Climate Investment Funds
Paul Venton is a disaster and climate resilience specialist with 25 years of experience in more than 25 countries. He is especially passionate about strengthening the protection, restoration, and sustainable management of nature, believing this to be foundational for progress in overcoming climate, environmental and disaster challenges at local and global scales.
Paul has helped co-develop inclusive policies, strategies and projects that mitigate disaster through a multitude of different entry points. In doing so, he helps forge pathways for multiple stakeholders to achieve integrated solutions to interconnected challenges. He has advised and worked in teams with bilateral and multilateral donors, many UN agencies, NGOs, research and academic institutions, intergovernmental organisations, think tanks, the private sector, and documentary filmmakers, as well as with civil society and local community groups.
Paul co-designed and teaches a course on Emergency Response, Disasters and Public Health at Harvard University as part of a Master of Public Health degree. He has an action-research PhD in methods of enhancing the sustainability and scale of community-based disaster risk management linked with his on-the-ground experience in disaster settings.
Climate Investment Funds
Asian Development Bank
Arghya is involved in the implementation of the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) climate priorities and targets by supporting client governments in strengthening climate adaptation related policies, plans and investments and access climate finance. He has more than 19 years of international experience in the field of climate and disaster resilience, especially in the context of urban resilience, resilient infrastructure, community resilience and post-disaster recovery and reconstruction.
Sustainable Development and Regional Planning Division, Jamaica
Claire Bernard is Deputy Director General at the Planning Institute of Jamaica with responsibility for the Sustainable Development and Social Planning Cluster. She is a Development Specialist who, in her years of employment to the PIOJ, has contributed to national development in the areas of education planning, social welfare and poverty reduction, environmental management and climate change. As part of her current portfolio, Ms Bernard oversees a number of climate change projects and the PPCR Focal Point for Jamaica.
World Bank
Felipe is an Urban Specialist at the World Bank, where he leads a portfolio of urban infrastructure investments in Central America and Haiti. His focus on cities has also included research and policy development on urban crime, sustainable urban development, climate change mitigation and resilience, and land-based financing in the Global South. Before joining the Bank, Felipe served as special adviser to the mayor of Medellin, Colombia, where he led the municipality’s delivery unit and supported the city’s urban transformation and internationalization strategy. He holds a bachelor’s in business from EAFIT University, and a Master of Public Policy (MPP) with Distinction at the University of Oxford.
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office UK
Peter Bentley is the Head of the Adaptation and Resilience team at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
He previously led on disaster risk financing and insurance for the FCDO and helped set up the Centre for Disaster Protection, which aims to find better ways to stop disasters devastating lives and economies, by supporting countries to better manage disaster risk. Prior to this he worked in humanitarian response for Save the Children, working across East Africa in South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia on first phase and chronic emergencies.
Peter has a Masters in Development Management which focused on engaging civil society in disaster risk financing decision making.
Asian Development Bank
Piseth is primarily responsible for managing several projects in the agriculture, water management, and rural development sector in Cambodia since he joined ADB in July 2008. Piseth has also worked in Lao PDR, Myanmar, and the Philippines and has been accredited for Procurement of Goods and Works at ADB since 2014. Prior to joining ADB, he was a Senior Program Officer at DANIDA, in charge of two Natural Resources and Environment Programs. He also worked as a researcher at the Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI) where he prepared several working papers. Piseth is one of a few Cambodians who received SIDA scholarship, and holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK, and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the Institute of Economics, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Ecobarter
Rita Idehai is a geoscientist turned social innovator who is solving Nigeria’s indiscriminate waste management problem and leading the transition to a circular economy. Through Ecobarter, Nigerian households are incentivized to sort and use their waste as a currency by recycling. Rita is enabling Nigerian cities to adapt to the prominent risk of flooding while also helping 200+ indigent youths and women earn a sustainable income collecting and trading otherwise wastes. Rita has been featured as 1 of 50 African entrepreneurs to know by the prestigious Tony Elumelu Foundation and recognized as a Youth Leader by both the UNDP and British High Commission in Nigeria. She is 1 of the 20 winners of the 2023 Africa Youth Adaptation Challenge and the best female-led startup at the pilot Global Cleantech competition in Nigeria. Rita sits as the president of the recyclers association of Nigeria and recently led a community of 270 volunteers on a 3-month Go Green Campaign across Nigeria.
Climate Investment Funds