• Agenda
• Speakers
• Debate

Kofi A. Annan of Ghana, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, served from 1997 to 2006 and was the first to emerge from the ranks of United Nations staff. Mr. Annan was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize for Peace jointly with the United Nations. Since leaving the United Nations, Mr. Annan has continued to advocate for better policies to meet the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly in Africa. Mr. Annan serves as the President of the Global Humanitarian Forum and Chairs several other initiatives: the Africa Progress Panel, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and the Prize Committee of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.

Matthew Bishop is Chief Business Writer/American Business Editor of The Economist. He also serves as the New York Bureau Chief. Matthew is the author of several Economist special survey supplements, including most recently "The Business of Giving", which looks at the industrial revolution taking place in philanthropy; "Kings of Capitalism", which anticipated and analysed the recent boom in private equity; and "Capitalism and its Troubles", an examination of the impact of problems such as the collapse of Enron. Matthew is the author of "Essential Economics", the official Economist layperson's guide to economics. Before joining The Economist, Matthew was on the faculty of London Business School, where he co-authored three books for the Oxford University Press, on subjects ranging from privatisation and regulation to corporate mergers. Matthew has served as a member of the Sykes Commission on the investment system in the 21st Century. He was also on the Advisors Group of the United Nations International Year of Microcredit 2005. He has been honoured as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and is an Oxford University graduate. He has a book on the business of philanthropy forthcoming in summer 2008 from Bloomsbury.

Eron Bloomgarden is United States Country Director for Eco-Securities. He spearheaded EcoSecurities’ move into the North American carbon market and manages all aspects of EcoSecurities’ United States operations including origination, strategic planning, project development and policy. He has extensive experience in the areas of carbon finance and emissions reduction project development. He has managed and orchestrated many global carbon market milestones, having worked on the first Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project in the world to receive carbon credits and the first unilateral CDM project. Mr. Bloomgarden has advised governments, multilateral institutions and international corporations on many aspects of the emerging GHG market. Prior to joining EcoSecurities, he worked as a consultant for the United Nations and with the Rainforest Alliance and IBM. Mr. Bloomgarden currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Environmental Markets Association (EMA) and as a liaison delegate to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). He holds a master's from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) in New York, and a bachelor's from Pomona College in Claremont, California

Lee Bollinger became the nineteenth President of Columbia University in 2002. He is also a member of the faculty of the Law School. One of the nation’s leading scholars of First Amendment issues, he has taught and written on freedom of speech and press for over thirty years. As the named defendant in the twin 2003 Supreme Court cases that clarified and upheld affirmative action in higher education, Bollinger became a national advocate for diversity and integration. In recognition of his leadership on these issues, he received the National Humanitarian Award from the National Conference for Community and Justice and the National Equal Justice Award from the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. He is the recipient of the Clark Kerr Award, the highest honor conferred by the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, for his service to higher education, especially on matters of freedom of speech and diversity. President Bollinger has received numerous honorary degrees from universities in the U.S. and around the world. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Prior to the Columbia presidency, he served as President of the University of Michigan, where he served for many years as a law professor and as Dean of the Law School.

Geoff Carr serves as the Science Editor for The Economist, editing and contributing to the Science and Technology section of the magazine. Carr first joined The Economist in 1991 as Science Correspondent, before becoming Tokyo Correspondent in 1994 and Science Editor, his current role, in 1995. Carr specializes in topics covering disease, climate science, evolution, genetics, neuroeconomics, neuroscience and synthetic biology.

Alice Dautry is President of Institut Pasteur, a post she has held since 2005. Dr. Dautry also is a professor and the head of the Biology of Cell Interaction Unit at the institute. She was trained as a solid state physicist at the University of Paris and as a molecular biologist at the University of New York at Stony Brook and the National Institutes of Health. She has been a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and professor at Ecole Polytechnique. Her research focuses on cell biology, host-pathogen interactions, and cellular microbiology and receptors of the immune system, among other areas. She has also been very involved in educational activities, serving as director of the molecular biology of the cell graduate course at Institut Pasteur, teaching cell biology at Ecole Polytechnique, and training PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. Dr. Dautry also has served on numerous scientific councils and advisory boards.

