UN Economic and Social Development
Division for Sustainable Development

Tariq Banuri, Director of the Division for Sustainable Development in UN-DESA (note: until September 2011). He has broad experience on the interface between policy, research, and practical actions on the realization of the goal of sustainable development. Before joining the United Nations, he was Senior Fellow and Director of the Future Sustainability Program at the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Dr. Banuri started his career in the Civil Service of Pakistan, went on to receive a PhD in Economics from Harvard University, joined the United Nations as a Research Fellow at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER), a model that he adopted in setting up and serving as the founding Executive Director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in Pakistan.

He has served on national as well as international forums for policy, advocacy, and research, including as a Coordinating Lead Author on the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as member of the board of governors of Pakistan’s central bank, and of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Council, and member/secretary of Pakistan’s Presidential Steering Committee on Higher Education. He has also served as the chair of the Board of Governors of the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), and was a founding member of the Great Transition Initiative (GTI).

Michael Levy is David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change in the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He was project director for the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on climate change. Dr. Levi was previously a science and technology fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. Prior to that, he was director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Strategic Security Project.

His interests center on the intersection of science, technology, and foreign policy, including energy, climate, and nuclear security. He is the author of the book On Nuclear Terrorism (Harvard University Press, 2007) and coauthor with Michael O’Hanlon of The Future of Arms Control (Brookings Institution Press, 2005) and with Michael D’Arcy (2005) of Untapped Potential: U.S. Science and Technology Cooperation with the Islamic World. His essays have been published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Nature, Scientific American, Slate, and the New Republic, among others. In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs he has published an article arguing for incremental steps in both developed and developing nations in the area of climate change.

Dr. Levi holds a PhD in war studies from the University of London (King’s College), where he was the SSHRC William E. Taylor fellow. He holds an MA in physics from Princeton University, where he studied string theory and cosmology, and a BSc (Hons.) in mathematical physics from Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada).

Robert Orr Assistant Secretary General for Policy Coordination and Strategic Planning

His responsibilities include advising the Secretary-General on a full range of strategic issues, running the Secretary-General’s Policy Committee, and leading the Secretary-General’s agenda on climate change. Dr. Orr serves as the principal policy advisor to the Secretary-General on food security, global health, counter-terrorism and the Secretariat’s efforts to complete the UN reform agenda agreed to by world leaders at the 2005 World Summit.

Dr. Orr joined the United Nations from Harvard University where he served as the Executive Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government. Prior to this, he served as Director of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Director of Global and Multilateral Affairs at the National Security Council in the White House.

Dr. Orr has published extensively on post-conflict reconstruction, the United Nations, peacekeeping, and democracy promotion. His publications include Winning the Peace: an American Strategy for Post-Conflict Reconstruction (CSIS Press, 2004) and Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, 1997). He received his Ph.D. and M.P.A. in International Relations from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and his bachelor’s degree from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

Jessica Seddon Wallack is Director of the Center for Development Finance at the Institute for Financial Management and Research, in Chennai, India. She is also Assistant Professor of Political Economy, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California. She was a lecturer of Public Policy at Stanford University. She also worked in the World Bank where she reported to Joseph Stiglitz.

Dr. Wallack has published a number of articles in Journal of International Economics, Latin American Journal of Economic Development, De Economist and Journal of Asian Economics and in the latest issue of the Journal for Foreign Affairs she has co-authored the article “The Other Climate Changers” where it is argued that most initiatives to slow global warming involve reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Little attention has been given to reducing emissions of the light-absorbing particles known as "black carbon" or the gases that form ozone--even though doing so, in the opinion of the authors, would be easier and cheaper and have a more immediate effect.

She holds a PhD in Political Economy from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and B.A. Magna Cum Laude, Political Science and certificate in Latin American Studies from Harvard University

Massimo Tavoni is research associate at the Princeton Environmental Institute and senior researcher at Eni Enrico Mattei Foundation (FEEM). His research is about energy and climate change economics. He focuses on the evaluation of international climate mitigation policies, with a focus on technological evolution and uncertainty, and the role of tropical deforestation. He is also interested in the consumption patterns of environmentally stressful goods, especially in countries in economic transition.

Dr. Tavoni is one of the two lead authors of the paper “Sharing Global CO2 Emissions among 1 Billion High Emitters," published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper proposes to use individual emissions as the best, fairest way of calculating a nation's responsibility to curb its output of carbon dioxide. The methodology does not mean that individuals would be singled out, only that these calculations would form the basis of a more equitable formula, according to the authors.

He holds a Laurea cum Laude in Engineering from the University of Bologna, an MSc in Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in Political Economics from the Catholic University of Milan.