Adamson, Rebecca
President, First Peoples Worldwide

Ms. Rebecca Adamson, a Cherokee, is the President and Founder of First Peoples Worldwide (1997). The First Peoples Worldwide (FPW): i) created the first Indigenous community foundation, the Lumba Aboriginal Community Foundation in Australia; ii) established capacity for the San to secure land tenure in traditional homelands in Botswana, Namibia, and southern Africa; iii) launched an international corporate engagement strategy (that includes Alcoa, Texaco, Rio Tinto, Merck, Ford, and Occidental) whereby investment criteria protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples have been adopted by a mutual fund, an index fund, and numerous investment advisors.

Ms. Adamson is also the Founder of First Nations Development Institute (1980). She has worked with grassroots tribal communities, and nationally as an advocate on local tribal issues since 1970.  Her work contributed towards the establishment of a new field of culturally appropriate, values-driven development which helped create: i) the first reservation-based micro-enterprise loan fund in the United States; ii) the first tribal investment model; iii) a national movement for reservation land reform; and iv) legislation that established new standards of accountability regarding federal trust responsibility for Native Americans.

Adamson is on the Board of Directors for the Calvert Social Investment Fund (the largest family of socially responsible funds), as well as Calvert Small Cap Fund. She serves on the Calvert Group Governance Committee, and Co-chairs the Calvert Social Investment Fund Audit Committee. Adamson helped co-founded the Calvert High Social Impact Investments, which was the first financial instrument whereby mutual fund shareholders and other individual investors could invest in community development loan funds. Offered in October 1990, it now has placed over $25 million in community and micro loan funds throughout the world.

Agrawal, Arun
Associate Professor, School of Natural Resources and
Environment, University of Michigan

Lorena Aguilar (Costa Rica) is senior gender advisor to the World Conservation Union and regional coordinator of the Social Area in Mesoamerica. She is an international advisor for numerous organizations, governments and universities on topics related to water, environmental health, and gender and community participation. With a Master’s degree in anthropology, Aguilar, who majored in cultural ecology at the University of Kansas, has worked for ten years in the field of development and in the design of public policy projects in Central America. For the past eight years she has been actively engaged in the incorporation of social and gender aspects into the use and conservation of natural resources in Mesoamerica. Over the past two years over 6,000 people have been trained methodologies she developed. Ms. Aguilar has published 20 books and several publications about gender and environment, environmental health, and public policy involving equity issues, that have been translaged into several languages and are widely referenced in worldwide project implementation.

Junaid Ahmad is Sector Manager of Social Development in the World Bank’s South Asia Region.  Mr. Ahmad, a Bangladeshi national, joined the Bank in February 1991 as a Young Professional. He has since held various positions, his most recent assignment being Regional Team Leader for the Water and Sanitation Program in New Delhi.  Drawing on his cross-sectoral experience of public finance, local government, and infrastructure, Junaid’s priorities are to consolidate and implement the Regional Social Development Strategy, to support the Region’s focus on scaling up services to the local and community levels, and to assist the Country Teams to address the challenges of social inclusion and conflict.

Halvard Buhaug is a senior researcher of the Center for the Study of Civil War (CSCW) at the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO), Oslo. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2005. His current research interests include security implications of climate change, geographic aspects of civil war and the use of disaggregated research designs in conflict research. In 2006 Dr. Buhaug recevied an award for youth excellence in humanities research by the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.  His work has appeared in a variety of publications including Conflict Management and Peace Science, Geopolitics, Journal of Peace Research, and Political Geography.

Buvinic, Mayra 
Sector Director, Poverty Reduction Gender, World Bank

Mayra Buvinic, a Chilean national and internationally respected expert on gender and social development, is the World Bank’s senior spokesperson on gender and development issues. Before joining the Bank in 2005, she was Chief of the Social Development Division at the Inter-American Development Bank and the Special Advisor on Violence Prevention.  Prior to this, she was a founding member and President of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). Ms. Buvinic holds a Ph.D. and a master’s degree both in social psychology from the University of Wisconsin.

