Sustainable Commodities for Climate, Nature and People: Learning from the Past, Investing in the Future

Ana Saggioro Garcia

• Assistant Professor at the Institute of International Relations at PUC-Rio. General Coordinator of the BRICS Policy Center. Professor of the Graduate Program in Social Sciences at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. PhD in International Relations from IRI/PUC-Rio and Master in Political Science from the Free University of Berlin (Germany). Member of the editorial board of the Socialist Register (Canada). Vice-coordinator of the thematic area of International Political Economy of the Brazilian Association of International Relations (ABRI). Researcher at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of International Relations Studies (LIERI/UFRRJ). Researcher at the Institute for Political Alternatives for the Southern Cone (PACS). She has publications in International Political Economy, Critical Theory, Gramsci, hegemony, imperialism, multinational companies, and South-South relations.

Claudia Melim-McLeod 

• Over 20 years of professional experience combining consulting, research, management and advisory positions at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), UNREDD, the African Development Bank, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, Norad, KPMG, and Rainforest Foundation Norway. Her areas of expertise are climate change, climate and nature financial risk, deforestation and conversion-free supply chains, sustainable finance, sustainable development, human rights, ESG best standards, and institutional/political economy analysis. Claudia has a strong track record in resource mobilization, research and project management, and has professional certifications in PRINCE 2 Project Management/Quality Assurance, Results-based Management, climate change economics and governance, and climate-related financial risks. Claudia has worked in over 40 countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe, and is fluent in English, Portuguese, Spanish, Norwegian and Danish. She is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Business School Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability and was previously a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Claudia's publications include the Guide for Integrated Planning in Africa, Assessing the Social Impact of Trade for the EU Bioeconomy and the UNDP Institutional and Context Analysis Guidance Note.

Paul Amar 

• Serves as Professor in the Global Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and as director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies. He is a political scientist and anthropologist with affiliate appointments in the Departments of Feminist Studies, Political Science, Sociology, Comparative Literature, and the Programs in Middle East Studies, and Latin American and Iberian Studies. A three-time Fulbright Fellowship winner who speaks six languages, Professor Amar served as founding director of the PhD program and subsequently as department chair in Global Studies at UCSB where he served as cofounder of the Area Global Institute (AGI) and of the Center for Feminist Futures. He also co-founded the Center for Middle East Studies at the Fluminense Federal University in Rio de Janeiro and the first Center for Global Studies in Brazil, at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. Before he began his academic career, he worked as a journalist in Cairo, a police reformer and sexuality rights activist in Rio de Janeiro, and a conflict-resolution and economic development specialist at the United Nations. His books include Cairo Cosmopolitan (with Diane Singerman, AU Cairo Press, 2006); New Racial Missions of Policing: International Perspectives on Evolving Law-Enforcement Politics (Routledge, 2010); Global South to the Rescue: Humanitarian Superpowers and Global Rescue Industries (Routledge, 2011); Dispatches from the Arab Spring: Understanding the New Middle East (with Vijay Prashad, Minnesota UP 2013); The Middle East and Brazil: Perspectives on the New Global South (Indiana UP, 2014); The Tropical Silk Road: The Future of China in South America (with Rofel, Viteri, Fernandez and Brancoli, Stanford UP, 2022); Cairo Securitized: Reconceiving Urban Justice and Social Resilience (AU Cairo Press, 2024); and Rio as Method: Collective Resistance for a New Generation (Duke UP, 2024). His book The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism (Duke UP, 2013) was awarded the Charles Taylor Award for Best Book of the Year in 2014 by the Interpretive Methods Section of the American Political Science Association. In 2019, he was awarded Mentor of the Year by the Latin American Studies Program at UCSB.

Peng REN 

• Manager of the Overseas Investment, Trade and the Environment Program at the Global Environmental Institute (GEI). Peng guides GEI’s work related to sustainable overseas investment and environmental policy, with a specific focus on improving the social and environmental conduct of China’s overseas investment. At GEI, his work has focused on several issue areas including Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI), Sino-Africa Forest Governance, BRI Energy Investment & Climate Finance and associated Environment standards. Since joining GEI in 2007, Peng has been involved in several high-level international platforms and policy work including, advocating for the policies in Environmental Protection Guidelines for Economic Cooperation Abroad, which was released jointly by the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection and the MOFCOM, and leading multi-stakeholder dialogue and exchanges in Southeast Asia (Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam) and in four African countries (Cameroon, DRC, Uganda, and Mozambique); he also has represented Chinese NGOs at major summits including Copenhagen COP 15 and Hamburg C20. In 2016, Peng served as a supporting expert for the green value chain task force of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED). Over the past ten years at GEI, he has authored and co-authored GEI’s “Going Global” series, which focuses on China’s overseas foreign direct investment and governance, namely in Southeast Asia, Africa and BRI countries. Prior to joining GEI, Peng worked in various government sectors including the State Forest Administration and the Ministry of Environmental Protection. He holds two Master’s degrees from the Beijing Forest University and the United Nations University for Peace. He speaks Mandarin and English.

Knut Lakså 

• A Norwegian consultant in international development currently based in Brazil. He has 20 years of experience from development aid, management, and program reviews, with several years of country experience from Brazil, the Middle East and Southern Africa, mainly working for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Norad.Knut has conducted multiple assignments relating to value-chains and climate and environment, including several studies on the Blue Economy in relation to the UN Sustainable Ocean initiative. He has also undertaken agriculture and fisheries value-chain analyses, as well as various reviews and program designs of climate adaptation programmes. Knut is a social anthropologist with extensive field expertise from Brazil where he did field work among the Pataxó people. He has worked for many years on topics such as indigenous and local community development, sustainable development, climate and environment, forestry/REDD+, social safeguards and private sector development. In 2015, he was the editor of the White Paper "Working Together" outlining Norwegian policies on private sector development.