Ms. Diann Black-Layne is the Director of the Department of Environment in Antigua and Barbuda and serves as the country's Ambassador for Climate Change. She has worked in environmental management for over 25 years and has been engaged in international climate policy since 2008.

Ms. Black-Layne was first elected as Co-Chair of the Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) in 2012, becoming one of its inaugural leaders alongside a representative from Switzerland. She was re-elected to the role in 2024, continuing her longstanding contributions to global climate finance dialogue. Her leadership extends to previous service on the Transitional Committees that established both the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Loss and Damage Fund.

She has also served as a Board Member of both the GCF and the Adaptation Fund and has represented Antigua and Barbuda as the national focal point to the Global Environment Facility (GEF) for over 15 years. As one of the lead finance negotiators for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), Ms. Black-Layne is a passionate advocate for articulating and communicating the unique national circumstances of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the global climate discourse.

 

Mr. Faustin Munyazikwiye is the Deputy Director General (DDG) of Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA) since November 2017 and holds a master’s degree in environmental management from University of Kwazulu Natal (South Africa,2010) and a Post Graduate Diploma in Human Resources Management from Maastricht School of management (Netherlands, 2008). He has a professional experience of 20 years.

Previously, Faustin held a wide range of technical and senior management positions and responsibilities in the field of environment and climate change including five years as Director of climate change and international obligations Unit, two years as Environmental regulation and standard officer and two years as Environmental Impact Assessment Officer in Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA).

Additionally, Faustin has been climate lead negotiator for Rwanda since 2012 where he participates actively in the negotiations related to climate finance, carbon market (CDM and Carbon Market). Faustin also supports the operationalization and coordination of Green Climate Fund (GCF) National Designated Authority (NDA) secretariat and Global Environment Facility (GEF) operational focal point office  since REMA serves as GCF NDA and GEF operational FP for Rwanda.

Result oriented, team builder, self-motivated Climate change negotiator committed to contribute to Green Economic Growth and Multilateral Environmental Agreement.

Mr. Petrus Muteyauli is the Head of Multilateral Environmental Agreements at the Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism in Namibia. His professional background is in environmental and tourism economics, having served as a Chief Environmental and Tourism Economist. 

Throughout his career, he has played a key role in establishing and operationalizing the Environmental Investment Fund of Namibia. He has also been instrumental in promoting synergies among the Rio Conventions and their associated financial mechanisms within the country. 

Currently, Petrus serves as a Board Member of the Environmental Investment Fund of Namibia. He previously held positions as a member of the Adaptation Fund and as Rapporteur of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) under the UNFCCC. 

He is dedicated to addressing environmental challenges through an economic lens, striving to create a balance between environmental sustainability and economic growth.

Bio coming soon.....

Mr. Yolando 'Lando' Velasco, a senior climate advisor at the Department of Finance of the Philippines, has held a distinguished career in climate policy development. He has led the Climate Finance Team of the United Nations Climate Change Convention Secretariat in Bonn, Germany, for 16 years.

Mr. Velasco’s extensive experience spans 32 years and encompasses national and international climate policy development, climate-related project management, and the intergovernmental process on climate finance. His tenure at the UN Climate Change Secretariat, spanning 25 years, has been marked by his leadership in capacity building, non-Annex I national communications, and climate finance.

Prior to his appointment at the secretariat, Mr. Velasco served as a Technical Adviser to the Philippine delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from 1992 to 1999. During this period, he actively engaged in negotiations on technology transfer, national communications, and the financial mechanism. Additionally, he contributed to the development of policy and projects focused on energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives in the Philippines.

Mr. Davi Bonavides is the Deputy Head of the Climate Negotiation Division at the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As the lead negotiator on climate finance since COP28, he has taken part in key processes, including the establishment of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) and the Sharm el-Sheikh dialogue between Parties, relevant organizations and stakeholders to exchange views on and enhance understanding of the scope of Article 2, paragraph 1(c), of the Paris Agreement and its complementarity with Article 9 of the Paris Agreement. During COP30, he oversaw climate finance negotiations as part of the Presidency team.

He has previously participated in international negotiations on biodiversity (CBD, Nagoya Protocol, Cartagena Protocol, CITES), desertification (UNCCD), sustainable development and industrial development (UNIDO, UNCITRAL), space law (COPUOS), and other thematic areas. At the national level, he served as member the Genetic Heritage Management Council (CGen) and the National Water Resources Council (CNRH). As a career diplomat, he has served at the Embassies of Brazil in Santiago, Vienna, and Maputo.

