Speakers
Felix Addor
Felix Addor serves as the Deputy Director General, General Counsel and Director of the Legal & International Affairs Division at the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (Swiss Ministry of Justice), the federal agency in charge of all intellectual property matters in Switzerland. He has been responsible for legal and policy matters regarding all fields of intellectual property at the national and international level since 1999. He leads Swiss negotiating delegations to the relevant international fora, such as the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization, and to bi- and plurilateral negotiations. Since 2008, Mr. Addor has been a Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Bern, too. He lectures on intellectual property law, international negotiations and global governance at the University of Bern, the World Trade Institute, and the Graduate Institute Geneva, among others.
Paula Castro
Paula Castro is a Research Assistant at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Zurich. She holds a BSc in Enviornmental Engineering and an MSc in Environment and Development. Since 2007 Paula Castro has worked on international climate policy, focusing on the role of existing and new market mechanisms in climate change mitigation, and on the role of bargaining strategies, power and institutions in the international negotiations towards a new climate regime. Her Ph.D. thesis, with the title “The CDM and incentives for climate change mitigation in developing countries” and under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Katharina Michaelowa and Dr. Axel Michaelowa, dealt with the interaction between the international climate regime and domestic policies in developing countries that contribute to climate change mitigation.
Veronika Elgart
Veronika Elgart is one of Switzerland’s key negotiators under the UNFCCC and Deputy Head of the Rio-Conventions Section at the Federal Office for the Environment. She has been engaged in the climate change negotiations since Copenhagen in 2009 with a particular focus on the new climate agreement which is to come into effect from 2020. She also conducts for Switzerland the negotiations on mitigation commitments and goals up to 2020 and oversees the areas of markets mechanisms, adaptation and loss and damage as well as the land sector. She further is engaged as Swiss representative in informal alliances such as the Cartagena Dialogue for Progressive Action. Before joining the climate negotiation team, Veronika Elgart has been involved as Swiss representative in the World Climate Conference 3 and worked as an assistant in weather forecast at Meteotest. Veronika Elgart holds a Master Degree in Geography.
Mikkel Gudsøe
Mikkel Gudsøe is an expert in negotiation, body language and dispute resolution and an experienced teacher at international and national level. Working also as Chief Attorney responsible for International Trade, Intellectual Property Rights and Mediation at the federation Danish Fashion & Textile he was originally responsible for the Federation´s policies on CSR during which he drafted the first ever unified industry code of conduct (Fair Fashion Code of Conduct) based on the UN Global Compact principles as well as this he initiated and headed the FashionAid® initiative where together with Red Cross (Denmark) tons of clothing each year are collected from companies and private persons and reused to limit the impact on the environment at the national yearly FashionAid Day. Mikkel is an external lecturer in Legal Negotiation at Master´s Level at the University of Aarhus, School of Law (Business & Social Sciences) and has given master classes and seminars all over the world.
Björn-Ola Linnér
Björn-Ola Linnér is professor in Water and Environmental Studies and at the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research at Linköping University, Sweden, where he was the previous director (2006-2010). He is presently CIRES Visiting Fellow hosted by the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado. His research focuses on international policy-making on climate change, food security and sustainable development. His recent publications analyse integration of policies on climate change, sustainable development and low-carbon energy technologies as well as climate visualisation, transnational governance and utopian/dystopian thought in climate science and policy. Published books include among others The Return of Malthus: Environmentalism and Postwar Population–Resource Crises. As a researcher he has been actively involved in the international climate negotiations for several years. He was member of the Swedish delegation at the Adaptation and Approval of the fourth Assessment Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Valencia, Spain 2007.
Rudolf Schüssler
Rudolf Schuessler is professor of philosophy in the ‘philosophy & economics’ course of studies at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. His research areas include environmental ethics, issues of justice, and ethics in negotiations. He is group leader in a current German federal ministry project on the social effects of German energy policy (‘SoKo Energiewende’). Apart from that he is a member of the group ‘Processes of International Negotiation’ (PIN) and an associated researcher at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations. Rudolf Schuessler’s publications include: Kooperation unter Egoisten, München 1990; Adjusted Winner Analyses of the 1978 Camp David Accords – Valuable Tools for Negotiators? in: R. Avenhaus/W. Zartman (eds.): Diplomacy Games, Berlin 2007; Climate Justice: A Question of Historic Responsibility? Journal of Global Ethics 7, 2011.
Michele Stua
Michele Stua is a research fellow in SPRU – Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex. He has spent the last seven years studying climate change policies and finance, becoming a recognised expert in market mechanisms related to climate change mitigation. His studies on the application of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in China guaranteed him the opportunity to publish on relevant scientific journals, such as Energy Policy and Climatic Change. Michele Stua participated to two Conferences of Parties (COP16 in Cancun and COP19 in Warsaw) as observer on behalf of the Sussex Energy Group (SPRU, University of Sussex), and in more recent times he has become an expert on climate finance radical innovations. His most recent works focus on the development of a new approach to the whole climate change economics, seeing him between the main promoters of the ‘Low Carbon Bretton Woods’ project.