Professor Graciela Chichilnisky with Professor Dietrich Fausten.

Global Citizen for Environment guest of Economics

Professor Graciela Chichilnisky, UNESCO Professor of Mathematics and Economics, Columbia University recently presented a public lecture on "The New Generation Kyoto Protocol" as a guest of the Department of Economics.

Professor Chichilnisky recently received the 'Global Citizen for the Environment' award in Athens, Greece.

Graciela Chichilnisky holds the UNESCO Chair of Mathematics and Economics and is a Professor of Statistics at Columbia University. She is Director of Columbia’s Centre for Risk Management (CCRM).

She created Columbia’s Program on Information and Resources (PIR), which is focused on transforming the University’s teaching and research agenda to reflect the growing trend towards globalisation and sustainable development.

She introduced the concept of Basic Needs, which was adopted by 150 countries in the United Nations Earth Summit and appears in UN Agenda 21 as the central element of their strategies for sustainable development.

She also introduced new financial instruments to deal with environmental risks, 'Catastrophe Bundles.' At the 1995 annual meeting of the World Bank, she proposed the global trading of carbon emissions with preferential treatment for poor countries, which became part of the Kyoto Protocol adopted by 166 nations in December 1997.

She has served as advisor to many international organisations, including the UN, OECD and OPEC, in the areas of international economics and environmental policy.

Chichilnisky is a former member of the Presidential Cabinet of the Central Bank of Argentina, an active consultant to the United Nations on international trade issues and the global financial industry on derivatives and reinsurance, and a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Program on Climate Change.