Mr. Steiner was born in Brazil in 1961 and is a German diplomate and expert in environmental policies. He studied in the UK and holds a Degree from Oxford University and a Master’s from London University, with a major in Development Economics, Regional Planning, International Development and Environmental Policy. He also studied at the German Development Institute in Berlin and at Harvard Business School.
Achim Steiner was Director-General of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) from 2006 to 2016 and has been Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) since 2017.
Prior to taking up this position, Mr. Steiner was Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the largest environmental network in the world, gathering government agencies and non-governmental organizations from 140 countries.
During his career, he has worked for governmental, non-governmental and international organizations.
In Washington, where he was Policy Advisor to the Global Policy Unit at the IUCN, he led the development of new partnerships between the environmental community and World Bank, as well with the United Nations system.
In 1998, he was appointed Secretary-General of the World Commission on Dams based in South Africa, where he managed an international program which aims to get the private and public sectors and civil society to work together in the context of a global policy on dams and development.