Kim Campbell served as Canada’s nineteenth and first female Prime Minister in 1993. She previously held cabinet portfolios as Minister of State for Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, and Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans’ Affairs. She was the first woman to hold the Justice and Defence portfolios, and the first woman to be Defence Minister of a NATO country. Ms. Campbell participated in major international meetings including the Commonwealth, NATO, the G-7 Summit and the United Nations General Assembly.

After her tenure as Prime Minister, Campbell was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics (Spring 1994) and the Joan Shorenstein Center for the Study of Press and Politics (1994-1995) at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She served as the Canadian Consul-General in Los Angeles from 1996-2000. In 2001 Ms. Campbell became a Fellow at the new Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School and then was invited to join the faculty as a lecturer and remains an Honorary Fellow of the center.

From 2004 until 2006 Ms. Campbell served as Secretary General of the Club of Madrid, an organization of former heads of government and state who work to promote democratization through peer relations with leaders of transitional democracies. Ms. Campbell is a founding member and additionally has served as its Acting President in 2002 and Vice President 2003-2004. Ms. Campbell currently sits on the Board of Directors. 
 
Kim Campbell served as Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders (CWWL) from 1999-2003. The Council’s membership consists of women who hold or have held the office of President or Prime Minister in their own country. From Oct. 2003 – Oct. 2005, Ms. Campbell served as President of the International Women's Forum, a global organization of women of significant and diverse achievement.
 
Ms. Campbell is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the newly formed Foundation for Effective Governance in Kiev.  She is a Trustee of the Crisis Group, the Salk Institute, and the Int’l Ctr for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at King’s College London. She also serves on advisory boards of numerous other international organizations such as the Arab Democracy Foundation, which launched in Doha in May of 2007, the Global Security Institute (GSI), and the Middle Powers Initiative (MPI). She is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, (the West Coast affiliate of the Council on Foreign Relations), the International Council of the Asia Society of New Yorkand Board of the Forum of Federations. Ms. Campbell is a member of the Eminent Persons Group of the World Movement for Democracy's Defending Civil Society project as well as the High-Level Advisory Group of the EastWest Institute’s International Task Force on Preventive Diplomacy and serves on advisory boards for Glendon College at York University as well as UCLA’s School of Public Policy amongst others. Ms. Campbell´s corporate director experience includes the high tech, bio-tech and medical devices industries and she is a consultant on issues related to democratization and leadership.
 
Kim Campbell was educated at the University of British Columbia (BA, 1969, LLB, 1983) and the London School of Economics (Doctoral studies in Soviet Government, ABD, 1970-73) where she’s an Honorary Fellow. She holds seven honorary doctorates. Her best-selling political memoir Time and Chance was published in 1996 by Doubleday Canada. 

Ms. Campbell speaks widely on issues relating to leadership, international politics, conflict resolution, democratization, international trade, gender, and Canadian/American relations. For more information about how you can request the Right Honourable Kim Campbell as a speaker, visit www.apbspeakers.com

Ms. Campbell is married to composer, pianist, and actor, Hershey Felder.

Chassard, Joelle
Manager, Carbon Finance Unit, World Bank

Joëlle Chassard manages the World Bank’s carbon finance business, a portfolio of 10 carbon funds and facilities with participations from 16 governments and 65 companies totalling $2.1 billion.  The funds purchase carbon credits from projects in the Bank’s client countries, under the flexible mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol---- the Clean Development Mechanism in developing countries and Joint Implementation in countries with economies in transition.  Close to 100 emission reductions purchase agreements have been signed, representing 200 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
 
Joëlle is overseeing the establishment of two new carbon facilities that will respectively scale up carbon finance as a means to facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy in the Bank’s client countries (the Carbon Partnership Facility; anticipated starting size: $500 million) and test approaches to address the issue of carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility; anticipated size: $300 million).  Both facilities will include a carbon fund to purchase credits and a program preparation fund to assist in the development of carbon assets.
 
Joëlle has been with the World Bank since 1980, and has held various positions in several regional vice-presidencies of the Bank.  A financial analyst by training, she spent the early part of her career at the Bank working on projects in the energy and infrastructure sectors in Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia. She was deputy to the Country Director for India from 1997 to 2003 and manager in the Corporate Strategy Group of the Bank until 2006.  Joëlle was appointed to her current position in May 2006.
 