Paula DiPerna is Executive Vice President for Corporate Recruitment and Public Policy with the Chicago Climate Exchange, the world's first and North America's only active, voluntary, legally binding integrated trading system to reduce emissions of all six greenhouse gases, with offset projects in North America and worldwide. DiPerna is a widely published author, public policy analyst and consultant to non-profit organizations and philanthropies, with a specialty in global environmental policy. In her new capacity, Ms. DiPerna will be responsible for CCX's private and public sector recruitment efforts and for liaison to governmental and public policy entities. Before joining CCX, Ms. DiPerna served as a consultant on environmental matters to the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility and LEAD-International, among numerous other organizations. From 1979 to 1997, she served as writer, co-producer and Vice-President for International Affairs for the Cousteau Society, whose President was the ocean explorer and environmental leader, Jacques-Yves Cousteau. In that capacity, Ms. DiPerna traveled extensively around the world, and was chief advisor and liaison for all public policy activities, including interaction with the United Nations and the U. S. Congress. Ms. DiPerna also served as President of the Joyce Foundation from 1999-2001.

Ken Drinkwater has been involved in research on climate variability and its effects on the marine ecosystem, including fish and fisheries, for over 35 years. He has been at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway, since 2003 and before that worked at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Canada. He was past chair of the Cod and Climate Change (CCC) program within ICES (International Commission for the Exploration of the Seas) and is now co-chair of the international program entitled Ecosystem Studies of Sub-Arctic Seas (ESSAS) program within GLOBEC (GLOBal ocean ECosystems dynamics). His recent research has focused on the Barents and Norwegian Seas and is presently leading several large projects into impacts of climate variability and climate change including a multidisciplinary study on oceanic fronts as part of the International Polar Year (IPY). He was a co-author of the chapter on Marine Systems within the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) and on the European Science Foundation’s Marine Board Panel Report released in 2007 on the Impacts of Climate Change on the European Marine and Coastal Environment.

Jan Egeland became director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs on September 1, 2007, and currently serves as Special Assistant of the UN Secretary-General for conflict resolution. From June 2003 to December 2006, he served as UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator appointed by then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Mr. Egeland has gained 25 years of active experience in humanitarian, human rights and peace work through the United Nations, the Norwegian Government, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and other non-governmental and academic institutions.

He has been an active participant in a number of peace processes including those between Israel and the PLO and between the Government of Guatemala and Guatemala's guerrilla movements. He also led the host delegation for the Ottawa treaty to ban landmines and served as Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General to the Peace process in Columbia 1999-2002.

Mr. Egeland holds a Magister Artium in Political Science, University of Oslo. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and a fellow at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, and the Truman Institute for the Advancement for Peace, Jerusalem. Mr. Egeland has been Chair of Amnesty International, Norway, and Vice-Chair of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International.

Michael Grubb is Chief Economist at Carbon Trust, the $200 million/year public-private partnership company established to help business in the United Kingdom move to a low carbon economy, and Chairman of the international research organization Climate Strategies. He is also a part-time senior research associate at the Faculty of Economics at Cambridge University and a visiting professor at Imperial College London. He was recently appointed to the United Kingdom Climate Change Committee, established under the United Kingdom Climate Change Bill, to advise the government on future carbon budgets and to report to Parliament on their implementation. Michael Grubb is the author of seven books, fifty journal articles and many other publications. He has held numerous advisory positions with governments, companies and international studies on climate change and energy policy, and has been a lead author for several reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on mitigation, including the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Climate Policy and is on the editorial board of Energy Policy. His most recent works have been directing climate strategies research on competitiveness dimensions of the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme, now extending into analysis of design and impacts to 2020, as well as editing the book Delivering a Low Carbon Electricity System: Technologies, Economics and Policy (Cambridge University Press, May 2008).

Grete K. Hovelsrud is Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, Oslo. Dr. Hovelsrud’s previous positions include: General Secretary, North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO) Secretariat, Tromsø, Norway; Associate, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government; Marine Policy Fellow, Marine Policy Centre; and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Research Associate, Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University. She is a member of the International Polar Year 2007-2008 Joint Committee and the Norwegian National Committee for the International Polar Year 2007-2008. Dr. Hovelsrud’s research interests include interdisciplinary studies on impact, adaptation and vulnerability to climate change, and the development of multidisciplinary theoretical and methodological frameworks for analyzing multiple factors of coupled human-environment systems, in particular in the Arctic; interdisciplinary studies of the impact of climate change; general arctic anthropology; political anthropology of the environment; and local knowledge. Dr. Hovelsrud received her M.A. (1992) and Ph.D. (1997) in social anthropology from Brandeis University, Massachusetts and her B.A. in anthropology from the University of Colorado, Boulder (1987).

