GLCA - Members & Senior Advisors

GLCA Members, Facilitator and Senior Advisors

Global Leadership for Climate Action (GLCA) is a joint initiative of the United Nations Foundation and the Club of Madrid and includes former heads of state and government as well as leaders from business, government and civil society from more than 20 countries. United Nations Foundation President Timothy E. Wirth and former Chilean President and current Club of Madrid President Ricardo Lagos serve as GLCA Co-Chairs. Mohamed T. El-Ashry, Former CEO and Chairman of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) serves as GLCA’s Facilitator and Advisor.

GLCA Members

GRO HARLEM BRUNDTLAND
Former Prime Minister of Norway

KIM CAMPBELL
Former Prime Minister of Canada

FERNANDO HENRIQUE CARDOSO
Former President of Brazil

JOSÉ MARÍA FIGUERES
Former President of Costa Rica

FELIPE GONZÀLEZ
Former Prime Minister of Spain

ENRIQUE IGLESIAS
Secretary General, Iberoamericana

LIONEL JOSPIN
Former Prime Minister of France

YORIKO KAWAGUCHI
Former Foreign, Environment Minister, Japan

RICARDO LAGOS
Former President of Chile
GLCA Co-Chair

HONG-KOO LEE
Former Prime Minister of South Korea

PAAVO LIPPONEN
Former Prime Minister of Finland

WANGARI MAATHAI
Nobel Peace Laureate
Founder, Greenbelt Movement

BENJAMIN MKAPA
Former President of Tanzania

VALLI MOOSA
Former South African Environment Minister
and former President of the IUCN

MARY ROBINSON
Former President of Ireland

JAMES E. ROGERS
Chairman & CEO, Duke Energy

PETRE ROMAN
Former Prime Minister of Romania

YASHWANT SINHA
Former Finance, External Affairs Minister, India

GEORGE SOROS
Founder & Chairman
Open Society Institute, Soros Fund LLC

KLAUS TOPFER KLAUS TÖPFER
Former Executive Director, UNEP

TED TURNER
Chairman, Turner Enterprises

TIMOTHY E. WIRTH
President, UN Foundation and Better World Fund
GLCA Co-Chair

JAMES WOLFENSOHN
Former President, World Bank

ERNESTO ZEDILLO
Former President of Mexico

SHI ZHENGRONG
Chairman & CEO Suntech Power, China

GLCA Facilitator

MOHAMED EL-ASHRY
Senior Fellow, UN Foundation

GLCA Senior Advisors

JUNFENG LI
Executive Director, China Renewable Energy Association

HERMANN MULDER HERMAN MULDER
Senior Advisor to the UN Global Compact and World Business
Council for Sustainable Development

R.K. PACHAURI
Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

DR. YOUBA SOKONA
Executive Secretary, Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS)

SIR CRISPIN TICKELL
Former UK Ambassador to the UN

LAURENCE TUBIANA
Director, Institute for Sustainable Development and
International Relations (IDDRI), France

[ Back ]

Unaccounted Feedbacks From Climate-Induced Ecosystem Changes May Increase Future Climate Warming
redOrbit: The terrestrial biosphere regulates atmospheric composition, and hence climate. Projections of future climate changes already account for "carbon-climate feedbacks", which means that more CO2 is released from soils in a warming climate than is taken up by plants due to photosynthesis. Climate changes will also lead to increases in the emission of CO2 and methane from wetlands, nitrous oxides from soils, volatile organic compounds from forests, and trace gases and soot from fires. All these ...
Converging weather patterns caused last winter's huge snows in U.S
ScienceDaily: The memory of last winter's blizzards may be fading in this summer's searing heat, but scientists studying them have detected a perfect storm of converging weather patterns that had little relation to climate change. The extraordinarily cold, snowy weather that hit parts of the U.S. East Coast and Europe was the result of a collision of two periodic weather patterns in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds. It was the snowiest ...
Urban Air Pollutants Can Damage IQs Before Baby s First Breath
Scientific American: In a sweltering summer in New York City back in 1999, Yolanda Baldwin was eight months pregnant with her first child. She lived near a gas station and across the street from an intersection choked with exhaust-spewing cars and buses. Sometimes the air was so thick with pollution that she could see it, breathe it, smell it, even taste it. And she often wondered what it might be doing to her unborn child. Now Baldwin and several hundred other mothers whose sons and daughters have been ...
Iran ready to resume nuclear fuel swap talks
Reuters: Iran said today it was ready to return to talks on a nuclear fuel swap, a surprise that came shortly after the EU agreed tougher sanctions, including a block on oil and gas investment. Shortly after EU foreign ministers approved extra restrictions that went well beyond UN sanctions agreed last month, Iran said it was prepared to return to negotiations on a nuclear fuel swap "without conditions", according to the official IRNA news agency. Talking of a letter that Iran handed to ...
The Right and the Climate
New York Times: Climate change legislation has been dying in the Senate for months now, but Harry Reid's decision to finally admit as much – in the midst of an endless East Coast heat wave, no less – has supporters of cap-and-trade casting about for somebody to blame. They've blamed the Obama administration, for prioritizing health care reform over an energy bill. They've blamed the American people, for being too concerned with economic issues to grapple with longer-term threats. And they've blamed figures ...
United Kingdom: Engineers race to design world's biggest offshore wind turbines
Guardian: British, American and Norwegian engineers are in a race to design and build the holy grail of wind turbines – giant, 10MW offshore machines twice the size and power of anything seen before – that could transform the global energy market because of their economies of scale. Today, a revolutionary British design that mimics a spinning sycamore leaf and which was inspired by floating oil platform technology, entered the race. Leading engineering firm Arup is to work with an academic ...
Senate Democrats to introduce energy bill
Reuters: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hopes to unveil his pared-back U.S. energy bill on Tuesday that focuses on reforming offshore oil drilling but Republicans were quick to dismiss its chances of passing. The bill would aim to hold BP Plc accountable for its Gulf of Mexico oil spill and boost investment in vehicles fueled by natural gas and electricity. Democrats, who last week abandoned a key Obama administration effort to forge a broad climate bill because of a lack of votes, ...
Carbon policies will drive heavy industry out of UK, warns report
Business Green: Rising energy prices and the Government's climate change policies will drive energy intensive industries overseas, warns a report published jointly today by the Energy-Intensive Users Group (EIUG) and the TUC. The Cumulative Impact of Climate Change Policies on UK Energy Intensive Industries cites steel making, ceramics, paper, cement and lime manufacture, aluminium and basic inorganic chemicals as industries based in the UK which face increases in their energy costs of up to 141 per ...