Joëlle graduated with a master’s degree in business administration from HEC, France, and a master’s degree in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.  Prior to joining the World Bank, she was an economist at Société Générale in Paris.

Dr. Elizabeth G. Ferris is Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC and Co-Director of the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement. She also teaches a graduate course in Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Prior to joining Brookings in November 2006, Dr. Ferris spent 20 years working in the field of international humanitarian response, most recently in Geneva, Switzerland at the World Council of Churches. She has also served as Chair of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), as Research Director for the Life & Peace Institute in Uppsala, Sweden, as Director of the Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program in New York.  She has been a professor at several US universities and served as a Fulbright professor to the Universidad Autónoma de México in Mexico City.

She has written or edited six books and many articles on humanitarian and human rights issues which have been published in both academic and policy journals.  Her current research interests focus on the politics of humanitarian action and on the role of civil society in protecting displaced populations.

Kristalina Georgieva, a Bulgarian national, assumed responsibilities for strategy and operations in the World Bank Sustainable Development Network on April 9, 2007. With the World Bank since 1993, Kristalina has held a number of technical and managerial positions in Bank operations and on issues of environment and sustainable development.

Serving as Environmental Economist from 1993-1997, she managed a large number of environment projects and was in charge of World Bank support of the Environment Action Program for Central and Eastern Europe. During the East Asia crisis, as Director for Environment and Social Development in the East Asia and Pacific Region, Ms. Georgieva oversaw the design and implementation of key social safety net programs, and led Bank response to concerns in the region about environmental risks. As Director for Environment from 2000-2004, she led the preparation of the first World Bank environmental strategy and oversaw a portfolio of over $11 billion in environmental lending. From 2004-2006, as Director and Resident Representative for the Russian Federation in the Bank’s Europe and Central Asia Region, she was responsible for all World Bank activities in Russia, including a $2.2 billion project portfolio in public management, health, education, municipal development and environment.

Prior to joining the World Bank in 1993, she held a range of academic and consulting positions in Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, and the US, and has lectured on development topics in a large number of universities around the world. Kristalina Georgieva received her Ph.D in Economics and her M. A. in Political Economy and Sociology from the University of National and World Economy in Sofia. She also did post-graduate research and studies in natural resource economics and environmental policy in the London School of Economics School and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Steen Lau Jorgensen is currently the Director for Social Development in the Sustainable Development Network of the World Bank. Prior to this appointment, he was acting Vice President for the Environment and Socially Sustainable Development network.  In his more than twenty years in the Bank, he has worked on strategy and operational activities across a number of themes including human, economic and social development, as well as governance and community empowerment.  Mr. Jorgensen has also held corporate jobs in the Bank working for Regional and Senior Management.
 
Mr. Jorgensen is the co-author of two strategy papers, “Empowering People by Transforming Institutions: Social Development in World Bank Organizations” and the “Social Protection Sector Strategy from Safety Net to Springboard”, as well as academic publications on community development and poverty analysis.
 
Mr. Jorgensen holds a post-graduate degree in Economics from the University of Aarhus, Denmark.

Ms. Abha Joshi-Ghani is Urban Sector Manager for the Finance, Economics, and Urban Department (FEU) in the Sustainable Development Network Vice Presidency.
 
Ms. Joshi-Ghani, an Indian national, joined the Bank in 1992 as Financial Officer in the Cofinancing and Financial Advisory Services Department. In 1999, she was assigned to the East Asia Region’s Thailand Country Office as a Senior Infrastructure Specialist.  Her most recent assignment was Lead Infrastructure Specialist in the Urban and Water unit of South Asia Region’s Sustainable Development Department.

Ruth Kagia, a Kenyan national, joined the Bank in August 1990 after a career in public service in Africa spanning close to twenty years.  For the first six years at the Bank, she worked as an education specialist in the Africa and the East Asia Regions. She has served as a Human Development Sector Manager in the Africa region, a Director for Strategy and Operations in the Human Development Network anchor, and an Education Sector Director for Education, the position she currently holds. In her current position, Mrs. Kagia has provided strategic oversight and coordination of the Bank’s education sector staffing and sector work program. She has also led the implementation of the Millenium Development Goal agenda on education including the establishment of the Education For All-fast track initiative as well as the preparation of several policy and strategic documents in education including reports on secondary education, education in post-conflict countries, education and economic growth, and has recently edited a book on the key development achievements of the World Bank 1995-2005.