Ms. Elena Pereira is a senior climate finance advisor with a Master’s degree in Carbon Finance from the University of Edinburgh and a Bachelor’s degree in Finance. She has over 15 years of experience in climate change, project development, international development, multilateral cooperation, and research. Throughout her career, she has worked with a wide range of stakeholders, including governments, private sector, civil society, and local communities.

She has held key roles within international organizations such as GIZ and UNEP and is currently the climate finance advisor for the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Honduras. In recent years, she has played a strategic role in the development of national climate policies, a green taxonomy, and adaptation strategies aligned with global climate frameworks.

As an international negotiator, Elena has led Honduras’ delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and chaired the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC). Since 2021, she has served as the lead climate finance negotiator for both Honduras and AILAC, actively contributing to key climate finance negotiations, such as the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG).

Elena currently serves as a Board Member of the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) and as a member of the Standing Committee on Finance (SCF), representing the Group of Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC). Within the SCF, she has co-facilitated the SCF Forum since 2024.

Ms. Patriciah Roy Akullo is the Social Safeguards and Gender Expert in the Climate Finance Unit, Department of Development Assistance and Regional Cooperation in the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development – Government of Uganda. Her roles focus on climate finance mobilization including the gender technical requirements in climate finance engagements. 

She has over 10 years’ experience following UNFCCC Negotiations as part of the Government of Uganda Delegation and additionally is one of the Finance Coordinators of Least Develop Countries (LDCs) in the UNFCCC process. 

Serves as a Member of the National Climate Change Advisory Committee of the Government of Uganda in addition to several other Boards of Institutions. 

She is dedicated to a Gender -Responsive Climate Finance Agenda.

Dr. Ali Waqas Malik currently serves as Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Pakistan in Seoul, Republic of Korea. As a career diplomat, he has held several key positions within Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and diplomatic missions abroad, including postings in Berlin, Germany from 2014–2015 and 2016–2019.

Dr. Malik is Pakistan’s climate finance negotiator under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, a role he has held since 2017. He has served as Adviser to Pakistan’s Board Member to the Green Climate Fund since 2019, and is currently a member of the UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance. He was previously a member of the Adaptation Fund Board and also served on the Transitional Committee for the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund.

With a strong background in multilateral climate diplomacy, Dr. Malik also served as Director (Climate Change) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan. His expertise spans multilateral climate negotiations including climate finance.

Born in 1986, Dr. Malik joined the Civil Services of Pakistan in 2010.

Mr. Amjad Abdulla is a Chief Negotiator and Director General, Climate Change of Maldives and Senior International Climate Change Expert, with over 28 years of experience in climate change, renewable energy, sustainable development, and international environmental governance. He previously served as Head of Partnerships at the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). He was the former Chief Negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group under the UNFCCC.

Mr. Abdulla has held numerous leadership positions in global climate governance, including serving on the Green Climate Fund Board, Adaptation Fund Board, CDM Executive Board, and as Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Groups II and III. He currently serves on the IPCC AR7 Task Force Bureau on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.

Throughout his career, he has played a leading role in shaping international climate policy, advancing renewable energy deployment, mobilizing climate finance, and strengthening resilience and sustainable development in vulnerable countries, particularly Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

Ms. Apollonia Miola is principal advisor on international climate finance at DG CLIMA,  European Commission.  Negotiator and senior policy expert specializing in climate change, international economics, and sustainable development.

With over 20 years of leadership at the Joint Research Centre (JRC), Apollonia directed innovative scientific programmes  on the economics of climate change and development. She pioneered complex analyses on economics of climate change, energy economics, ecological economics.

Apollonia’s international experience is enriched by her tenure as Senior Policy Analyst at the OECD, where she advised on governance reforms and aligned recovery plans with SDGs and the Paris Agreement. As visiting scientist she also collaborated with the World Bank on climate change economics and disaster risk management.

A frontrunner in complex economic analysis related to climate change and energy economics and ecological economics, Apollonia has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals.

Ms. Isobel Bartholomew is a climate finance specialist representing the United Kingdom in international negotiations.

She has worked across a range of domestic and multilateral platforms to advance the delivery of climate finance, including on the UK's domestic delivery, advising UK representatives to the G7 and G20 and representing the UK in negotiations under the UNFCCC such as on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) and the Standing Committee on Finance (SCF).

Isobel’s career has been dedicated to public policy, with experience spanning local government, bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations, and international climate diplomacy.

