governments in mobility, finance, smart technology, health care, energy efficiency, water, sanitation, security and housing.
Earth Imaging Journal is a bimonthly print magazine covering a range of earth observation and geospatial technologies and applications. Content is crafted to satisfy novice through professional. Content is written by industry professionals, researchers and magazine staff to illuminate the broad band of applications, products and processes that are shaping the international Earth imaging market.
Earth Imaging Journal is a bimonthly print magazine covering a range of earth observation and geospatial technologies and applications. Content is crafted to satisfy novice through professional. Content is written by industry professionals, researchers and magazine staff to illuminate the broad band of applications, products and processes that are shaping the international Earth imaging market.
GeoConnexion International and GeoConnexion UK bring you the latest news and stories plus reports from geotechnology industries in UK, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North America and Asia. Coverage of topics such as 3D Visualisation, Remote Sensing, LiDAR, Cloud, Mobile Mapping, Navigation with emphases on healthcare, public safety, retail, the environment, utilities, surveying, LBS, transport/ logistics, telecommunications and more. To view the magazines:http://www.geoconnexion.com
Geospatial Media and Communications aims to achieve its vision of "Making a difference through geospatial knowledge in world economy and society" through an array of activities and programmes.
Our Media & Public Relations offerings stand true for its mission statement through multiple media channels – print, online, video and social media. Our flagship products are under the brand names – Geospatial World (print magazine and web portal), and GeoBuiz (live & on-demand video portal).
Shawati' magazine is striking, sumptuous and thought provoking in equal measure, Shawati' serves as a cultural bridge between the rich traditions and brave modernity that define this unique city. Distributed to the Royal families throughout the UAE and GCC, along with other VVIP dignitaries and all government ministries and departments, UAE Embassies and Abu Dhabi Tourism and Cultural Authority offices around the world, plus exclusive distribution within the country, the region and internationally. Additionally, we have select distribution points throughout the UAE, GCC, Lebanon, Europe and America.
Shawati' magazine is striking, sumptuous and thought provoking in equal measure, Shawati' serves as a cultural bridge between the rich traditions and brave modernity that define this unique city. Distributed to the Royal families throughout the UAE and GCC, along with other VVIP dignitaries and all government ministries and departments, UAE Embassies and Abu Dhabi Tourism and Cultural Authority offices around the world, plus exclusive distribution within the country, the region and internationally. Additionally, we have select distribution points throughout the UAE, GCC, Lebanon, Europe and America.
Shawati's blend of incisive interviews, quality reporting and stunning photojournalism presented in a unique Arabic-English format – provides local residents, expatriates and visitors with a unique view of Abu Dhabi as it establishes itself as a global cultural centre.
The BIM Hub is a trusted environment for BIM and pioneer in providing specialised online networking platform dedicated to the BIM professionals across the AECO industry. It provides the first web-based social platform that brings all the construction industry into a single Hub. Our goal is to empower the BIM community to better CONNECT, LEARN, DEVELOP and communicate real world data and help people better understand and engage with the places we live, work and play, and together build a more connected, liveable and sustainable world.
The BIM Hub is a trusted environment for BIM and pioneer in providing specialised online networking platform dedicated to the BIM professionals across the AECO industry. It provides the first web-based social platform that brings all the construction industry into a single Hub. Our goal is to empower the BIM community to better CONNECT, LEARN, DEVELOP and communicate real world data and help people better understand and engage with the places we live, work and play, and together build a more connected, liveable and sustainable world.
Features include the world's first BIM company directory, jobs, events, networking and an expertly-curated set of resources for all industry professionals. As we develop we are introducing more features that we hope every BIM professional can benefit from.
THE TIMES OF AFRICA is a bi-monthly International Business Magazine, which aspires to bring Africa to the world. It's our earnest endeavor to make our readers cognizant of the opportunities and happenings existing in Africa.
THE TIMES OF AFRICA is a bi-monthly International Business Magazine, which aspires to bring Africa to the world. It's our earnest endeavor to make our readers cognizant of the opportunities and happenings existing in Africa.
Undoubtedly, Africa is escalating on its road map of economic development. We truly believe that Africa is exceedingly vibrant and our primary focus is on the promotion of Africa's economic policy, business management, capacity building, trade, travel and tourism. It is indeed blessed with the good genes of its clients and its new fusion look has become an International business statement.
EcoMENA's core mission is to disseminate high-quality information and create mass awareness on renewable energy, sustainable development, waste management, environment protection and resource conservation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
EcoMENA's core mission is to disseminate high-quality information and create mass awareness on renewable energy, sustainable development, waste management, environment protection and resource conservation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Our expertise encompasses all aspects of the environment and sustainability sectors, including policy formulation, advisory, consulting, project studies, content creation, training courses, workshops, mentoring, knowledge dissemination and fund-raising.
Corporate profile:
For over twenty years, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) has been tracking and reporting the "real-time" story of sustainable development. No other organization in the world has this track record. IISD's Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) has moved the multilateral environmental agreement (MEA) policy making process towards greater transparency, and it has become the de facto independent record for MEA negotiations. The ENB reports are an objective summary of a meeting's proceedings and are sent out to an extensive online community of policy makers and political leaders within 48 hours of the conclusion of a meeting (http://www.iisd.ca/).