Caroline Kende-Robb, a U.K. national, is the Sector Manager of Social Development, at the World Bank. Prior to her current assignment, she was the first Social Development Specialist recruited by the International Monetary Fund, with the responsibility of promoting a greater poverty and social development focus in Fund-supported programs. At the IMF, Ms. Kende-Robb also worked with IMF country teams to develop poverty and social impact analysis (PSIA) and poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSP).
 
During her career, Ms. Kende-Robb spent five years in the private sector as a commercial manager. She then spent over five years living and working in The Gambia, West Africa, first as a business and community development advisor with Voluntary Service Overseas. Ms Kende-Robb then worked as an NGO Field Director in The Gambia, and this was followed by an assignment with the UNDP, where she assisted the government to develop a national strategy for poverty alleviation.
 
Before joining the IMF, Ms. Kende-Robb worked for the World Bank focusing on how to include poor people in the national policy dialogue, participation, poverty analysis and participatory poverty assessments. She later joined the East Asia Region as the Regional Participation Coordinator, where she focused on analyzing the poverty and social impacts of the financial crisis in East Asia.
Ms. Kende-Robb has an MSc from the London School of Economics in Social Policy in Developing Countries and has published a book titled, “Can the Poor Influence Policy? Participatory Poverty Assessments in the Developing World.”

Dr. Peter D. Little is a Professor of Anthropology at Emory  University, Atlanta, Georgia.   He also has held positions as Chair and Professor of Anthropology, University of Kentucky (1994-2007), Research Associate Professor, State University of New York (1999-2004), and Program Director and Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Development Anthropology, Binghamton, New York (1983-1994).
 
During the past 27 years, Dr. Little has researched and directed interdisciplinary programs on development and globalization, natural resources management, pastoralism and risk management, and drought and food insecurity in several African countries, but with primary emphasis on eastern Africa, including the African Horn.  In this period, he has earned several prizes and awards, including fellowships and grants from the John and Simon Guggenheim Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, National Science Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council; and the Kirwan Memorial Research Prize (2005) and the Wethington Research Award (2007) both from the University of Kentucky, Amaury Talbot Book Prize from the Royal Anthropological Institute (2003), and a Choice Academic Book award (2004).  
 
Dr. Little has served as a Member of the African Studies Committee, Social Science Research Council (1992-1996), the National Review Committee for Sub-Saharan Africa, Fulbright Scholar Program (1996-1998),  the African Dissertation Program of the Rockefeller Foundation (1997-1999),  and has been a consultant and advisor to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Bank,  Rockefeller Foundation,  US Agency for International Development, the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), OXFAM-America, and several other agencies and foundations.
 
Dr Little has published more than 100 journal articles, book chapters, and research reports and eight books.  Among his major publications are Somalia: Economy Without State (2003; Talbot Book Prize and Choice Academic Book Award), Understanding and Reducing Persistent Poverty in Africa (with C. Barrett and M. Carter, 2008), The Elusive Granary: Herder, Farmer, and State in Northern Kenya (1992), and Lands at Risk in the Third World: Local Level Perspectives (with M. Horowitz, 1987).

Mayaki, Ibrahim
Former Prime Minister of Niger and Current Executive Director, Rural Hub In Francophone Africa

After working as Public Administration Professor in Niger (1975-1978 & 1982-1985) and Technical Advisor (1978-1982) and Ministry of Planning (1985-1987) in Venezuela, Mr Mayaki occupied the position of General Secretary at the SOMAIR (AREVA subsidiary). Between 1996 and 1999, he was successively Minister of Foreign Affairs, then Prime Minister of the Republic of Niger.
 
Guest professor for 4 years at the University of Paris XI, he lectured on international relations and organizations. He has served the Executive Director of the Rural HUB since July 2004.

