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Djaheezah Subratty has 30 years’ experience in the private sector, national government and the UN system in mainstreaming sustainability into sector policies and strategies, public sector investment programmes and regional or international policy agendas. She works for the industry and economy division at UNEP. Since joining UNEP in 2010, Djaheezah has held several positions, including in energy and climate policy, UNEP corporate programme performance monitoring and reporting, and global subprogramme coordinator for resource efficiency, finance and economic transformations. Prior to joining UNEP, she worked for three years in environmental consulting in the private sector and for fifteen years in the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of Mauritius. Djaheezah has a multidisciplinary background, with degrees in chemistry and environmental studies, in international trade and economic diplomacy and post-graduate diplomas in environmental technology and in environmental management, specialising in solid waste management.

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Rie Vejs Kjeldgaard has held diverse management positions for the ILO throughout Europe and Asia, including in New Delhi, Vietnam, Bangkok and Geneva. Some of her responsibilities have included partnerships and field support, country policy analysis, job quality in micro- and small businesses, and enterprise development. Prior to joining the ILO she worked as head of product and market development in the pharmaceutical industry. Rie is a Danish national with an education background in economics and business administration, with a specialisation in marketing and international business development.

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Achim Steiner became UNDP Administrator in June 2017 and has been reappointed by the United Nations General Assembly to a second four-year term beginning in June 2021. He is also the vice-chair of the UN Sustainable Development Group, which unites 40 entities of the UN system. He has been a global leader on sustainable development, climate resilience and international cooperation. He has worked to champion sustainability, economic growth and equality for the vulnerable, and has been a vocal advocate for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to UNDP he was the director of the Oxford Martin School and previously led the UN Environment Programme. He was also director general of International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the secretary general of the World Commission on Dams.

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Aik Hoe Lim oversees the WTO’s work on trade and environment, as well as on the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. He joined the WTO in 1999 and served in the external relations division, the director-general's office and the trade in services division. He was previously counsellor to two WTO director-generals, adviser to the Director General’s Consultative Group, and secretary to WTO committees, working groups and negotiating bodies on services trade and domestic regulation. His principal areas of interest and expertise are on trade and sustainable development, climate change, technical barriers to trade, services trade policy, and trade and regulation.

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Elisa Tonda works for the industry and economy division of UNEP. She has more than 20 years’ experience in the field of environmental management, business sustainability, resource efficiency, sustainable consumption and production, the circular economy and sustainable development. She began her career in the private sector as an environmental expert and then held several positions in UN organisations.

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Namita Datta works for the bank’s multistakeholder global programme S4YE, forging partnerships with several leading private companies, foundations and Civil Society Organisations (NGOs). She has led several flagship publications on frontier topics including the role of digital technology, changing nature of work, gender and opportunities in the creative and circular economies. She led the recent global report “Working across Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work”. Before joining the bank, Namita worked with the Government of India, heading a large complex municipal corporation responsible for delivering key urban services to the city of Delhi. She also worked as secretary (head) of the departments of urban development, power and environment in Goa, India. She holds a PhD from Cornell University, an MIA from Colombia University, New York, and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

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Klaus Tyrkkö has worked for the Global Eco-Industrial Parks Programme (GEIPP) implemented by UNIDO since 2020. GEIPP is a 7-country programme advancing the uptake of eco-industrial parks (EIP) practices and creating an EIP-conducive policy environment. Klaus served previously as division chief at UNIDO and has held a policy advisory role at UNDP and the European Commission. Klaus started his career in the manufacturing industry and has also served as a consultant in more than 20 countries.

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Christian Susan is an Austrian national. He holds an MSC in integrated water resource management and an MSC in environmental economics. He joined UNIDO in 2008 and has since worked as project manager on a wide array of environmental projects in Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin and Central America. The main objectives of the projects include promoting public-private-partnerships for water stewardship, circular and sustainable industrial approaches, facilitating resource efficient and cleaner production, the transfer of environmentally sound technologies and supporting the transition towards eco-industry. In 2018, he assumed management responsibility for the Swiss-funded Global Eco-Industrial Park Program (GEIPP) as well as for the GEIPP country-level interventions in Colombia, Indonesia, Peru, South Africa and Vietnam. The GEIPP is one of UNIDO’s flagship projects promoting the adoption of circular economy approaches in industries.

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Jerome leads the circular economy and resource efficiency unit at UNIDO. The unit supports industries, and in particular SMEs, in member states in just transitions towards more resource-efficient and circular business models and practices. Working for UNIDO since 2010, Jerome designed and managed environmental interventions ranging from eco-industrial parks and large industrial mercury emitters to artisanal gold mining. Prior to joining UNIDO, he worked for an environmental consultancy in Switzerland providing expertise to industries facing environmental legacies. Jerome holds an MSc in earth sciences from the University of Lausanne and an MAS in hydrogeology from the University of Neuchatel, both in Switzerland.

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Paul Ekins has a PhD in economics from the University of London and is professor at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources. In 2011 he was appointed vice-chairman of the DG Environment Commissioner’s High-Level Economists Expert Group on Resource Efficiency, and in 2012 a member of the European Commission’s European Resource Efficiency Platform. In 2013 he was appointed to UNEP’s International Resource Panel (IRP), for whom he was lead author of a major report on resource efficiency at the request of the German Government at the G7 Summit in 2015. He is now lead coordinating author for a forthcoming IRP report on critical minerals. He was one of two co-chairs of UNEP’s sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6), published in March 2019. In 1994 Paul received UNEP’s Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement and in 2015 an OBE for services to environmental policy.

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