Recording Circularity GAP report 2021

David Suzuki

Award-winning geneticist and broadcaster David Suzuki co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation in 1990. In 1975, he helped launch and host the long-running CBC Radio’s, Quirks and Quarks. In 1979, he became familiar to audiences around the world as host of CBC TV’s The Nature of Things, which still airs new episodes.

From 1969 to 2001, he was a faculty member at the University of British Columbia, and is currently professor emeritus. He is widely recognized as a world leader in sustainable ecology and has received numerous awards for his work, including a UNESCO prize for science and a United Nations Environment Program medal. He is also a Companion of the Order of Canada.

He has 29 honorary degrees from universities in Canada, the US and Australia. For his support of Canada’s Indigenous peoples, Suzuki has been honoured with eight names and formal adoption by two First Nations.

In 2010, the National Film Board of Canada and Legacy Lecture Productions produced Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie, which won a People’s Choice documentary award at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. The film weaves together scenes from the places and events that shaped Suzuki’s life and career with a filming of his “Last Lecture”, which he describes as “a distillation of my life and thoughts, my legacy, what I want to say before I die.”

Dr Anthony Nyong

Mr Nyong is director of the Climate Change and Green Growth Department at the African Development Bank and also responsible for the secretariat of the African Circular Economy Alliance (ACEA). He is named among world’s “20 Most Influential People in Climate Policy” in a peer-to-peer learning platform for governments.
Dr Nyong joined the Bank in 2008 and built up the Bank’s climate change initiatives including its Green Growth Agenda. Prior to joining the Bank, he worked as a Senior Program Specialist for Climate Change at the International Development Research Centre in Nairobi. In this role, Nyong successfully mobilized substantial resources to set up the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa program that has significantly built adaptation capacity across the continent. Prior to that, he was a Coordinating Lead Author of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and was a Co-Recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions. Mr. Nyong also served as a Professor of Climate Change at the University of Jos, Nigeria.

His Excellency Mr Quijandria

Mr Quijandrio, is Minister of Environment of Peru. He is professional in environmental management, with 20 years of experience in environmental policies with emphasis on climate change, financing for sustainable development and biodiversity conservation. He has been Co-President of the Green Climate Fund, Representative of The Nature Conservancy in Peru and Technical Director of the Fund for Natural Protected Areas of Peru. He has done consulting work for the IDB, AVINA Foundation, GIZ and the Costa Rican Tourism Institute. He is a sociologist and Master in Natural Resources Management.

Martin Frick

Martin Frick is deputy to the Special Envoy for the United Nattion’s Food Systems Summit 2021.
Martin previously served as the Representative of Germany to the International Organizations in-country, including the Secretariats of the UN Convention to Combat Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the UN Convention to Combat desertification (UNCCD). Prior to this assignment, he led E3G’s – Third Generation Environmentalists, a leading climate change think tank– Programme Leader for climate diplomacy from November 2010 to June 2012.
Dr. Frick has been a German diplomat since 1996. He served as the German representative for human rights and humanitarian affairs at the UN General Assembly from 2005 to 2007. In 2007, during the German EU presidency, Dr. Frick was the European Union’s lead negotiator in the establishment of the UN Human Rights Council. He was also the EU negotiator on resolutions on the right to development and on the human rights situation in Darfur. From 1999 to 2002 he served as Consul and as Deputy Ambassador in post-crisis Albania.

From 2002 to 2005, he was the Cabinet Affairs Advisor to German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. 2007 to 2010 Dr. Frick defined the Global Humanitarian Forum’s (set up by former UN-Secretary General Kofi Annan) work on the human face of climate change and on climate justice. Dr. Frick has a PhD in Law from Regensburg University, and a diploma in International Relations from Science Po Strasbourg. He was a senior fellow at Demos, New York as well as a guest lecturer at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.