John Morton is Professor of Development Anthropology, and Associate Research Director (Social Sciences) at the Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, UK. A social anthropologist by training, he studied for a BA at the University of Cambridge, and gained a PhD from the University of Hull on the social and political organization of the pastoral Beja people of North-eastern Sudan.  After periods working as a consultant and researcher for a number of NGOs and international agencies in Sudan and Pakistan, he moved to the Natural Resources Institute in 1993.
 
While he has carried out research and consultancy work on a variety of development topics, including participatory research methodologies, crop marketing, irrigation, and refugee situations, his main work has focussed on social, institutional and policy aspects of livestock and pastoral development.  This has included an advisory role to DFID’s Livestock Production Research Programme, responsibility for policy and institutional content within FAO’s Livestock-Environment Toolbox, a series of high-profile advisory and consultancy commissions on managing drought in the livestock sector, and leadership of innovative research projects on the involvement of parliamentarians and the corporate sector in pastoral development.  Geographically, he has worked in many countries throughout Africa, but in particular in the Horn of Africa, as well as Pakistan, India, China and Mongolia.

From 2005 he served as Lead Author on smallholder and subsistence agriculture for the Working Group on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and has co-authored the recent study of climate change and drylands for the World Bank.

Caroline Moser is the Director of the Global Urban Research Centre, School  of Environment and Development, University of Manchester. She is also a Visiting Fellow at Brookings Institution and a Senior Research Associate, Overseas Development Institute, London. Previously she was Lead Specialist Social Development, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, in the World Bank and prior to that a Lecturer at the London School of Economics. She has published on urban poverty, household vulnerability and coping strategies under structural adjustment; human rights, social protection, gender and development. 

As the founder and director of GROOTS Kenya, Esther Mwaura-Muiru has built a multi-tribal, multi-village grassroots women’s national self-help network in direct response to inadequate visibility of grassroots women in development and decision-making forums that directly impact them and their communities.  From that vision GROOTS Kenya has become recognized as an innovative network that advances community responses to defining issues such as HIV/AIDS, the inclusion of women in decision-making processes, natural and man-made disaster, urbanization, the preservation of land rights and income generating activities.  The network has worked inside an array of Kenyan women’s civic education and political bodies to build inclusive coalitions that promote the advancement of women in formal decision making. 

The climate change work undertaken by Esther as part of and outside of GROOTS Kenya, focuses on promoting grassroots approaches to effective natural resource management with a special emphasis on supporting women’s voice and leadership in these processes.  Esther has taken this work forward by facilitating peer learning and collaboration with best practice groups in Latin America, Asia the Pacific & other Africa countries.  In addition to her work with GROOTS Kenya, Esther is a steering committee member of the UNDP’s Equator Initiative (EQI), a partnership that brings together the United Nations, civil society, business, governments and communities to help build the capacity and raise the profile of grassroots efforts to reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. She has been a part of training local authorities and ministers to foster effective collaborations with poor people's efforts for sustainable development.

Don Nelson is a Senior Research Associate in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is also an adjunct professor in the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona, USA.

During the last decade his work has been focused on the complex relationships between humans and the environment, particularly in climate stressed regions. Within the Tyndall Centre, his work is primarily concerned with promoting adaptation to climate change and is directed towards understanding the roles of the public and private sectors and the ways in which they can work together to help reduce social vulnerabilities and increase resilience. The scale of work ranges from households to communities, watersheds and regions. In partnership with the Secretariat of Local and Regional Development in Ceará, Brazil, he was responsible for developing Projeto MAPLAN (Participatory Mapping for Planning), a Participatory Geographic Information System based methodology for drought mitigation and long term adaptation planning for rural agricultural regions.  He is currently involved in a national level assessment in Brazil of the newly formed participatory watershed management committees. The assessment explores the institutional characteristics of adaptive capacity, decentralization, and democratization in light of increasing demands and projected supply variations that result from the changing climate.  Additional current research explores the linkages and processes between livelihoods, institutions, and ecosystems in dryland farming households and communities.  Combining a recreated historical water balance with socio-economic indicators the research identifies those areas less sensitive to climate variation prior to carry out in-depth field work to explore why these areas demonstrate higher levels of resilience.

