The following is a statement from CCI Executive Director Joe Robertson.
Rachel Kyte has been named the new UK Climate Envoy. Ms. Kyte is well-respected around the world for her key leadership roles as World Bank Vice President and Special Envoy for Climate, in the run-up to the Paris Agreement, later as Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and CEO of Sustainable Energy for All, and as Dean of the prestigious Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
When the ripple effects of the COVID pandemic collided with worsening climate impacts, widespread debt distress among nations, and exploding food insecurity amid the invasion of Ukraine, she was called by the United Nations to serve as a key leader in the Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy, and Finance. She is co-chair of the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative and a member of the G20 Expert Group on the reform of Multilateral Development Banks.
In 2022, I was privileged to work with Dean Kyte in co-founding the Earth Diplomacy Leadership Initiative—a series of workshops that train diplomats and observers to navigate the complexity, coded language, and need for multidisciplinary strategy in the context of the UN Climate Change negotiations. At CCI, we know Rachel Kyte as a skilled diplomat who leads by welcoming—inviting leaders, stakeholders, experts, as well as the young, marginal, and vulnerable, to come together to share insights, to gain understanding, and to achieve more together.
We wish her well in this new leadership position and look forward to seeing the effects of her steady, focused diplomacy.