Eystein Jansen is a professor in the Department of Geology and director of Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research at University of Bergen, Norway. Dr. Jansen received his M.Sc in 1981 and Ph.D. in 1984 in Marine Geology from the University of Bergen. Dr. Jansen's research focuses on understanding the operation of the ocean system and its influence on climatic processes. This is done by reconstructions of the spacial and temporal evolution of ocean currents, oceanic heat transfer, ice sheet variability and carbon cycling in the ocean based on sediment records. Studies of the modern carbon cycle and modern ocean dynamics has subsequently been added to this. The research emphasis is placed on high latitude areas, on defining water mass structures, rates of change and the variability and stability of the climate system under different natural forcings.

Lady Barbara Thomas Judge received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and Juris Doctor with honors from New York University School of Law. Previously Lady Judge was a partner in the law firm of Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays and Handler, specializing in corporate transactions and thereafter was appointed as Commissioner of the United States Securities & Exchange Commission and was the youngest to hold this title. Subsequently, she was the first woman to become Executive Director of Samuel Montagu & Co. and News International, where she led a buy-in of Whitworths Food Group and founded Private Equity Investor PLC. Lady Judge became Director of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority in 2002 and has been Chairman since 2004. She is also Chairman of LIFE IC (an incubator for renewable energy) and Chairman of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She is also Deputy Chair of Friends Provident and a non-executive director of Massey Energy and Magna International among others. She is Co-Chair of the U.K./U.S. Task Force for Corporate Governance and a member of the Trilateral Commission, among others. Lady Judge has also spoken and written extensively on the subject of nuclear decommissioning and nuclear new build, as well as corporate governance.

Klaus S. Lackner joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2001, where he is the Ewing-Worzel Professor of Geophysics and part of the Earth Institute. He is the director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy and the Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

He received his Ph.D. in 1978 in theoretical particle physics from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center before joining Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1983. While working primarily in research, he also held positions in the Laboratory's senior management, including Acting Associate Laboratory Director for Strategic and Supporting Research, representing one-third of the Laboratory.

Presently he is developing innovative approaches to energy issues of the future. He was instrumental in forming the Zero Emission Coal Alliance (an industry-led effort to develop coal power with zero emissions to the atmosphere) and continues to research advanced fossil fuels and power plant design. Lackner is studying carbon capture and storage technologies, such as the extraction of carbon dioxide from the air, mineral carbonation, and deep marine sediment storage.

Jonathan Ledgard is Africa Correspondent for The Economist, based in Nairobi. He reports from across the continent, and is responsible for the magazine's coverage of Darfur and the Horn of Africa. He has been a foreign correspondent for The Economist since 1995, including a period in Afghanistan after September 11th, 2001. He is also the author of a recent book of fiction published by Penguin Press, Giraffe, a novel set in Communist-era Czechoslovakia, based on the true story of the life and death of the largest herd of giraffes ever held in captivity. Ledgard was born on the Shetland Islands, Scotland, in 1968 and educated in England, Scotland, and America. He divides his time between Europe and Africa.

John McArthur is Co-Director of the Millennium Villages Project, a collaboration between The Earth Institute at Columbia University, Millennium Promise and the United Nations Development Programme to promote community-level achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) throughout rural Africa. He is also CEO-Designate of Millennium Promise, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the achievement of the MDGs. He co-chairs, with Jeffrey Sachs, the Commission on Education for International Development Professionals, an initiative sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation to identify the cross-disciplinary training requirements for the next generation of sustainable development practitioners. Previously Mr. McArthur served as Deputy Director and Manager of the U.N. Millennium Project. In this capacity he coordinated a global network of nearly 300 experts who served on ten thematic task forces and he was lead editor of the Project’s final report to the Secretary-General, “Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals.” Previously Mr. McArthur was a research fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, where he co-authored the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report with Michael Porter and Jeffrey Sachs. He has an M.Phil. in economics from Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar, a Master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of British Columbia.

Edward Mcbride joined The Economist in September 1996. He has since written as Home Affairs Correspondent for the Britain section, as Middle East Correspondent, based in Beirut, as South-East Asia Correspondent, based in Bangkok, and as a reporter on Global Agenda, The Economist's daily online news section. He is now based in London as Energy and Environment Correspondent, specializing in alternative energy, climate chance, the oil industry, nuclear power, natural gas and the like.

