Speaker

Pavan Sukhdev

UNEP Goodwill Ambassador, The Founding Trustee of Green Indian States Trust (GIST), Founder & CEO of GIST Advisory, Associate Fellow of Davenport College, Yale University

India

Mr. Sukhdev is a pioneer in developing an accounting system with economic rationale and practical metrics for a transition towards an inclusive green economy. He has drawn attention to the critical role of the Corporation in this transition. His work has shown how to mainstream the values of ecosystem services into improved public policies and business practices. By developing accounting systems with sustainability metrics for the corporate, provincial and national levels, he has driven momentum and capacity building to hasten the evolution to an inclusive green economy.

Thomas E. Lovejoy

Professor, Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University

United States

Through pioneering and creative fieldwork conducted in the tropical Amazon rainforest, a great achievement of Dr. Lovejoy was shedding light on the fact and a major mechanism of species decline when the biodiversity concept was still in its infancy. Through this fieldwork, Dr. Lovejoy became the first person to academically clarify how human caused habitat fragmentation and propelled biodiversity toward crisis. Based on profound insights into ecosystems obtained through the series of research, Dr. Lovejoy became the first to publish the “a projection of species extinctions.” From there, he has continued to indicate and propose measures for curbing the rising rate of endangered species, significantly influenced numerous academic institutes and societies and helped lay the foundation for protecting the natural environment based on biodiversity, which is now a mainstream concept.

Moderator

Julia Tagüeña

Deputy Director General for Scientific Development, Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT)

Mexico

Dr. Tagüeña is the Deputy Director General for Scientific Development at the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology. She has been a research professor at the Energy Research Center of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), of which she also served as Director. She worked on science communication in directing the UNAM Science Center Universum. She is a former executive director of RedPOP.