Climate finance leaders shared their expertise at the Sustainable Innovation Forum on the technologies changing the finance world, how blockchain will revolutionise carbon markets and how investors and policy makers are working together to align investment with climate action.
Director General
Blockchain Climate Institute
Alastair Marke is Head of Blockchain Innovations (Climate Change) at Abt Associates and Secretary-General of the Blockchain Climate Institute. He is also Climate Change Policy Lead for the British Blockchain Association. He is a seasoned sustainability policy researcher with publications covering a wide range of policy issues, including food and energy security, climate finance, low-carbon investment planning, emissions trading, and associated green growth issues in many regions. Recently, Alastair has been appointed a member of the ISO climate finance standards committee.
Seeing the dire need to accelerate global efforts to fill the current climate finance gap, Alastair has recently co-founded Blockchain for Climate Network, converted from his International Core Group on Blockchain Climate Finance, composed of nearly 60 experts across the world, to study the potential of blockchain technology to upscale sustainable, environmental and climate finance for developing countries, encompassing energy finance, carbon trading, and new cryptocurrency-based multi-level climate finance transfer mechanisms. The first output of the Group is a ground-breaking book – “Transforming Climate Finance & Green Investment with Blockchains” to be released in early 2018. He is also a founding member of the Climate Chain Coalition with the UNFCCC Secretariat. At the Global Solution Networks – a first-of-its-kind research programme looking at how the world’s problems can be solved differently with digital revolution, Alastair was the project leader of climate-resilient agriculture and global food security.
Prior to joining the Global Solution Networks, he was a senior research officer of the Private Sector & Markets programme at the Overseas Development Institute and a research associate at The ResPublica Trust in the UK. He was also a civil service fast streamer (trade stream) in Hong Kong.
Director and Global Head
Climate Business Department, IFC
Founder / CEO
Smart4tech
Anna is a strategic and innovation expert with a focus on the impact business, Sustainable Development, blockchain and green finance. Founder of Smart4tech – the key focus of the project to address water efficiency and security through the merge of the circular economy, innovation, and finance. The project is closely interconnected with Waste, Energy, & Carbon sectors. Author of the Water Trade Finance chapter in the book Transforming Climate Finance and Green Investment with Blockchains. Contributor to the Bloomberg Environment, Global Water Intelligence, The Water Report UK and EBRD publications and discussions.
Chief Advisor, Climate and Energy Finance
Danish Ministry of Energy, Utilities and Climate
Asger is responsible for linking the international negotiations on climate finance to operational implementation through international channels and bilateral cooperation. From his background as an economist, Asger focuses on climate finance and climate change mitigation, in particular mobilizing private investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency through innovative instruments.
Over time, he has covered several areas of international collaboration from positions in government, financial institution, consultancy, and civil society as a practitioner developing and promoting instruments and policies that redirect investments toward a low-carbon economy, in international processes and forums that focus on finance mobilization and greening of investments by public and private financial and development institutions and in policy processes and negotiations related to climate change and finance.
Senior Advisor
RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
Dennis Pamlin is an entrepreneur and founder of 21st Century Frontiers. His main skill is work with companies, governments and other organisations as a strategic economic, technology and innovation advisor in the area of sustainability. His background is in engineering, industrial economy and marketing.
Mr Pamlin worked as Global Policy Advisor for WWF from 1999 to 2009. During his tenure, Pamlin initiated WWFs Trade and Investment Programme work in the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and led the work with companies (especially high-tech companies such as ICT) as solution providers.
From 2010 to 2013 he was the Director for the Low Carbon Leaders Project under the UN Global Compact.
He is currently a Senior Associate at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Senior Advisor at RISE, a visiting research fellow at the Research Center of Journalism and Social Development at Renmin university, and advisor to Centre for Sustainable Development at Confederation of Indian Industries (CII).
Current work includes work to establish a framework that can identify winners in a sustainable future, build a platform for global trend assessment, promote clusters capable of delivering transformative solutions, exploring the impact of our “digital twins” and develop tools that allow public procurement to support sustainable solutions. Pamlin is also leading work to develop tools for companies, organisations and cities to measure and report their positive impacts, focus on climate, water, health and poverty.
