Luis Gomez Echeverri

After over 30 years in a variety of senior positions with the United Nations, Mr. Gomez-Echeverri has been for four years at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis –IIASA – in Austria, where he was the Associate Director of the Global Energy Assessment, the most comprehensive energy assessment to date involving some 500 analysts from around the world and to be published by Cambridge University Press in the fall of 2012. Upon completion of the GEA, he is now a Senior Research Scholar at IIASA. He is also currently a Senior Advisor to the Executive Office of the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon on the Sustainable Energy for All – an initiative launched by the UN SG at Rio + 20. Mr. Gomez-Echeverri was responsible for overseeing the start-up of the SE4ALL programs of action throughout the developing world – over 50 countries - in the run up to Rio + 20 and is now responsible for overseeing the development of programs of action.

In his last fifteen years with the United Nations, Mr. Gomez-Echeverri occupied a number of senior positions including that of Resident Coordinator (Head of UN) in several countries and Chief of Staff for UNDP, the largest development agency within the UN System. He was responsible for overseeing and advising environment, climate change and developments programs and in building up the environment, energy and climate change UNDP portfolio in many countries around the world. He was responsible for setting up the first Environment and Energy Department at the UNDP in the early 90s and became its first director. The Department he created now oversees the largest energy and environment portfolio in the UN System. His last position was as Deputy Director of the Bureau for Development Policy (BDP), the Bureau responsible for development policy and policy advice to developing countries with policy advisors in many parts of the world.Prior to this, he was with the Secretariat of the UNFCCC for several years, where he was the Coordinator of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation of the Convention (SBI), the body responsible for coordinating the climate change political negotiations, Director of Implementation programs for the Convention and Director of programs related to finance of the Convention. In 1992, and working with the Executive Office of the UN Secretary General, Mr. Kofi Anan, he was the Team Leader of a group of some 200 authors who prepared the “Frameworks for Action” in the areas of water, energy, health, agriculture, and biodiversity for the Johannesburg Conference on Sustainable Development. The team was composed of authors from the World Bank, 21 UN agencies, and many other institutions. Mr. Gomez-Echeverri was also the convening lead author for the Framework for Action for agriculture.

Mr. Gomez-Echeverri was educated at Yale University and Georgetown University, US, in the areas of environmental science and international economic affairs respectively. He is a Lead Author of the IPCC WGIII Fifth Assessment Report – Chapter on Finance -and member of the small Core Team responsible for producing the Synthesis Report of the AR5. He is also involved in research in areas concerned with governance of energy, climate change and finance and on the negotiations on climate change. Currently, Mr. Gomez-Echeverri is the Coordinator of the "Finance Circle", a platform of the European Capacity Building Initiative designed to allow climate change negotiators discuss, under Chatham House rules, issues related to the negotiations on the Finance Mechanism of the UNFCCC.

Last update: 25-JAN-2013