Erik Solheim, a well-known global leader on environment and development, has joined Annapurna Media Network’s Unity for Sustainability Campaign as a green Ambassador.
“Nepal is a beautiful country, with fantastic people. It is also vulnerable to climate—shifting rains in the Terai or Himalayan glacier melting. I am happy to join Annapurna Unity for Sustainability as green Ambassador,” he said through a tweet.
He served as Norwegian Minister of Environment and International Development from 2005-12. During that period, he initiated the global program for the conservation of rainforests and brought through game-changing National legislation- among them the Biodiversity Act and legislation to protect Oslo city forests. He brought Norwegian development assistance to 1 percent, the highest in the world.
Solheim has been chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (the main body of world donors) as well as Executive Director of UN Environment. He led the peace efforts in Sri Lanka as the main negotiator of the peace process and played a vital role in peace efforts in Nepal, Myanmar, and Sudan.
Currently, he is a senior adviser at World Resources Institute and President of the Belt and Road Green Development Institute in Beijing.
Solheim is Chief Mentor of Global Alliance for Sustainable Planet and Chairman of the Board of Afroz Shah Foundation in Mumbai. He is an adviser to April/RGE world’s largest paper and pulp company in Indonesia, to Aker Horizons, Norway’s leading green industry player, and to Norwegian electric battery company Morrows. He serves as chairman of the development roundtable in Green Hydrogen Organization as well as co-chair of Treelion a green blockchain company in Hong Kong.
AMN’s campaign aims to highlight climate change issues. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba inaugurated the campaign amid a special function organized on January 7 in Kathmandu. To fight climate change individual steps are not enough and all stakeholders need to jointly work and raise their voices. Right now, these stakeholders are not working in unison and there is a lack of coordination, and hence no concrete output. AMN hopes to change this state of affairs by bringing together climate stakeholders and fostering meaningful interactions between them.
