About the Earth Debates panel members

Richard Black

As the BBC’s environment correspondent for the last 6 years, Richard has covered the climate summits in Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun in 2010, and the biodiversity summit in Nagoya in 2010. Previously he produced and presented science programmes for the BBC World Service.

Food security debate

Sue Dibb

Sue is Executive Director of the Food Ethics Council, the UK’s leading organisation working for fairer and sustainable food and farming systems. She has a background in ethical and sustainable food issues and is highly experienced in researching, developing and promoting sustainable food policies.

Before taking up her role at the Food Ethics Council, Sue advised government, leading the Sustainable Development Commission’s Enabling Sustainable Lives team. Previously she was principal policy advocate for food policy at the National Consumer Council and co-director of the Food Commission. She has also worked with Consumers International and Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food and Farming.  Sue is currently Chair of the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, which aims to make healthy and sustainable food readily available to all across the city.

Barry Gardiner

Barry is a Labour Party politician. He was elected to Parliament as MP for Brent North in 1997. In 2011 he was appointed as the Special Envoy on Climate Change and the Environment to the Lead of the Opposition, the Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP. In this capacity he works with other senior legislators around the world to provide innovative thinking on current debates within international environmental bodies.

Reporting directly to Ed Miliband, Barry provides regular assessments of the national priorities and positions of other countries on environmental issues. He suggests areas for further development and policy cooperation in order to achieve international consensus around issues of climate change, natural wealth accounting, desertification, biodiversity and sustainable development.

In July 2011, he launched the new All Party Parliamentary Group on Biodiversity to help promote the protection of biodiversity to Parliament, in business and across the wider community.

John Ingram

John Ingram is Food Security Leader with the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and is based at the Environmental Change Institute in the University of Oxford. Following extensive field experience in Africa and Asia on agricultural and forest research projects, he coordinated international research on the interactions between global environmental change and agroecology.

For the last 10 years he has worked at a senior science policy level as Executive Officer for the international research project ‘Global Environmental Change and Food Systems’. He has published on a wide range of topics from soil organic matter dynamics to food security issues, and recently led the preparation of Food Security for a Planet under Pressure – an international policy brief for input into Rio+20.

Camilla Toulmin

An economist by training, Camilla has worked mainly in Africa combining field research, policy analysis and advocacy. Her work has aimed to understand how environmental, economic and political change impact on people’s lives, and how policy reform can bring real change on the ground.

As Director of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) since 2004, Camilla has focused on developing the Institute’s strategy and communications. The Institute has grown under her leadership and now focuses on four principal goals that bring together diverse areas of work on climate change, human settlements, natural resources, and sustainable markets. This year, the Institute celebrates 40 years of ideas and action for sustainable development to feed into Rio+20.

Green cities debate

Professor Thomas Elmqvist

Thomas is a professor of Natural Resource Management at Stockholm University. His research focuses on ecosystem services, land use change, natural disturbances and components of resilience, including the role of social institutions. He coordinates major interdisciplinary research themes as part of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, focusing on the management of ecosystem services in urban landscapes, involving 12 cities around the world.

The centre will produce the City Biodiversity Outlook report in late 2012. It will be the first comprehensive global analysis of how urbanisation and urban growth impacts biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics in terrestrial, freshwater and marine systems. The report will provide key messages to decision-makers on the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.

Conor Riffle

Conor serves as Head of Cities for the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), an independent non-profit organisation that serves as a global system through which organisations and businesses disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and climate change strategies.

Previously, Conor spent 3 years in various roles at the William J Clinton Foundation. Conor holds an MA from the London School of Economics.

David Stubbs

David is Head of Sustainability for the London 2012 Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, a role he has held since joining the London 2012 bid team in November 2003. He is responsible for developing and coordinating the sustainability programme for the London 2012 Games.

David is an internationally renowned specialist in the field of sport and environment. During the 1990s he was Director of the European Golf Association Ecology Unit and he established the first pan-European environmental management programme for golf courses. In 1998 he began advising the British Olympic Association on environmental matters and in 2000 he worked with the environment team at the Sydney Olympics.

His career started in the field of conservation biology and he is a full member of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management and a Chartered Environmentalist.

Dr Paul Toyne

Paul is Head of Sustainability at WSP Group, an international design and engineering consultancy, which he joined in 2010. He leads their Future Cities work. He was previously Head of Sustainability for the UK for Bovis Lend Lease, where he was the architect of an award-winning sustainability strategy focused on carbon reductions, waste, responsible sourcing, sustainable design and local employment.

Paul has a diverse background in global applied research as an ecologist and conservationist, campaign work with the World Wildlife Fund, and business and government consultation through his CSR (corporate social responsibility) consultancy, Article 13.  

As well as leading biodiversity assessments and undertaking environmental impact assessments, Paul has worked with governments to help create new protected areas. He has also helped develop market tools like the Forest Stewardship Council for timber products and managed species conservation programmes. He has worked extensively with governments, private sector and non-governmental groups on the development of policy on issues of sustainable communities, trade and the environment.

