Burlington Consensus 3 - A United Nations Science-Policy Panel for Chemicals, Waste and Pollution Prevention - Scientists at the Heart of Global Policymaking

Professor Sir Jim Skea was elected IPCC Chair for the Seventh Assessment cycle in July 2023. He was Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III for the 6th Assessment Cycle. From 2009 to 2023, Jim Skea was Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College London. He has research interests in energy, climate change and technological innovation. 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 Chair of Scotland’s Just Transition Commission from 2018 to 2023.

Gill is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Southampton and was Head of Chemistry between 2016-2020, and served as President of the Royal Society of Chemistry from 2022-2024.

Her research focuses on coordination and organometallic chemistry, motivated by studies of new ligands to explore the influence of metal-ligand combinations on properties and reactivity, as well as application driven targets. These include developing reagents for use in CVD and electrodeposition of functional thin films and nanostructures. She also works on the development of metal-chelate scaffolds for binding the fluorine-18 radioisotope towards new positron emission tomography (PET) imaging agents.
 

She is an Indigenous scientist whose work in nature conservation bridges natural, social and indigenous sciences. Her career is distinguished by a focus on integrating Indigenous knowledge and earth observations into contemporary science-policy-society fora. She has collaborated with UN organisations in multilateral settings and was recently appointed Lead Author of the Indigenous Knowledge and Local Knowledge for the Global Environment Outlook Report 7, United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). A Young scholar at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Junior Fellow the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, she holds a PhD from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany).

I am researcher in a groundwater study at the University of Jena (Germany), applying untargeted liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LC-MS) to derive patterns in the long-term dynamics of dissolved organic matter (DOM) components. Before, I carried out research at the University of Warwick (UK) and at Mainz University (Germany) in synthetic biology and protein biochemistry.

I am proud RSC member since 2013, have previously served in the Birmingham / West Midlands local section, as volunteer and committee member in the chemists’ community fund (CCF), and am currently part of the water science forum (WSF) interest group committee.

Paul Whaley was the first specialist editor of systematic reviews in toxicology and environmental health research. Since 2016 he has handled over 500 submissions and contributed to over 40 publications relating to best practices in the conduct, reporting, evaluation, and publishing of systematic reviews. He has worked with many leading users of systematic review methods in chemical assessment, including the US Environmental Protection Agency, US National Toxicology Program, the World Health Organization, and the European Food Safety Authority.

is the CEO of Lhasa Limited, an educational not-for-profit charity that focusses on developing computer applications that support decision making in chemical safety. Chris uses his experience as a pharmaceutical medicinal chemist to lead Lhasa as it develops innovative predictive computational models, databases and decision-support systems that are widely used by industry and regulators by over 600 organisations across the world.

Dr Balayannis is a transdisciplinary social scientist specialising in the problems of pollution and waste, with a focus on planetary health. Her work interrogates and intervenes in how pollution and waste are understood, managed, and governed in everyday practice. She is an Associate Professor in the Knowledge Technology and Innovation Group, at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, and is about to commence a new 5-year collaborative project funded by the Dutch Research Council on PFAS and the problems these chemicals pose in institutional and daily practices.

Alastair Lewis is professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of York. He is an experimental scientist who has studied the composition of the atmosphere from polar regions to megacities, open oceans to tropical forests. He received the 2012 John Jeyes Prize for Environment, Energy and Sustainability and the 2022 Royal Society of Chemistry award for contributions to science policy. He is currently Chair of the Defra Air Quality Expert Group, Department for Transport Science Advisory Council and a member of the Environmental Sustainability Panel of the Civil Aviation Authority. He has been a contributor to >300 scientific papers, chapters and reports on topics including pollution, environmental impacts, measurement technology and health effects.

Dr Sen is an internationally renowned academic with more than 30 years research experience from laboratory scale development to a commercial product involving nanotechnology. His research focuses on public health issues: (i) Chemical pollution in water and mitigation; (ii) patience with severe bloodstream infection and liver cancer.  He run several projects with India and China since 2010 including 3 ongoing projects, funded by British Council under “Going Global” on chemical pollution in water. He is a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry, a Fellow of Royal Society of Medicine, and a Fellow of Higher Education Academy, UK.    

Dr. Mohammed Abdelraouf is the Environmental Security and Sustainability Research Program Director at the Gulf Research Center out of Riyadh, `Geneva and Cambrdige (2005 to date). He holds a Ph D in environmental Economics from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt and done advanced training program in Environmental Economics and Accounting at university of Augsburg, Germany. He is also non-resident Environmental researcher with many other think tanks/institutes in MENA/Europe.
Currently, Dr. Raouf is Co-chair of the Major Groups Facilitating Committee at UNEP and a member of Interdisciplinary Stakeholders Advisory board of GEO 7 report of UNEP. He was part of T20 team of Saudi Arabia working group on Climate change. He worked in many projects related to climate change such as “Climate Change and Peace building in MENA region”, Berghof Foundation, Germany in 2021. He authored five books and published various policy papers on different environmental issues in MENA Region such as “GCC-EU Climate Change Partnership” published by Bussola Institute in Brussels, Belgium, November 2019.
Dr. Raouf organises, participates and presents at various UN Meetings such as “UNEAs of UNEP”, “OWEG for the SPP on Chemicals, waste and pollution” and COP27 and COP28 of UNFCC.

Lucia Santirso has been working with Bridges for the last 6 years in the Social Outcomes team. During this time, Lucia has designed and implemented more than 10 Outcomes Partnerships related to the areas of health, education and the environment. Lucia was part of the GSG Policy working group and is a co-author of the report they produced: “Catalysing an Impact Investment Ecosystem: A Policymaker’s Toolkit”. Prior to joining Bridges, Lucia worked in Equity Research at J.P. Morgan. Lucia holds a MSc in International Finance from HEC Paris and a BSc in International Business Administration from Rotterdam School of Management.

Stewart has specialised in understanding the effects of pharmaceuticals in the environment for more than 20 years. He leads PREMIER, an innovative health initiative consortium of 26 partner institutes and ~100 people addressing the environmental risks of medicines https://imi-premier.eu/ and collaborates extensively with academic and industry partners to develop the predictive tools that better identify and manage chemicals in the environment.

Matthew Davidson is Professor of Sustainable Chemical Technologies at the University of Bath and Director of an EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in this area. He is also Director of its Institute of Sustainability and Climate Change at Bath and Executive Director of the Innovation Centre for Applied Sustainable Technologies (iCAST).