Ms. Karima Oustadi is climate finance and transparency expert in the Directorate General of European and International Affairs of the Italian Ministry of Environment and Energy Security. Climate finance negotiator in the UNFCCC process since 2017, she entered the Ministry as environmental economist.

She serves as Alternate Board Member of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, and as Vice-chair of the subsidiary body of the OECD Development Assistance Committee EnviroNet (environment and development cooperation).

Ms. Vicky Noens serves as Senior Advisor and coordinator of multilateral and bilateral cooperation at the Environment Department of the Government of Flanders, Belgium, with over 15 years of experience in international climate policy and finance.

Ms. Noens has been engaged in international climate policy since 2008 and is member of the Standing Committee on Finance since …. In this capacity, she co-facilitated the 4^th and 5^th Biennial Assessment and Overview of Climate Finance and was elected as SCF co-chair in 2026. With her long experience in climate finance and the UNFCCC budget, she has taken up key roles in the climate negotiations throughout the years, including serving as EU’s negotiator on transparency of support and on the UNFCCC budget.

In her capacity as Senior Advisor, Ms. Noens steers Flanders’ international environmental cooperation, fostering partnerships with countries and regions, and ensuring strategic coherence across multilateral and bilateral engagement on climate change, biodiversity, and related environmental priorities. She previously coordinated the Flemish International Climate Action Programme (2021–2022), the main channel through which Flanders delivers international climate finance to developing countries in line with the Paris Agreement.

At the national level, she contributes to Belgium’s international reporting obligations by co-leading the provision of information on climate finance, technology transfer, and capacity-building for Biennial Transparency Reports and National Communications . She is also Belgium’s key negotiator on the UNFCCC budget.

Ms. Noens holds a Master in History (Ghent, 2006), a Master in International Relations & Diplomacy (Antwerp, 2007) and a Master of Science in General Economics (Ghent, 2016). She is a firm believer of the importance of multilateralism to tackle global challenges, such as climate change.

Ms. Hendrikje Reich heads the International Climate Finance Division at the German Federal Foreign Office.

She is the lead on climate finance for the German delegation to the UNFCCC and a member of the EU negotiation team, where she also leads the EU’s work on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). She joined the Standing Committee on Finance in 2024.

Hendrikje has been heavily invested in bringing contributors of climate finance together to ensure joint delivery of collective finance goals.

She deeply believes in bringing people together from different backgrounds will help us to find the solutions.

Hendrikje was involved in setting up the International Climate Finance Initiative (IKI) as well as the NAMA Facility. She also worked on a federal support programme for local communities in Germany.

She graduated in political science, economics and human geography.

Ms. Ekaterina Vasilenko is the Chief Economist at the Climate Risks Unit, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. Her area of expertise is related to climate risks assessment and management, sustainable finance, and climate and environmental strategies for financial institutions and corporates. 

Since 2024 she has been a member of financial team of the Russian delegation at the UNFCCC negotiations. Ekaterina also take part in negotiations on climate finance issues at G20 (the Sustainable Finance Working Group (SFWG) and the Task Force on a Global Mobilization against Climate Change (TF-CLIMA) in the Brazilian Presidency of G20) and BRICS.

Before joining the Central Bank, Ekaterina worked in a private banking sector and the World Bank on issues related to Russia’s climate policy, carbon markets, and blue economy. In addition, she has years of experience in Environmental Impact Assessment for marine infrastructure. 

Ekaterina earned a M.S. in Environmental Sciences and Policy from the Central European University in Vienna. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Ecology and Natural Resource Management from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University) with specialization in climate policy, multilateral environmental diplomacy, and international law.

Bio coming soon.....

Mr. Martin Stadelmann is Principal Policy Advisor for Environmental Finance at Swiss Federal Office of the Environment, and thereby responsible for questions on international environmental finance within in the Swiss government.

He has 20 years of experience with international climate finance, having worked for NGOs, universities, the World Bank and the private sector. His PhD thesis compared the effectiveness of public climate finance and carbon markets. He served as contributing author of the first IPCC chapter on finance (2014). During his time at Climate Policy Initiative, he further developed the Global Landscape of Climate Finance and advised various governments and multilateral institutions on tracking climate finance and unlocking private finance.

Before joining the Swiss government, he was part of South Pole’s Executive Committee, leading the business lines on climate investments and climate advisory for several years with team members on all continents. He sees the mobilization of investments as the core challenge to solve if we want to fulfill the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Bio coming soon.....