Jim Kolbe
Climate Change
Climate change threatens poverty reduction, economic development, and the destruction of our way of life. At the same time, reducing North American and European dependency on hydrocarbons from geopolitically unstable regions would lessen security risks. Poor people in developing countries will bear a disproportionate share of the negative impacts from climate change: they are concentrated in regions where climate stress will be early and severe; their livelihoods are threatened; and their limited economic and institutional capacity diminishes their ability to cope with rapid and severe changes. Development needs to be a much more integral element in climate change debates. Tackling climate change involves both how to reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere and the oceans (mitigation) and how to adapt to its realities. Development experts have a particular role to focus on the ways in which developing countries and their peoples can respond to climate change (adaptation).
Challenge Members:
- Geoffrey Lamb (Lead Coordinator, United States) is currently Managing Director for Public Policy for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Previously, he was Vice President, Concessional Finance and Global Partnerships at the World Bank where he chaired a series of international negotiations through which governments provided the largest Bank increase in decades for the world's poorest countries.
- Noam Unger (United States) is the Policy Director of the Brookings Institution's Foreign Assistance Reform Project. Mr. Unger served from 2003-2007 at the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he worked on humanitarian affairs, reconstruction, conflict transformation, and interagency coordination.
- Mats Hårsmar (Sweden) for Gunilla Carlsson is Chief Analyst at the Division for Development Policies at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He is the primary staff member at the Ministry for the Transatlantic Taskforce on Development. Previously, he served as Head Secretary of the Expert Group on Development Issues, EGDI, which was an independent research group, with its secretariat placed within the Ministry.
- Michael Hofmann (Germany) is currently Executive Director for Germany at the World Bank since November 1st 2007. Prior to this appointment, Mr. Hofmann was Director General in the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
- Simon Maxwell (United Kingdom) became Director of the Overseas Development Institute in 1997. An economist by training, Mr. Maxwell worked overseas for ten years, in Kenya and India for UNDP, and in Bolivia for UKODA; and for 16 years at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, latterly as Programme Manager for Poverty, Food Security and the Environment.
- Alison Evans (United Kingdom) is Director of Programmes for Poverty and Public Policy at the Overseas Development Institute. The Poverty & Public Policy Group hosts work on aid effectiveness, aid architecture, aid agency incentives and practices. An economist by training, Alison has worked on aid and aid effectiveness issues for 20 years, including six years at the World Bank.
- Jim McDonald (United States) is Vice President for Policy and Program at Bread for the World where he manages the organization’s work on policy issues and their programs of advocacy, education and social change. He led Bread for the World’s effort to secure debt relief for the world's poorest countries. He was previously an international policy analyst.ent.