Beyond GDP debate

Emily Benson

Emily is a project manager for the Green Economy Coalition, a diverse group of global organisations who are committed to accelerating the transition to a green economy. Over the last 9 months she has worked with the Coalition to build a shared narrative and common set of policy asks for the Rio+20 earth summit.

Previously, Emily was the Head of Communications and Engagement for Stakeholder Forum for a sustainable future and has worked with United Nations agencies (including UNAIDs, UNEP and UNODC) and the Climate Investment Funds, administered by the World Bank, to improve their work with civil society and businesses. She also worked with the BBC World Service Trust and UN Radio to help journalists from developing countries report on global sustainability issues.

Hannah Ryder

Hannah is a senior UK government economist in the Department for International Development (DFID), where she oversees the department’s evidence-base and policy on green growth, including for Rio+20 and other international meetings such as the G20. She also provides direct advice to DFID country offices on how to design and implement new green growth programmes.

Before joining DFID, Hannah was a climate negotiator in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, where she oversaw the UK’s short and long-term strategy for financing and governing action on climate change in developing countries, as well as DECC’s first ever £400m contribution to the Climate Investment Funds. She organised the first Capital Markets Climate Initiative to link London’s financial sector with developing countries interested in low-carbon investment.

Hannah was a co-author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published in 2006, and also worked on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the design of Phase I and II of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

Andrew Simms

Until the end of 2010, Andrew was Policy Director at the New Economics Foundation (nef), founding their climate change, energy and interdependence programmes. He is the author of Ecological Debt: Global Warming and the Wealth of Nations (2009). Described by New Scientist magazine as ‘a master at joined-up progressive thinking,’ he co-authored the Green New Deal report and co-founded the Green New Deal group.

Andrew writes regularly for the national press and is on the boards of Greenpeace UK, the climate campaign 10:10 and The Energy and Resources Institute Europe. He worked for many years for international development organisations, writing extensively on issues of climate change and poverty reduction. He was one of the original organisers of the Jubilee 2000 Coalition developing country debt relief campaign, devised the idea of Ecological Debt Day (also known as Overshoot Day), and was behind the onehundredmonths.org initiative that is counting down the time left for action before the world enters a new more perilous phase of global warming.

Paul Simpson

Paul is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the only global climate change reporting system. CDP uses the information organisations and businesses disclose about their greenhouse gas emissions and climate change strategies to help shape financial and policy decisions with the goal of motivating investors, corporations, and governments to prevent dangerous climate change. CDP was awarded first prize in the 2012 Zayed Future Energy Prize.

Paul sits on the board of EIRIS, on the advisory panel of Guardian Sustainable Business, on the steering committee of Forest Footprint Disclosure and on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change High Level Clean Development Mechanism Panel. Paul has previously worked with the International Society for Ecology and Culture and is the former Director of the Social Venture Network.

Ecosystem economics debate

• Tim Radford, former Science Editor of the Guardian, stood in for Richard Black for the first debate, due to illness.

Professor Sir Robert Watson

Robert Watson is Chief Scientific Advisor to Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and former Chief Scientist and Director for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (ESSD) at the World Bank. Before joining the World Bank, Professor Watson was Associate Director for Environment in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President in the White House. Before joining the Clinton White House, Professor Watson was Director of the Science Division and Chief Scientist for the Office of Mission to Planet Earth at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Claire Brown

Claire is a Senior Programme Officer for Ecosystem Services and Assessment at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) World Conservation Monitoring Centre. As a senior scientist Claire coordinated the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, which was the first assessment of how the environment across the whole of the UK is changing and what essential services ecosystems provide to people. Her current work includes coordinating the Secretariat for the international initiative The Sub-Global Assessment Network, which aims to create a common platform for assessing ecosystems across the world. She works with a range of countries to enable them to carry out ecosystem assessments and supports UNEP in putting together the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Ian Dickie

Ian has been a Director of the Aldersgate Group (an alliance of leaders from business, politics and society that drives action for a sustainable economy) for 4 years, and leads the Business and Biodiversity activities. His interests span biodiversity, natural resources policy and the impacts of environmental policies on economic objectives. He is also Business Development Director at EFTEC (Economics for the Environment Consultancy) and has worked on European and UK natural environmental policies, providing inputs for impact assessments of new natural environment regulations. Prior to joining EFTEC, he was Head of Economics at the RSPB.

Will Evison

Will is an environmental economist in PricewaterhouseCoopers' sustainability and climate change team specialising in green economic growth, ecosystem policy and non-market valuation of the environment. Will was a lead author and chapter editor for The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Report for Business (TEEB D3) and a technical advisor to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Corporate Ecosystem Valuation initiative (WBCSD CEV). He now runs the WBCSD’s ecosystem policy and valuation helpdesk and is a regular speaker on the subject.