Achim Steiner, the head of the worlds largest environmental network has been elected by the UN General Assembly as the next – and fifth – Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), based in Nairobi, Kenya.
A German national who was recommended to the Assembly by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Mr. Steiner will begin his four-year term on 15 June, following the two-term tenure of fellow countryman, Klaus Töpfer, which ended on 1. April. Töpfer – a former German environment minister – did not want a third term.
In the intervening period, UNEPs Deputy Executive Director, Shafqat Kakakhel, will serve as acting Executive Director.
Mr. Steiner is the Director-General of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), based in Gland in Switzerland, which has over 1.000 members that include States, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in 140 countries.
– He has worked both at grassroots level and at the highest levels of international policy-making to address the connections between environmental sustainability, social equity, and economic development, a UN spokesman said in announcing Mr. Steiners nomination by the Secretary-General.
Prior to his assumption of the directorship of the Conservation Union in 2001, Mr. Steiner served as head of the World Commission on Dams, the chief technical advisor of a programme for sustainable management of Mekong River watersheds and as Senior Policy Advisor of IUCNs Global Policy Unit, where he developed partnerships between the environmental community, the World Bank and the UN system.
Steiner was born in Brazil in 1961, where he lived for ten years. 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, regional planning, and international development and environment policy.
He also studied at the German Development Institute in Berlin as well as the Harvard Business School.
Mr. Steiner serves on a number of international advisory boards, including the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) and the Environmental Advisory Council (ENVAC) of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
Klaus Töpfer (67), who led the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) over an eight-year period that saw environmental sustainability become central to international development goals, bid farewell to the agency Friday (31 March) during ceremonies in Nairobi.
Mr. Töpfers tenure was noted for the increased importance given to environmental considerations by the international community, UNEP said. The importance of environment for development became central to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed to at the 2000 World Summit to reduce extreme poverty and other global ills by 2015.
When that focus was reaffirmed at the 2005 World Summit, Mr. Töpfer noted the environment “is not a luxury good, only affordable when all other problems have been solved. It is the oxygen that breathes life into all our aspirations for a healthier, fairer and more stable world.”
Among the milestones of Mr. Töpfers time at UNEP are a number of important environmental agreements, including the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which addresses issue of genetically modified organisms, and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.
He was also closely involved in behind-the-scenes negotiations in support of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which entered into force in February 2005 after Russias ratification papers were handed to the UN Secretary-General at UNEP headquarters in November 2004.
In addition, Mr. Töpfers term saw the establishment of the annual Global Ministerial Environment Forum, which is tasked by the UN General Assembly to review important and emerging environmental issues, as well as an expanded role for UNEP at the national level with the adoption of the Bali Strategic Plan for Technology Support and Capacity Building in 2005.
Klaus Töpfer who has held many top-assignments in his long carrier, was born in 1938 in Waldenburg in Silesia.
Kilde: FNs nyhedstjeneste
