Beyond decarbonization: Tackling the triple planetary crisis through systemic resource efficiency and circular economy

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Dr Janez Potočnik (1958) graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (Ph.D. degree 1993). He started as a researcher at the Institute of Economic Research (1989) and was nominated for a Director of the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development in 1994. He was appointed Head of the Negotiating Team for Accession of Slovenia to the EU (1998). He was also Director of Government Office for European Affairs (2000), Minister Councillor at the Office of the Prime Minister (2001) and Minister responsible for European Affairs (2002). In 2004 he joined the European Commission, first as ‘shadow’ Commissioner for Enlargement, and then as Commissioner for Science and Research. In 2010 he became the European Commissioner for Environment. After the end of his mandate in November 2014, he was appointed as a Co-Chair of UN Environment International Resource Panel. From April 2016 he has also been a Partner of SYSTEMIQ.

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I was born in Dessau on the Elbe and grew up there. I began studying agricultural sciences in Berlin in 1988. In 1989, I helped found the party die GRÜNE (the Green party) of the GDR. From 1994 to 2002, I served as a member of the Bundestag for BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN (the Greens). The last four years of this period, I was Parliamentary Secretary. In 2002, my party elected me to the office of federal party manager, which I held until 2013. Since the federal elections of 2013, I have been a member of the Bundestag. Up until 2021, I was Parliamentary Secretary and Nature Conservation Spokesperson of the Greens parliamentary group.

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Jim Skea is Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College London with research interests in energy, climate change and technological innovation. He is Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III. He was Research Director of the UK Energy Research Centre 2004-12 and Director of the Policy Studies Institute 1998-2004. He was a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change from 2008 until 2018, and currently chairs Scotland’s Just Transition Commission.

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Giovanna Valverde Stark is a career diplomat since 2004 and an expert in sustainable development, climate change, agriculture, commerce and finance. She has distinguished herself in many countries as a climate change and trade negotiator as well as for promoting Costa Rica’s sustainable development model.

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Josef (Sepp) works at the UFZ – Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Halle/Germany, where he heads the Department of Conservation Biology and Social-Ecological Systems. He holds a PhD in agriculture, based on agro-ecological research on biocontrol in tropical irrigated rice systems and is professor of ecology at the Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg. Before being co-chair of the Global Assessment of IPBES from 2016 to 2019, he was part of the Asia-Pacific and the Pollination Assessment. He also was Coordinating Lead Author of the 5th Assessment Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – IPCC, and co-author of the IPBES-IPCC co-sponsored workshop report on biodiversity and climate change, published in 2021. Since July 2020 he is member of the “German Advisory Council on the Environment” of the German government. His research focusses on the interface of land use, climate and biological diversity. He is highly cited researcher in Web of Science. He was and is coordinating major national and international inter- and transdisciplinary research projects.