Kyle Peters is Director of Country Services, in the Operations Policy and Country Services (OPCS) Vice Presidency of the World Bank. Mr. Peters provides operational support through corporate reviews and good practice lessons to the Bank’s senior management and country programs/staff on issues related to Country Assistance Strategies, development policy lending, and selected investment lending; catalyzes Bank efforts to strengthen the results focus of Bank strategies, instruments, and reporting; and coordinates institutional responses to global emergencies and institutional initiatives.   An American national, Mr. Peters joined the Bank in 1983 in the Office of the Vice-President for the East Asia & Pacific Region.  Since then, he has held a number of positions in the East Asia, and Eastern and Central European regions.  In 1999, he was appointed as Sector Manager in the European and Central Asia Region’s Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Department.   

Navin K. Rai, a Nepali national, is the Lead Specialist and Team Leader for the Inclusion and Social Safeguards Team in the Bank’s Social Development Department.  In this capacity, he coordinates the implementation of the Bank’s social safeguards policies as well as the program on Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change and the Pilot Initiative on Enhancing Development Benefits to Local Communities in Bank-financed Hydropower Projects. 

As the World Bank coordinator on Indigenous Peoples issues, Mr. Rai oversees the formulation and implementation of the World Bank strategy and policy on Indigenous Peoples. In his role as Lead Specialist, he provides technical expertise on the Bank’s corporate vision related to Indigenous Peoples, conducts quality assurance reviews for complex development projects affecting Indigenous Peoples, and supports capacity building for Indigenous Peoples’ organizations and borrower agencies on Indigenous Peoples issues.

As the principle point of contact on Indigenous Peoples for the Bank, he liaises with the international Indigenous community, UN-based Indigenous Peoples bodies as well as other multilateral and bilateral agencies on Indigenous Peoples issues.

Mr. Rai joined the Bank in 1999 as the South Asia Region Indigenous Peoples specialist.  Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Rai worked for the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) for twelve years as team leader for multinational teams in the Philippines and Nepal. Mr. Rai holds a PhD. in ecological anthropology from the University of Hawaii (1982) and served as a Fulbright visiting professor at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor and Carleton College, Minnesota (1987-1988).

Raleigh, Clionadh
Guest Senior Researcher International Peace Research Institute, Oslo

Dr. Clionadh Raleigh (Ma, PhD Geography) is a researcher at the University of Essex. She recently completed her dissertation on the spatial and temporal patterns of conflict and governance in Central African countries. She developed the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) to track the dynamics of conflicts over time. Her current work concerns the local impacts of climate change in developing countries, the political geography of conflict, African civil war patterns, and spatial econometrics.  She has recently begun a project of drought-induced migration in East Africa. She has worked for the Centre for the Study of Civil War at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo since 2004.

Vicky Tauli-Corpuz serves as the Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and as the Executive Director of the Tebtebba Foundation in the Philippines. Since 1993, she has been a Co-Chair of the Indigenous Caucus of the UN Commission of Sustainable Development NGO Steering Committee and is also a Board Member of the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) and the Vice President of the International Training Center of Indigenous Peoples (ITCIP).   For many years, she has been the voice of indigenous people around the world and has sought to bring all of them together in policy-making and global advocacy.

Camilla Toulmin is Director of the International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED), having formerly run the Drylands Programme from 1987-2002. An economist by training, her work has focused on social, economic, and environmental development in dryland Africa. This has combined field research, policy analysis, capacity building and advocacy, with strategic management of the programme. It has involved engaging with people at many different levels from farmers and researchers, to national governments, NGOs, donor agencies and international bodies.
 
As Director of IIED since February 2004, Camilla has focused on developing the institute’s strategy and encouraging greater cohesion between the diverse areas of IIED’s work. She has initiated a process of re-structuring which will bring together ten smaller programmes into four larger groups, working on: human settlements, natural resources, climate change, and sustainable markets. She has organized a major conference on Land and property rights in Africa, feeding into the Blair Commission for Africa’s work. She has also been consolidating the institute’s funding base, through stronger relations with our principal donors. Further attention is being focused on achieving a better match between IIED’s findings and external events and opportunities to influence policy.