CEO & Co-Founder
ClimateTrade
Jose Lindo Solis, CEO and CO-Founder of Climate Blockchain Initiatives, is a visionare, pioneer and social entrepreneur that, through the years, has been developing knowledge, sensibility and expertise in fundraising and corporate social responsibility strategies.
He has attained various academic titles, including a Master Degree in Natural Resources Management and Social Marketing, developing a unique and balanced profile that combines knowledge of environmental problematics with a profound understanding of politics and corporate dynamics.
Moreover, his innate curiosity and his pioneristic mindset has pushed him to experiment with emerging technologies like augmented and virtual reality and blockchain, so to develop innovative and disruptive solutions aimed to help communication, visibility and driving of financial resources towards environmental and social oriented projects.
Through his career, he worked as fundraiser and advisor for the United Nations, NGOs and various governments, managing a wide range of campaigns and institutional actions aimed to the preservation and enhancement of natural resources. As highlight, he performed as key actor and stakeholder in the UNEP “Plant for the Planet” campaign, where he was inspired by and worked alongside Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, raising funds to plant 47 Million trees throughout the Spanish territory and creating one the largest green areas in Europe.
He was also advisor for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which analysed the impact of climate change and he is one of the key references for the B-Corp movement, advocating green, social innovation and impact oriented projects worldwide.
Manager, Sustainable Development Mechanism Program
UNFCCC
Country Manager-Costa Rica
Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI)
A Costa Rican citizen, Mr. Chacón holds an academic degree in Business Administration from the Latin American University (ULACIT), and a Master’s degree from the International Center for Economic Policy of the National University of Costa Rica (UNA).
He currently serves as Country Manager-Costa Rica for the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI). CABEI is the regional bank that provides support to their member countries with the goal of achieving social and economic development, regional integration, and competitiveness of Central American countries.
Prior to joining the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), he worked for more than 20 years for local and regional financial institutions such as Citibank in positions related to the financial structuring of projects in areas such as energy, telecommunications, health, and infrastructure both for public and private sector in the Central American region.
Chief Executive Officer
dCentra
Sorin is an accomplished IT professional with over 17 years’ experience. He is working with public authorities, in finance and logistic industry, his focus being improvement of business and creating value through digitalization and use of innovative technologies. He has a proven record of delivering results in challenging environments, creating benefits through his transition and transformation programs, achieving improvement in performance and quality of business process by using the blockchain technology.
Appling his industry experience and working together his team at dCentra, Sorin has designed ClimateCoop, a platform providing a new way for funding, governance and collaboration between independent parties, working towards SD goals and scaling the SDG movement to the society, developing engaging and proactive communities.
Sorin holds an MS and BS in Computer Science and lives in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Vice President, Climate and Energy
Ceres
Sue is vice president of climate and energy at Ceres, overseeing the organization’s climate and energy team including electric power, transportation, oil and gas and insurance. She also coordinates across the organization to advance the Ceres Clean Trillion campaign. The campaign promotes a clean energy investment target intended to avoid the worst effects of climate change, requiring more than $1 trillion additional investment in clean energy globally each year while ratcheting down investment in fossil fuels.
In her role at Ceres, Sue led the development of ground-breaking analysis by Ceres, Bloomberg New Energy Finance and investor Ken Locklin — Mapping The Gap — illuminating the global renewable electric power investment and sources of capital needed through 2040 to limit temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees Celsius. Sue also has contributed columns to Forbes.com and has been featured in Bloomberg, BBC, CBS.com, NPR, and The Boston Globe, among other news outlets. She often is invited to speak at climate and energy conferences around the U.S. and globally.
Sue has more than two decades of experience as an attorney and specialist in climate and energy policies, practices and investments. Prior to joining Ceres in 2014, she served as Vice President and Massachusetts Advocacy Centre Director at the Conservation Law Foundation, where she successfully spearheaded efforts to secure some of the strongest climate and clean energy policies in the U.S. She also has served on several Boards of Directors and advisory boards, including the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act Implementation Advisory Committee, Toxics Action Centre Advisory Board, Earth Island Institute Board of Directors, and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey’s Advisory Committee on Massachusetts Judicial Nominees.
She also previously worked as an intellectual property litigation attorney at law firms in Silicon Valley and Boston, where she represented a broad range of high tech clients. She earned her law degree with honours from Boston University School of Law
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