Guided by a background in photojournalism and a passion for marine conservation, Shaahina worked closely with the Maldivian government to formalize recreational diving standards and establish a dive center. She is the first woman to work professionally in the Maldivian dive industry. Shaahina’s dedication and extensive knowledge of the environment, people, culture, history, and geography of the islands are an immense asset to any project she undertakes and led her to receive a President of the Maldives Green Leaf Award for her work creating environmental awareness among school children.

Kimarli is the Chairperson of Sri Lanka Tourism, heading the Government’s four main Tourism entities; Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, Sri Lanka Conventions Bureau, and Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management. This is the first time that one Chairperson was appointed to all four Boards; she is also the first woman in the role. She has been a member of the Presidential Task Force for Prevention of COVID 19 since 2020.

Louise Heaps is WWF’s global lead on sustainable blue economy, with a focus on influencing mainstream finance and policy enablers, as well as addressing the barriers to delivering an inclusive sustainable blue economy at coastal community levels. Louise has worked in ocean conservation and natural resource management for over 25 years, leading ocean policy and field-based programmes in the global north and south, with 5 years in the Pacific Islands region as the Conservation Director of WWF South Pacific.

Dr. Qing provides policy advisory and technical support to countries in the Asia and Pacific region to strengthen countries’ capacity to enhance public finance effectiveness and leverage innovative finance for climate change. Qing has 10 years of experience in international cooperation with governments, financial regulators, and banking industries, and in-depth experience in policy research on political economics and innovative finance in Asia and the UK. Before joining UNDP, Qing worked in academia and the banking industry.

Based out of Singapore, Rahul Sheth is an Executive Director in Standard Chartered’s Capital Solutions team, housed within its Capital Markets franchise. In his role as a solutions specialist, he globally heads the green bonds product and has been responsible for leading pioneering green bond transactions for clients across the bank’s footprint including the New Development Bank, Axis Bank, TSKB, Agricultural Bank of China, NTPC, IDBI, Bank of China amongst others.

Mr. Sayed-Khaiyum is the Fijian Attorney-General and the Minister for Economy, Public Enterprises, Civil Service, and Communications, and the minister responsible for climate change. He is the second-ranking elected official in the country. Mr. Sayed-Khaiyum oversaw the creation of a climate change unit in the Office of the Attorney-General to examine legal matters pertaining to climate change that are often omitted from public discussions, such as how to protect the human rights of people who are displaced by the effects of climate change.

Gen. (ret) Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan began his career in the Indonesian National Armed Forces until his retirement in 1999. Following that, he has had a longstanding political career and was previously the Presidential Chief of Staff for President Joko Widodo until his appointment as the Coordinating Minister for Politics, Law, and Security in September 2011 which was followed by his appointment as the Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs in July 2016.

Janaki is the current Environment Ministry Director of International Relations in Sri Lanka. 

Anna Lundbom joined EasyMining, an innovation company within Ragn-Sells Group, in May 2020 as the Marketing and Product Sales Manager. She is focusing on leading the project to commercialize EasyMining´s nitrogen removal and recovery process along with business development for the company´s other processes and products. Anna joined the Ragn-Sells Group, one of the Nordic’s largest waste management companies, in 2012 and has been working with business development and sales in various positions. Previous to Ragn-Sells, she worked as a management consultant.

Using tropical paddy as the model ecosystem, the focus of research by Prof. Adhya is on sustainable management of resource-poor tropical soils to maintain high productivity with minimum environmental impact. Dr. Adhya initiated field-level research on methane and nitrous oxide emission from tropical Indian paddy and identified strong mitigation options with additional input to Carbon sequestration, biogeochemistry, and global change. He has contributed to India's first NATCOM on GHG and was invited to the review panel for the IPCC-2012 database and methodologies (2013) on GHGs by WMO/UNEP.