IISD also tracks and reports on important meetings and publications in between the key negotiations, to further enhance the transparency and accountability of efforts to implement intergovernmental agreements related to sustainable development. This information is published on a daily basis and stored in freely available, online and searchable knowledgebases (http://www.iisd.ca/knowledge/).
Director and Chief Executive, Innovative Learning Network Ltd.
Director: European Centre of Excellence, digital-earth.eu, Paris Lödron University, Salzburg, Austria
President of the European Association of Geographers (EUROGEO)
Director and Chief Executive, Innovative Learning Network Ltd.
Director: European Centre of Excellence, digital-earth.eu, Paris Lödron University, Salzburg, Austria
President of the European Association of Geographers (EUROGEO)
Karl Donert is an expert Geographer with a national and international profile, a strong track record in initiating and establishing innovative projects, as well as leading major networking activities. A member of Academia Europea.
Karl is Director of the European Centre of Excellence: digital-earth.eu and adjunct faculty at the Centre for GeoInformatics at Paris Lödron University, Salzburg. Karl is President of EUROGEO (European Association of Geographers) and a UK National Teaching Fellow, the highest award an academic can receive from their peers. He is active in European policy making as a member of the Council of Europe groups on Education & Culture, a former Hon. Vice President of the Geographical Association, a Fellow of Academia Europea, the European Scientific and Research Academy, the Royal Canadian Geographical Association and Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers.
Karl is Director and Chief Executive of Innovative Learning Networks Ltd, a UK SME specialising in education and training, with respect to professional and academic networking, project development, research partnerships and project management. Karl is an inspirational speaker, a European leader in learning and teaching geography and in the use of ICT and digital media in education. He acts as a consultant to many organisations, working in this context to increase networking potential and raise the profile and quality of learning and teaching activities as well as research.
Karl has extensive experience in major international educational developments. He is an expert in the use of new technologies in learning and teaching in education, teacher training, universities and in schools. He was coordinator of the HERODOT Thematic Network for Geography in Higher Education, the largest Bologna disciplinary network, is initiator of the digital-earth network on geo-media and the School on the Cloud network examining future perspectives in Cloud-based education. He has participated in more than 100 other international projects mainly concerned with the innovative uses of geo-ICT, geo-media and open education. He has written and published on the tole and value of networks and networking.
Board director of what3words
Senior consultant for the World Bank (open standards and mapping)
Visiting Professor at the Institute for Future Cities at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, UK
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS)
Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)
Steven is an accidental geographer. He got involved with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) in the early 90s and has been working with global location projects since that time. After spending 10 years building an international software company called 1Spatial he worked for a global, non-profit, standards development organization focussed on location; authoring a guidance document on standards relevant to the EU INSPIRE Directive. He was then Managing Director of the international division of Great Britain's national mapping agency, Ordnance Survey. Today he's a Board director of a small British organisation called what3words that's trying to change how addressing works globally. www.what3words.com/about
Steven is also a senior consultant for the World Bank (open standards and mapping) and a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Future Cities at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, UK. He's a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). You can follow him on Twitter @steven_ramage
U.S. delegate to the Working Party on Environmental Information.
USEPA lead for the UN General Assembly process regarding the post-2015 development agenda.
Member of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Data Management and International Working Groups
Served as Principal Liaison to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Environmental Health
Mr. Sonntag currently manages a variety of initiatives for the USEPA Office of International and Tribal Affairs.
From 1999, Mr. Sonntag was a co-convener of the Ecoinformatics International Technical Collaboration process with partners including USGS, DOE, CDC, NSF, United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the European Environment Agency (co-convener),European Commission Directorates General for Environment and Research, Joint Research Centre (JRC), OECD. Ecoinformatics primary topics include advanced computer science and data system interoperability, indicators and global assessments including sustainability and environmental observations systems.
Mr. Sonntag has been engaged in the Eye on Earth process since 2010 and served as a co-chair for Capacity Building during the preparation process for the 2011 Eye on Earth Summit.
He is currently the USEPA lead for the UN General Assembly process regarding the post-2015 development agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals and targets. He has also served as EPA desk-office for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
Mr. Sonntag is currently the U.S. delegate to the Working Party on Environmental Information.
Mr. Sonntag is a member of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Data Management and International Working Groups and serves on the Standards and Interoperability Forum.
He participates as a member of the UNEP Advisory Committee for the Division of Early Warning and Assessment, and has been a principal US government representative for the development of the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO6) and the global environmental assessment system, UNEP Live.
Mr. Sonntag served as Principal Liaison to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Environmental Health and was responsible for managing the development of USEPA and CDC partnership activities under the terms of the MOU signed by USEPA and HHS in 2007 to promote and improve public and community access to integrated chronic disease data and environmental information.
Mr. Sonntag joined the USEPA during the Administration of President Clinton in the Office of Reinvention and has served at USEPA for 18 years. He played a leading role in the development of USEPA, State and Tribal environmental data standards and the Environmental Information Exchange Network during his first years at USEPA. He has extensive contacts with international organizations and governments.