Who will replace Patricia Espinosa as the UN climate chief?

Who’s finest suited to guide the world into delivering important emission cuts this decade? 

That’s the query being requested on the UN headquarters in New York. Mexican diplomat Patricia Espinosa is stepping down as head of UN Local weather Change in July after a six-year stint.

Discussions for her alternative have been sluggish to get going. The job advert for her successor was posted on the UN web site on Friday, leaving simply over a month for governments to place their candidates ahead earlier than the 24 June deadline.

Candidates might want to show senior management expertise, “strategic imaginative and prescient and an intimate understanding” of local weather and growth points. Ministerial expertise is a plus. The job relies on the UN Local weather Change headquarters in Bonn, Germany, and the wage is $207,000, in line with the newest UN pay grid.

With earlier government secretaries from Europe and Latin American, there’s a push for African and Asian candidates to be given an opportunity. Feminine candidates are “particularly welcome,” the advert stipulates.

UN chief António Guterres has been a vocal promoter of girls’s management. Capitals will foyer and his deputy Amina Mohammed is known to have affect over the method. In the end, the choice lies with him.

It is a robust job. The profitable candidate might want to steer worldwide local weather efforts via a important decade of motion for assembly international local weather targets.

They’ll “want to begin constructing a brand new structure of accountability,” one senior supply near the UN instructed Local weather Dwelling Information.

Managing the transition from specializing in negotiations to implementation might be important. “That may be a big organisational problem. Ideally you will want somebody with direct expertise of supply past the world of diplomacy,” stated Kaveh Guilanpour, veteran local weather adviser.

In no explicit order, listed here are 9 runners and riders.

Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya – Rwanda

Rwanda’s setting minister has a powerful diplomatic file and longstanding ministerial expertise. Her title comes up rather a lot in local weather circles as a possible successor to Espinosa.

On the Cop26 local weather talks, she co-led ministerial discussions to align nations’ local weather plans over a standard time interval. Extra not too long ago, she collectively and efficiently proposed a decision for a plastic air pollution treaty on the UN Surroundings Meeting.

She studied bodily chemistry in Russia and holds a PhD from the Indian Institute of Know-how-IIT Roorkee. 

Earlier than her appointment on the setting ministry in November 2019, Mujawamariya served as Rwanda’s ambassador to Russia, and the nation’s schooling and subsequently gender minister. 

She is fluent in English, French and Russian.

Yasmine Fouad –  Egypt

Surroundings minister Yasmine Fouad was assigned “ministerial coordinator and envoy” for Cop27, the local weather summit in Sharm el-Sheikh this November – a job she must give up to step into Espinosa’s footwear.

Whereas the federal government gave her the junior position to overseas minister Sameh Shoukry’s presidency of the Cop, Fouad has ample local weather and UN expertise.

A local weather scientist by background, Fouad was a lead creator on a chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change’s particular report on desertification in 2017.

She was made deputy setting minister in 2014, when she supported the Egyptian president as coordinator of the committee of African heads of states for local weather change (CAHOSCC), earlier than her promotion to minister in 2018.

Fouad has labored with a number of UN organisations together with the Inexperienced Local weather Fund, the World Surroundings Facility and the UN Growth Programme (UNDP) on implementing growth and local weather tasks in Egypt.

Maite Nkoana-Mashabane – South Africa

South Africa’s minister of girls, youth and individuals with disabilities has been a vocal advocate for gender-responsive local weather coverage.

She has been a minister for 13 years, serving on the worldwide relations and cooperation portfolio for 9 years. Throughout that point, South Africa turned a member of the group of rising economies often called Brics (along with Brazil, Russia, India and China).

In 2011, Nkoana-Mashabane presided over Cop17 in Durban, one of many newest working UN local weather summits on file. Nations agreed on a roadmap to a worldwide local weather treaty (which turned the Paris Settlement) and established the Inexperienced Local weather Fund.

Some sources which have labored together with her describe her as “an excellent candidate”.

However campaigners are usually not impressed by her file. Nkoana-Mashabane’s assist for disgraced president Jacob Zuma, who’s dealing with corruption costs, may play towards her.

Sharon Ikeazor – Nigeria

As Nigeria’s setting minister, Ikeazor oversaw a pioneering local weather invoice to set annual carbon budgets in direction of internet zero emissions by 2060.

Sam Onuigbo, a Nigerian lawmaker who sponsored the invoice, described her as “a purpose getter and a result-oriented chief”.

