Developing countries are likely to be the most impacted by climate and the least able to afford its consequences. COP26 President Alok Sharma has said that richer nations must deliver now on long-promised funding to help poorer countries fight climate change. However, the £100bn a year pledge by 2020 (made in 2009) has not been met and the associated commitments no longer look realistic. This first panel session of the series will explore:
- What do developing countries need from COP26 to make it a tangible success? Is climate finance alone enough?
- Will the funding that has been pledged be enough for the adaption and mitigation interventions that are required to support the transition of developing nations?
- Is the developing world leading the way?
- What role can actuaries in developing nations play to help meet climate targets? What can we learn from those on the ground?
This event is part of The Road to Glasgow: IFoA’s Sustainability Thought Leadership Series which will provide a platform for prominent contributors so that our members and others can understand the perspectives of a wide range of parties interested in the climate debate.
Chair
Louise Pryor, President of the IFoA
In the course of a varied career as an actuary, software engineer and academic, Louise was Director, Actuarial Standards at the Financial Reporting Council, where she led the development of the Technical Actuarial Standards. She has practised as an independent consultant in the areas of software risk and sustainability and has worked on financial modelling for social security and pensions reform in a number of emerging economies.
Louise is Chair of the London Climate Change Partnership and a non-executive director at the Ecology Building Society.
She became a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in 1987 and a Fellow of IEMA in 2019. She has a degree in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Northwestern University.
Speakers
Dr Dabo Guan, Professor in Climate Change Economics and the Low Carbon Transition, The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London
Professor Dabo Guan is a Distinguished Professor at Tsinghua University, China, and Chair of Climate Change Economics at the University College London, UK. He is the Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences, UK. He specialises in environmental economics for international climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, scenario analysis on environmental impacts, water resources accounting and management, input-output modelling and their applications in both developed and developing countries. He was a Lead Author for the IPCC AR5. He was the Highly Cited Researcher for 2018-2020, top thousand climate academics (rank 389 in 2020). He has authored over 200+ publications, including 60+ articles published Nature, Nature Research Journals, and PNAS. He received the PNAS Cozzarelli Prize 2014, the Leontief Prize 3 times and the Philip Leverhulme Prize. His paper about climate change impact on beer consumption received the 2018 Altimetric Top 100 award.
Professor Saleem Huq, Director, International Centre for Climate Change and Development
Prof. Saleem Huq is the Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and Professor at the Independent University Bangladesh (IUB) as well as Associate of the International Institute on Environment and Development (IIED) in the United Kingdom. In addition he is the Chair of the Expert Advisory Group for the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) and also Senior Adviser on Locally Led Adaptation with Global Centre on Adaptation (GCA) headquartered in the Netherlands.
He is an expert in adaptation to climate change in the most Vulnerable developing countries and has been a lead author of the third, fourth and fifth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and he also advises the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In addition he is affiliated with the UN Food System Summit for 2021 as co-chair of the Action Track 5 on Building Resilience to Vulnerabilities, Shocks & Stress.
He has published hundreds of scientific as well as popular articles and was recognized as one of the top twenty global influencers on climate change policy in 2019 and top scientist from Bangladesh on climate change science.
Prosper Matiashe, Analytics and Actuarial Services Manager, FBC Holdings Limited
Prosper is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and specializes in life insurance and healthcare. He is the Analytics and Actuarial Services Manager at FBC Holdings Limited. FBC Holdings is one of the largest banking groups in Zimbabwe with assets worth over USD 1 billion and has interests in banking, asset management, insurance and microfinance. Previously he was the Business Development Actuary for FBC Holdings where he led product development, pricing and strategy. He led the creation of a group actuarial function for the company.
He is an active volunteer for the actuarial profession and currently serves as Treasurer of the Actuarial Society of Zimbabwe, Secretary of the IAA Banking Working Group and as Career Ambassador for the IFoA.