Wayne is the Director of Climate Change Office Cook Islands located in the Office of the Prime Minister, on Rarotonga, Cook Islands. He has been involved in climate change negotiations and issues since 1990 at a time when talk was all about the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The then UN Framework Convention on Climate Change had finally been agreed and was at the time available for signature and eventual ratification.
Wayne’s background is Forestry having trained and worked in New Zealand. In 1997, after 10 years in the Cook Islands government, saw him take up work at SPREP in Samoa, managing the first UNDP/GEF funded Pacific Islands Climate Change Assistance Program (PICCAP) a 10 country regional program, which was then followed by a 2.5 year climate advisory job at ADB in Manila, looking at how climate change can be mainstreamed into the Banks policies, programs, and procedures.
A shift to the private sector as a Director of a carbon company under the new NZ Emission Trading Scheme saw the first successful ERU transactions between NZ forestry companies and compliance buyers in the EU-ETS, totaling many millions of units sold brokered by his company. Wayne is keen to follow on with his climate activities, but unfortunately is unable to participate at Glasgow for COP26.