Rio Climate Action Week

Malini Mehra is curator and co-convenor of Rio Climate Action Week. She has worked on climate change since COP3 in Kyoto and now leads GLOBE Legislators, the environmental organisation founded by Al Gore, John Kerry and other parliamentarians, which now serves as the UNFCCC Focal Point for parliamentarians. An award-winning sustainability leader, Malini brings more than three decades of international experience on climate change and sustainable development globally. From teen student leader in the 1980s to NGO founder, she has forged a long and distinguished international career working with business, government, the United Nations and civil society – including campaigning NGOs such as Oxfam and Friends of the Earth – to shape policy and accelerate action on climate change and sustainable development.

Some highlights from her long and varied career include serving as an advisor to UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan and working with President Cardoso of Brazil on UN-civil society reform. While in the UK Government 20 years ago, she was the architect of the UK’s pioneering sustainable development dialogue initiative with Brazil, China, India, South Africa and Mexico. She has served on advisory and governance boards of numerous corporates and NGOs, including the world’s largest companies such as Unilever, BHP and Hewlett Packard, China Dialogue and the Global Reporting Initiative. In 2000, she founded Centre for Social Markets, India’s first national award-winning climate change mobilisation NGO working with cities, business and youth. Her urban sustainability expertise dates back to Local Agenda 21 in the mid-1990s ,and she served as a Commissioner to the Mayor of London on Sustainable Development for 7 years.

Born and raised in India, she has lived all over the world and speaks six languages. Now a naturalised British citizen, she lives in her adopted home of London with her husband and three children. She is a founding organiser of London Climate Action Week and has taken it global, curating similar climate action weeks in Baku and now Rio de Janeiro. Her academic background is in political science, gender and development and she has degrees from Smith College (USA) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS-Sussex). A keen swimmer, she is also the founder of the Teach A Girl To Swim campaign to save lives, tackle climate change and empower women and girls.

More at: www.malinimehra.com