Overview

In 2020, we find ourselves at a critical crossroads for achieving balance between the human economy and nature. COVID-19 has underlined the urgent need to rebuild better, taking full account of our natural resilience to climate disasters as well as zoonotic diseases emerging from food production. Never has our productive relationship with nature been placed so starkly in view as countries finalize the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework and seek to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. And never has such an arsenal of tools existed for countries to begin to fully value nature’s contribution to green growth. 

This webinar will explore some of the latest methods for assessing natural capital in national policies aimed at achieving sustainable development in the post-COVID recovery. It will consist of (1) an OECD keynote address on green growth, natural capital and biodiversity in the post-COVID recovery and (2) an expert discussion on state-of-the-art approaches, including the launch of recent work by the GGKP Expert Group.

An agenda and list of OECD and GGKP speakers is found below.

Background

The Green Growth Knowledge Partnership (GGKP) is a global network of organisations and experts that identifies and addresses major knowledge gaps in green growth theory and practice. The GGKP has launched the Natural Capital Expert Group to work with leading green growth institutions, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), to promote natural capital implementation in national green growth planning.

In 2020, the GGKP Expert Group produced five papers addressing key knowledge gaps in natural capital metrics, data, and policy, building in part on its partnership with OECD to make natural capital a key focus of the 2019 Green Growth Policy Review of Indonesia. This year, the OECD has made natural capital the theme of the Green Growth and Sustainable Development (GGSD) Forum in November, “Securing natural capital: Resilience, risk management and Covid-19”. 

Agenda

SPEAKERS

From the OECD

Anthony Cox, Deputy Director, Environment Directorate, OECD
Anthony Cox is the Deputy Director of the Environment Directorate of the OECD. Since joining the OECD in 2000, Mr Cox has led work on water, climate, fisheries, political economy of reform, green finance and fossil fuel subsidies. He has overall responsibility for the OECD’s Horizontal Programme on Water, which pools the expertise from across the OECD to address economic and governance issues in water policy. Prior to joining the OECD, he worked as Senior Economist in the Australian Public Service, including positions in the Productivity Commission and the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Kumi Kitamori, Head of Division, Green Growth & Global Relations, OECD
Kumi Kitamori is Head of Green Growth & Global Relations Division at the OECD Environment Directorate. In this role she oversees the mainstreaming of green growth in the work of various policy committees of the OECD and in member and other partner countries. This includes a dedicated programme that promotes green growth policies, finance and investment in the Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia region. Prior to this, she worked in the OECD Environment Directorate. She led a flagship project OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050 published in 2012. During 2005-2006, she served as Advisor to the OECD Secretary-General. Prior to joining the OECD, Kumi was at the World Bank where she worked extensively in South and Southeast Asia on urban and environmental infrastructure projects.

 From the GGKP Natural Capital Expert Group

Anil Markandya, Distinguished Ikerbasque Professor, Basque Centre for Climate Change
Anil Markandya is a Distinguished Ikerbasque Professor at Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) and Honorary Professor of Economics at University of Bath. He has held academic positions at the universities of Princeton and Harvard in the US and at University College London and Bath University in the UK. He was a lead author for Chapters of the 3rd and 4th IPCC Assessment Reports on Climate Change, which were awarded a share of the Nobel Peace in 2007. Professor Markandya has also acted as a consultant to a number of national and international organisations and served as Lead Economist at the World Bank. In 2012 he was elected the President of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economics and in 2013 he became a member of the Scientific Council of the European Environment Agency.

 Joe Grice, Chairman, UK Office for National Statistics Economic Experts
Joe Grice is the Chairman at the Office for National Statistics Economic Experts. Prior, he was an Executive Director and Chief Economist at the Office for National Statistics (ONS). He has overseen the new dashboard of economic wellbeing statistics. He also chairs the Natural Capital Accounts Steering Group, which is overseeing the production of natural capital accounts for the UK. Joe Grice spent most of his career at the UK Treasury where his last two posts were as Director of Macroeconomic Policy and as the Chief Economist and Director of Public Services. Joe chaired the OECD’s Working Party on Macroeconomic and Structural Policy Issues for 10 years until 2013, and was closely involved with the OECD’s work on measurement of wellbeing. He is currently a co-chair of the GGKP Expert Group.

 Paul Ekins, Director, Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London
Paul Ekins is Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy and Director of the Institute for Sustainable Resources at University College London (UCL). He is also Deputy Director of the UK Energy Research Centre, and the UKERC Co-Director leading on its Energy Resources theme. Professor Ekins is a member of the GGKP Senior Advisory Group and Co-chair of the GGKP Natural Capital Expert Group. He is also a senior member of UNEP’s International Resource Panel. In 2011 Professor Ekins was appointed Vice-Chairman of the DG Environment Commissioner’s High-Level Economists Expert Group on Resource Efficiency and a member of the European Commission’s high-level European Resource Efficiency Platform. In 2015 he was awarded an OBE in the UK’s New Year’s Honours List for services to environmental policy. His academic work focuses on the conditions and policies for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy.

 Rosimeiry Portela, Senior Director, Conservation International
Rosimeiry Portela is a Senior Director at the Betty and Gordon Moore Center for Science at Conservation International (CI), and CI’s institutional lead on Natural Capital Accounting efforts. Dr. Portela’s research focuses primarily on nature’s provision of ecosystem services and their contribution to human well-being. Her current work explores the integration of environmental-economic information into national accounting systems, through the UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) Experimental Ecosystem Accounting. She also works to foster businesses’ incorporation of natural capital impact and dependencies into decision-making through the application of the Natural Capital Protocol. Dr. Portela is a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, as part of a CI-ASU collaboration.

 From the GGKP Secretariat

John J. Maughan, Research Programme Manager, GGKP Secretariat
John J. Maughan manages the Green Growth Knowledge Partnership’s (GGKP) programme for neutral, inter-institutional research and in-country science-policy applications. He serves as the primary focal point for the GGKP collaborative expert groups and has coordinated six such groups on major themes including natural capital, trade and competitiveness, metrics and indicators, behavioral economics, green growth and the law, and sustainable infrastructure. Prior to joining GGKP, John worked on international economic and environmental affairs at the UN Environment Programme and in the US Government. He has produced various publications on international economic law and sustainable development. Originally from Minnesota, USA, he is an alumnus of the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, and of Reed College in Portland, Oregon.