Environment as Foundation for Development: A Conversation with Achim Steiner

When: 3 June, 2021 | 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM EDT

Where: Online, register here.

Anniversaries offer opportunities to reflect on the past and imagine the future. In 2022, the United Nations Environment Programme turns fifty and has a chance to reimagine itself. Created to catalyze environmental work within the United Nations and beyond, how has UNEP done? What are the new challenges and what should it do differently? Who can cause that change, and how can they do so?

To explore the questions over the year that commemorates UNEP’s 50th anniversary, the Center for Governance and Sustainability at UMass Boston convenes a series of conversations with leaders around the world who have shaped UNEP’s history. Guests will engage with the new book by Center Director Prof. Maria Ivanova, The Untold Story of the World’s Leading Environmental Institution: UNEP at Fifty.

For our second dialogue, Dr. Maria Ivanova was joined by the Administrator of UNDP and former Executive Director of UNEP, Achim Steiner, to discuss the interconnectedness of environment and development and the future of the two organizations.

Prior to joining UNDP, Steiner was Director of the Oxford Martin School and Professorial Fellow of Balliol College, University of Oxford. He led the United Nations Environment Programme from 2006 to 2016 including during the Rio+20 Conference in 2012, which finalized several reform initiatives in international environmental governance.

The Center for Governance and Sustainability was honored to launch the inaugural conversation for the UNEP at 50 Dialogue Series with Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of UNEP, earlier on 7 May, 2021.