By Nancy Sedmak-Weiss, March 2010
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced March 4 the membership of the new High-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing. Out of the 19 people named no women were included.
The Secretary-General announced the launch of the group on February 12 and established it to study the potential sources of revenue for financing mitigation and adaptation activities in developing countries and to make progress on this key issue in 2010.
A March 9 article in the Huffington Post by Suzanne Ehlers, Interim President of Population Action International states that the failure to include women “is unfortunate because women will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change and are key to any mitigation and adaptation efforts”.
Ehlers comments that the Secretary General’s choices for the group “will bring intellectual energy and political gravitas”. The group will be co-chaired by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, and includes two additional heads of state, high-level officials from ministries and central banks, as well as experts on public finance, development, and related issues. Financier and philanthropist George Soros and economist Sir Nicholas Stern are taking part. “It includes equal representation between industrialized countries and developing countries. But what it does not include, is women,” she notes.
In an open letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization states “[w]hile we applaud your initiative in establishing such an esteemed group of advisors to address climate change finance – surely one of the most critical issues of our time, we are deeply concerned that the panel neglects to include even a single woman. The panel is representative of North and South, industrialized and developing, public and private; but it is not representative of women and men.”
Among the women mentioned as potential candidates for membership in the group are:
• President Michelle Bachelet, Chile;
• H.E. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Special Envoy on Climate Change to UN, Norway;
• H.E. Pia S. Cayetano, Senator, Philippines;
• Dr. Graciela Chichilnisky, economist, Argentina;
• Dr. Dianne Elson, gender and development expert, UK;
• President Tarja Halonen, Finland;
• Dr. Noeleen Heyzer, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Singapore;
• Mindy Lubber, sustainable investment expert, President, Ceres, USA;
• Prof. Wangari Maathai, Ambassador for the Congo Basin, Kenya;
• President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia;
• Rebeca Patricia Santos Rivera, Minister of Finance, Honduras;
• Tessa Tennant, sustainable investment expert, co-founder, Carbon Disclosure Project, UK
• Dr. Mariama Williams, economist, Jamaica;
• H.E. Dessima Williams, Ambassador to the UN, Grenada.
The complete list of members of the High-Level Advisory Group of the United Nations Secretary-General on Climate Change Financing is as follows:
Heads of State and Government
• Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (Co-Chair)
• Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Co-Chair)
• Bharrat Jagdeo, President of the Republic of Guyana
• Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister of Norway
Other members (in alphabetical order)
• Ambassador Pedro Luiz Carneiro de Mendonça, Under-Secretary General for Economic and Technological Affairs, Ministry of External Relations, Brazil
• Soumaïla Cissé, President, Commission of the West African Monetary Union
• Ernesto Cordero Arroyo, Minister of Finance, Mexico
• Donald Kaberuka, President, African Development Bank
• Caio Koch-Weser, Vice-Chairman, Deutsche Bank Group
• Jean-Pierre Landau, Second Deputy Governor, Bank of France
• Trevor Manuel, Minister in the Presidency for National Planning, South Africa
• Bob McMullan, Member of Parliament and Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance, Australia
• Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, Special Adviser to the Cabinet Office, Government of Japan
• Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister for Finance, Singapore
• Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, United States of America
• Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Government of India
• George Soros, Chairman, Soros Fund Management
• Nicholas Stern, Professor of Economics and Government, London School of Economics
• Zhu Guangyao, Assistant Minister, Ministry of Finance, People’s Republic of China.
The group is scheduled to hold its first meeting on March 29 in London, and is expected to issue initial reports before the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiating session May 31 to June 11. Its final report is to be submitted by November 2010.
Nancy J. Sedmak-Weiss is Secretary-Treasurer of Global Urban Development and General Counsel of Climate Prosperity Strategies, LLC.