Dr. Ren Wang obtained his Ph.D in Entomology in 1985 at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.   He was a researcher (Assistant Research Professor, Associate Professor and Professor) at the Institute of Biological Control of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) during 1985-1993, and pioneered China’s program of managing invasive exotic plants using the classical biological control approach. He was the funding Director of the USDA-MOA/CAAS Sino-American Biological Control Laboratory during 1987-1993. From 1993 to 1995, he was the Deputy Director, Programme Development of the International Institute of Biological Control (IIBC), CAB International, UK. In 1994, he was appointed by the Chinese State Council as Vice President of CAAS, responsible for international relations, strategic research planing and supervision of 6 of the 38 research institutes of the Academy. Dr. Wang joined IRRI in mid January 2000 to be the Deputy Director General for Research.
 
Dr. Wang played a leadership role in developing China ’s agricultural research strategies and planning. During the 1990’s, he served as Principle Leader and Coordinator of the Program on Mass Propagation of Natural Enemies for the Eighth Five-Year Plan of China (1990-93), Executive Member and Vice Secretary General of the Science and Technology Committee, Chinese Ministry of Agriculture (1996-99), member of Expert Advisory Panel for Developing China’s “National Guidelines for the Development of Agricultural Science and Technology, 2001-2115” (1998-99), and Executive Member of the Academic Committee of CAAS.
 
Dr. Wang has been a leader in the international agricultural R&D with extensive experiences and strong capabilities in developing, organizing and coordinating international cooperative programs. He was a member and Vice Chairman (1999) of the Board of Trustees of the International Potato Centre (CIP) during 1996-2000, member of the Council for the International Congresses of Entomology at the XX International Congress, member of the United Nation’s FAO/UNEP Panel of Experts on Integrated Pest Control and Resistance Breeding (1991-95), and a member of International Organization for Biological Control, and Vice-Chairman of the IOBC Asia and Pacific Regional Section from 1998 to 2000. During his tenure of Vice President, CAAS, he led the establishment of the largest Japan-China project in agriculture, the Sino-Japan Center for Sustainable Agriculture at CAAS, and was the focal point for the CGIAR-China cooperation.
 
As the DDG-Research of IRRI, he provided leadership in developing IRRI’s new initiatives in Sub-Sahara Africa and the Central Asia, the IRRI-CIMMYT Alliance programs, and the development of IRRI’s new strategic plan (2007-2015). He manages IRRI’s research programs and the outreach offices in 14 countries. He has represented IRRI in the steering committees of many regional and global programs, consortia, and through which developed close cooperative relationship with the leaders and scientists of national agricultural research and extension systems (NARES) in Asia and Africa.
 
He has published more than 50 scientific papers, books, and book chapters.
 
Dr. Wang was appointed as the Director of Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research in July 2007.

Professor Bob Watson has been the Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) since September 2007. He ultimately is responsible for the broad range of science that falls under Defra’s remit. His main role is to provide ministers with the best possible scientific advice and build on existing measures to ensure that science and technology are used to inform policy. He also supports the UK Government’s scientific work on minimizing the effects of climate change and improving sustainability by promoting consistency across Defra and working together with other Government departments.
 
Bob Watson was previously at the World Bank where he was the Chief Scientist and Senior Advisor for Sustainable Development. He has also held senior positions at NASA and, more recently, at the White House, where he was responsible for ensuring that science underpinned policy making.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier currently resides in Iqaluit, Nunavut. She was born in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik (northern Quebec ), and was raised traditionally in her early years before attending school in southern Canada and in Churchill, Manitoba. She is the past Chair of Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), the organization that represents internationally the 155,000 Inuit of Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and Chukotka in the Far East of the Federation of Russia.
 
Ms. Watt-Cloutier was a political spokesperson for Inuit for over a decade.  From 1995 to 1998, she was Corporate Secretary of Makivik Corporation, set-up under the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Land Claims Agreement.  Defending the rights of Inuit has been at the forefront of Ms. Watt-Cloutier’s mandate since her election as President of ICC Canada in 1995 and re-election in 1998.  Ms. Watt-Cloutier was instrumental as a spokesperson for a coalition of northern Indigenous Peoples in the global negotiations that led to the 2001 Stockholm Convention banning the generation and use of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that contaminate the arctic food web.  In 2002, Ms. Watt-Cloutier was elected international Chair of ICC. She contributed markedly to ICC Canada’s Institution-Building for Northern Russian Indigenous Peoples’ Project, which focused on economic development and training in remote northern communities.
 