Kathryn McPhail, Senior Program Director at the International Council on Mining & Metals (ICMM) joined ICMM in 2002 following 22 years of development work with the World Bank Group in Washington D.C. and four years in the British High Commission in Nairobi, Kenya. Kathryn is responsible for ICMM’s Resource Endowment initiative, a project which aims to help governments, companies and local communities, development assistance agencies and the voluntary sector work together so that mining benefits all citizens. She is also responsible for work on business and human rights issues and represents ICMM on the global dialogue of governments. At the World Bank, Kathryn designed the monitoring system used to track the compliance of World Bank projects with social and environmental policies. She also developed good practice social assessment guidelines for the Global Environmental Facility. She represented the World Bank Group on the Assurance Group for the Metals, Mining and Sustainable Development project (MMSD). As program manager at the World Bank and IFC, Kathryn participated in the design, implementation and evaluation of development operations in thirty developing countries. She has authored over 40 articles and publications. She was born in Nairobi, Kenya and brought up in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

Asha-Rose Migiro of Tanzania took office as Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations in February 2007. She is the third Deputy Secretary-General to be appointed since the post was established in 1997. Dr. Migiro served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation from 2006 to 2007 and before that was Minister for Community Development, Gender and Children for five years. As Foreign Minister, she served as Chair of the Council of Ministers' meetings of the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region. She was also Chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Ministerial Committee of the Organ on Politics, Defense and Security Cooperation and President of the United Nations Security Council during its open debate on peace, security and development in the Great Lakes Region. Prior to government service, Dr. Migiro pursued a career in academia. She was a member of the Faculty of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam. She headed the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law from 1992 to 1994 and the Department of Civil and Criminal Law from 1994 to 1997. Her work was published widely in local and international journals. Dr. Migiro obtained a Master of Laws from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1984 and a Ph.D. in law from the University of Konstanz in Germany in 1992.

Andrew Morton is a program manager for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and leads a range of activities including major assessments in post-conflict countries, developing the UNEP disaster risk reduction portfolio and exploring the fundamental links between environmental issues and social issues in unstable developing countries. His most recent achievement was as the manager and lead author of the UNEP report entitled “Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment,” a major study that was then followed up with the establishment of a UNEP country program for Sudan. Other assignments for UNEP include the assessment of contaminated sites in Iraq and disaster recovery projects in Southeast Asia. Prior to joining UNEP in 2005, he spent a total of 18 years in the private sector, working on environmental projects in over 20 countries as a consultant and as an environmental manager for an international oil company. His qualifications include a Master’s degree in geological engineering and diplomas in project management and company direction.

John C. Mutter is Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Department of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and Associate Director of the Ph.D. Program in Sustainable Development. At the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, he has studied the continental margins, oceanic crust and mid-ocean ridge tectonic evolution using geophysical methods, primarily marine reflection seismology. More recently Dr. Mutter has turned his attention to the issue of the role of earth systems in sustainable development. He uses his expertise in the behavior of these systems and the inherent limits to their predictability as the basis for studying science-based issues of sustainable development. Dr. Mutter also has responsibility for several activities for The Earth Institute, including directing the Fellows Program, and until July 2007, he was Deputy Director. Dr. Mutter received a B.Sc. in physics and pure mathematics from the University of Melbourne, Australia, an M.Sc. in geophysics from the University of Sydney, Australia, and a Ph.D. in marine geophysics from Columbia University. He has authored or co-authored more than 70 articles in scientific journals and many popular articles. His fieldwork includes over three years at sea on research cruises aboard Columbia’s vessels and others in all parts of the world’s oceans, crossing the equator, the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Circle.

Erik S. Reinert is professor of Technology Governance and Development Strategies at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia. Dr. Reinert founded and chairs The Other Canon Foundation, a small center and network for heterodox economics research that focuses on the qualitative economic understanding that dominated US and German economic thinking until World War II.

His research interests and publications focus around the theory of uneven development, the history of economic thought and policy, and the role of the state in the process of economic development, and the relations between financial and production capital. Dr. Reinert studied economics at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, Harvard University (MBA), and Cornell University (Ph.D.). In 1972 he founded a small industrial firm in Bergamo, Italy that later developed into the leading European firm of its kind. After selling the company, he returned to academia.

Dr. Reinert has worked in 49 countries during his business, consulting, and academic careers and lectures in five languages. His latest book is "How Rich Countries got Rich" and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor" (Carroll & Graf 2007).