Keynote presentations

During the conference, threel keynote speakers addressed the insightful and inspirational speeches about the overarching conference theme 'Communicating and Engaging Ecosystem Services in Policy and Practice in Asia' with perspective of culture, science, policy and practice. 

Click the presentation titles below to view the presentations in PDF.

Keynotes

Vinay Sheel Oberoi 

(Former Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to UNESCO, Paris)  

The role of Ecosystem Services in the communication and management of UNESCO protected areas

Pavan Sukhdev 

(Leader of the TEEB study and now President of WWF International) 

Lets Change Our Economic Compass: from GDP to corporate performance Part 1. &  Part 2. 

Dr. Madhav B. Karki

(Co-chair IUCN-CEM and Co-lead of the IPBES Asia & Oceania Assessment) 

State of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Asia-Pacific: Opportunities in the midst of challenges

Biographies

Vinay Sheel Oberoi 
Former Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to UNESCO, Paris 

Mr. Vinay Sheel Oberoi, a post-graduate in Economics, was an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) Officer of the Government of India with distinguished service tenure of nearly 37 years. He served in various departments of his office cadre as well as on central government deputation and assignments abroad.  

He retired as the Secretary, Department of Higher Education in the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, New Delhi. However, he continues to be associated with the government and other agencies in an advisory and consulting role.

Mr. Oberoi was Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to UNESCO, Paris from 2010 to 2014. During his stay in Paris, he spearheaded the task of successfully bringing in transformational changes in the working of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. 

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Pavan Sukhdev
Leader of the TEEB study and now President of WWF International

Pavan Sukhdev is a sustainability thought leader, an experienced innovator in practice, and an influential voice amongst national environmental policy makers and institutions focused on sustainable development.

As Special Adviser and Head of UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative and Study Leader of TEEB (2008-2011),  Pavan led the path-breaking TEEB report suite (‘The Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity’) and UNEP’s landmark report ‘Towards a Green Economy’. He continues to support TEEB as Special Adviser to its new study “TEEB for Agriculture and Food”.

Pavan was awarded the McCluskey Fellowship (2011) by Yale University, where he taught a graduate course on TEEB and wrote his book “Corporation 2020”. Based on his book, his campaign “Corporation 2020”, launched at Rio+20 (2012) promotes tomorrow’s corporation as one with positive rather than negative externalities, presenting key policy reforms needed to transform today’s business for tomorrow’s world.

As Founder-CEO of GIST Advisory (a sustainability consultancy that advises corporations worldwide) and as Founder-Trustee of GIST, (an NGO that measures sustainable development at all levels in India) Pavan’s focus now is to demonstrate and mainstream the vision of TEEB, Green Economy and Corporation 2020. 

A career banker, Pavan delivered TEEB’s Interim Report (2008) whilst still working full time as a Managing Director of Global Markets Division at Deutsche Bank. He is a member of the board of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and also served on the boards of Conservation International and the Global Reporting Initiative. His work has been recognized through several awards, including the Gothenburg Award for Sustainable Development (2013) and the Blue Planet Prize (2016). In January 2018 Pavan was nominated as President of the WWF International Board.

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Dr. Madhav B. Karki 
Co-chair IUCN-CEM and Co-lead of the IPBES Asia & Oceania Assessment

Dr. Madhav Karki has over 40 years of professional experiences in Biodiversity Conservation, Natural Resources Management, Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation and Sustainable Development across Hindu Kush Himalaya, South/Southeast Asian and Africa.

Dr. Karki holds a Ph.D. and MSc in Forestry and Natural Resources Management and has +100 professional publications. He has been actively participating in the global Climate Change, Environment, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development discourses contributing his knowledge and insights in various forums.

He just completed serving as the Co-chair cum Coordinating Lead Author of the IPBES sponsored Regional Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Assessment in Asia Pacific regions which was approved by the IPBES Plenary-6 and released in March, 2018.

He is currently working as the Team Leader; Watershed Management in the ADB/Govt. of Nepal supported Bagmati River Basin Improvement Project as well as of the DFID funded Adaptation at Scale prize project.

Dr. Karki has been Lead Evaluator and team member in a number of sustainable land management, landscape conservation, climate change and sustainable development projects and programmes in SE Asia and Nepal including Hariyoban Phase 1; GEF/GoN/WWF funded Sustainable Land Management in Churia Range, Nepal (SLMCRN) in Nepal and ASEAN-Swiss Social Forestry and Climate Change Programme in SE Asia.

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