During the past several years, Ms. Watt-Cloutier has alerted the world that Inuit will not become a footnote to the onslaught of globalization by working through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to defend Inuit human rights against the impacts of climate change.  On December 7, 2005, she filed a climate change-related petition with to the Commission as an urgent message from the Inuit “sentinels” to the rest of the world on global warming’s already dangerous impacts.  Most recently, on March 1, 2007, she testified before the Commission during their extraordinary first hearing on the links between climate change and human rights.
 
Ms. Watt-Cloutier received the inaugural Global Environment Award from the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations in recognition for her POPs work.   She is the recipient of the 2004 Aboriginal Achievement Award for Environment.  In 2005, she was honored with the United Nations Champion of the Earth Award and the Sophie prize in Norway.  Later in the year, she was presented with the inaugural Northern Medal by the outgoing Governor General of Canada, Adrienne Clarkson.
 
In February, 2007, she was publicly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by members of the Norwegian parliament, including the former Minister of the Environment.  Also in Norway, she received the Rachel Carson Prize in June, 2007.  Later that month at the U.N. Human Development Awards in New York, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon presented Sheila with the 2007 Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Award.

She currently serves as a mentor for two Trudeau Foundation Scholars pursuing their Ph.D.s.  She is writing a book to further share her message: “The Right to be Cold.”
 
Ms. Watt-Cloutier sums up her work by saying: “I do nothing more than remind the world that the Arctic is not a barren land devoid of life but a rich and majestic land that has supported our resilient culture for millennia.  Even though small in number and living far from the corridors of power, it appears that the wisdom of the land strikes a universal chord on a planet where many are searching for sustainability.”

Wheeler, Graeme
Managing Director, World Bank 

Mr. Wheeler is currently Managing Director, Operations in the World Bank.   He previously held the position of Vice President and Treasurer of the World Bank from August 2001. He joined the World Bank in 1997 as Director of the Financial Products and Services Department.   For the previous four years, he was the Treasurer of the New Zealand Debt Management Office and a Deputy Secretary to the New Zealand Treasury.  Prior to this, he was Director of Macroeconomic Policy and Forecasting in the New Zealand Treasury.  During the second half of the 1980s, Mr. Wheeler was the Economic Counselor for the New Zealand Delegation to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.
 
Mr. Wheeler is the author of a book on Sound Practice in Government Debt Management, and a recipient of the Staff Association’s Good Manager Award in the World Bank.

Andy is the Coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative and the President of the Rights and Resources Group. Prior to joining Rights and Resources he served as Senior Director of Programs at Forest Trends and Natural Resource Management Specialist at the World Bank, as well as worked as a consultant to the International Food Policy Research Center, Save the Children Federation and the Inter-American Foundation. He has worked extensively in Haiti, Mexico and China and supervises policy research and engagement Asia, Latin America and Africa. His own research and project work has focused on forest tenure and policy, as well as international trade and forest industry. He has a PhD in forest economics and a MA in anthropology from the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Sergei Zelenev is the Chief of the Social Integration Branch in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN/DESA), which is responsible for providing substantive support to the UN’s intergovernmental policy dialogue of Member States and for facilitating international cooperation on a range of social development issues.   Specifically, he is responsible for overseeing the conceptualization, research and production of UN/DESA publications on inclusive policy issues, ageing, youth and family, including reports which are submitted to the Commission for Social Development, the Economic and Social Council and the UN General Assembly.
 
Main areas of personal research interest include social protection, social inclusion, youth and ageing in various settings.   Contributed to drafting some key UN social policy documents, including   Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen (1995), policy documents of the 24th Special Session of the General Assembly in Geneva (2000),  Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, and “Supplement to the World Programme of Action on Youth’, as well as follow-up reports on the above issues submitted to intergovernmental bodies. Since 1981, he has contributed inputs to all UN Reports on the World Social Situation published by UN/DESA.  He is the author of a book and many articles on economic and social development, published in Russian and English.
 
Educated in Russia and USA, he received his MBA from New York University (Stern School of Business) and M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO- University ).