Eric Soubeiran is Managing Director Climate & Nature Fund and Vice-President Sustainable Sourcing at Unilever. He previously served as the Global Nature, Human Rights & Water Cycle Director at Danone and was a member of its Cycles & Procurement Board. In this role, he was responsible for coordinating the company’s approach and actions on climate change, water resource protection, regenerative agriculture, circular economy and human rights. Eric also serves as administrator of the Livelihoods Carbon Fund. Previously, he served as Danone’s Global Nature & Senior Climate Director. 

Eric began his career in strategy consulting and mergers and acquisitions, then joined Rexam Plc to lead strategic planning of its beauty and medical devices division. In 2006, he relocated to India to take on the role of Managing Director of the newly acquired business of Rexam. 

In 2010, he joined Danone to head the group’s operations in the sub-continent. During this period, he launched a range of nutritional products designed for the ‘bottom of pyramid’ customers, with an innovative route to market approach. In 2013, Eric joined Danone’s marketing team, in charge of Activia and Vitalinea brands for the French market. In 2014, Eric was appointed director of milk sourcing for Danone in Europe, managing a network of 4,000 dedicated farmers across six European countries during a period of deep transformation in the milk market 

Ms. Bhandari is Senior Advisor, Global Climate Program and the Finance Center at the World Resources Institute. She previously served as Diector for Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management Division of the Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department (SDCC) at ADB and as Chief of Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management thematic group, where she was responsible for providing policy and strategic direction to ADB’s initiatives on climate change and disaster risk management, including mobilizing concessional financing from multilateral funds such as the Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF). She also has an oversight on climate financing from ADB’s own resources including through investments in private sector.

Prior to joining ADB, she was heading the Finance, Technology and Capacity Building Program of the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. She led the support to the international negotiations on climate finance, which culminated in the launch of GCF and the Standing Committee on Finance. Ms Bhandari coordinated the establishment of the Technology Mechanism under the Convention, which includes the Climate Technology Centre and Network. She has also worked as the Director of the Policy Analysis Division at TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) in India.

She has over 30 years of experience in environment, climate change and sustainable development, having worked on projects across Asia, and in multicultural and diverse organizations. She is on the editorial board of Climate Policy and has in the past served as a member of the core group on climate change, established by the Government of India to assess India’s strategy for the UN climate change negotiations. She has also helped adjudicate for the Climate CoLab at MIT, which mobilizes and harnesses innovative ideas to address the challenge of climate change. She is currently advising initiatives led by the 2050 Pathways Platform. She is also a member of the Advisory Committee to the project on Mobilizing Development Finance being coordinated by the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

Luc GNACADJA is a renowned international expert on governance issues for sustainable development. He is the founding president of the think tank GPS-Dev (Governance & Policies for Sustainable Development) whose mission is to facilitate the transformation of governance systems to make them more conducive to sustainable development.

He has extensive experience and high-level credentials in reflecting, advocating for, and integrating environmental issues into public policy to promote sustainable development, as well as a proven leadership capacity to facilitate change and transformation in regional and multilateral contexts.

Architect by profession and CEO of an architecture and urban planning consultancy based in Cotonou, he was Minister of Environment and Urban Development of Benin (1999-2005) and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (2007-2013). In the latter capacity, he was a guiding voice and a leading advocate for sustainable land development in the negotiations leading up to the Rio+20 Summit in 2012 and is the architect of the concept of "Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN)" now integrated into the 2030 development agenda as target 15.03 of the SDG.

GNACADJA received the 2003 “Green Award” from the World Bank for promoting environment-friendly public reform in Benin, and the “Cook Prize in Desert Architecture” from the Ben-Gurion University of the Neguev in 2014 for “his lifetime contribution to a sustainable built environment”.