Her ministerial time period involves an finish in 2023 and she or he could wish to line up the following job.

Earlier than her appointment in 2019, Ikeazor was a lawyer with a number of nationwide and worldwide banks. She labored for Shell in Nigeria within the early Nineteen Nineties earlier than establishing her personal authorized observe.

She continued to supply authorized recommendation to the oil and gasoline sector in Nigeria earlier than getting into politics in 2011.

She is a champion for ladies’s management and based an NGO to offer internally displaced ladies interest-free loans to begin small-scale companies.

Naoko Ishii – Japan

Ishii has in depth expertise of working with UN organisations on local weather and growth finance, making her a powerful candidate for Asia.

She was elected CEO and Chairperson of the World Surroundings Facility in 2012 and led the grant-giving organisation for eight years till September 2020.

Earlier than becoming a member of the GEF, she served as Japan’s deputy vice minister of finance and negotiated the design of the Inexperienced Local weather Fund. She held positions on the World Financial institution, the IMF and the Harvard Institute for Worldwide Growth.

She serves as the manager vp of the Institute for Future Initiative and the director of the Heart for World Commons  on the College of Tokyo.

She is a member of the China Council for Worldwide Cooperation on Surroundings and Growth, the UN Sustainable Growth Options Community and an envoy for the Meals and Land Use Coalition.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati – Indonesia 

An economist by coaching, Indrawati has served as Indonesia’s finance minister since 2016 – a job she beforehand occupied 2005-2010.

She resigned as finance minister in 2010 when she was appointed managing director of the World Financial institution group. She was credited with steering Indonesia’s financial system via the 2008 monetary disaster by driving investments – though lawmakers raised considerations over “suspicious and presumably fraudulent transactions” through the bailout interval.

Indrawati has a strong grasp of the event and finance challenges the growing world is dealing with.

Through the Cop13 local weather talks in Bali in 2007, she introduced growth and finance ministers into the local weather tent for the primary time. This led to the creation of the “Bali breakfasts”, a sequence of annual conferences with the World Financial institution, the IMF and ministers.

She serves because the co-chair of the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Local weather Motion.

Teresa Ribera – Spain

Ribera is broadly seen as having a few of the most related expertise to tackle the position as head of UN Local weather Change.

Local weather adviser Guilanpour instructed Local weather Dwelling the Spanish jurist and deputy prime minister “ticks all of the containers”. 

Below her management, the Spanish authorities stepped in to host the Cop25 local weather talks in 2019 with only one month’s discover after Chile withdrew due to social unrest in Santiago. She supported the Chilean presidency in clinching a deal, albeit an underwhelming one, two days into additional time.

As minister for the ecological transition, Ribera reached an settlement with Spanish unions to shut coal mines as a part of an power transition funding package deal. She beforehand headed Paris-based environmental thinktank Iddri.

Her transfer to Bonn could be a win for the UN and a loss for Spain. Nevertheless, growing nations could not wish to see a European within the prime local weather job.

Catherine McKenna – Canada 

McKenna, Canada’s former setting and infrastructure and communities minister, left politics final yr to spend extra time on “[her] youngsters and the local weather”.

In March, she was appointed to chair Guterres’ anti-greenwash squad which is tasked with presenting suggestions by Cop27 for guaranteeing the environmental integrity of firms, cities and areas’ internet zero commitments. However as one supply put it, “nothing is everlasting”.

McKenna is well-known within the worldwide local weather group. She signed the Paris Settlement on behalf of Canada and collectively spearheaded the Powering Previous Coal Alliance.

However she could also be extra helpful to Guterres on his internet zero professional group.

Selwin Hart – Barbados 

Hart was appointed UN particular adviser to the secretary-general on local weather motion and simply transition at first of 2020.

A former chief local weather negotiator for Barbados and a lead negotiator on finance for the Alliance of Small Island Creating States (Aosis), Hart led the UN workforce that helped ship the 2014 UN Local weather Summit in New York.

He beforehand served as the manager director for the Caribbean area on the Inter-American Growth Financial institution and as a local weather advisor to the Caribbean Growth Financial institution.

Hart has no expertise in a ministerial position and sources instructed Local weather Dwelling that can play towards him. Plus the final two government secretary of UN Local weather Change have come from the group of Latin America and Caribbean nations. However his proximity to Guterres offers Hart a shot.