Tariq Banuri retired on 31 August as Director of the Division for Sustainable Development and Head of Office of the Conference Secretary-General for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). Mr. Banuri has broad experience on the interface between policy, research and practical actions on the realization of the goal of sustainable development. He has also worked in government, academia, civil society and the international system.

Before joining the UN, he was Senior Fellow and Director of the Future Sustainability Program at the Stockholm Environment Institute. He started his career in the Civil Service of Pakistan, went on to receive a PhD in Economics from Harvard University, joined the UN as a Research Fellow at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER), a model that he adopted in setting up and serving as the founding Executive Director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in Pakistan.

Mr. Banuri has served on national as well as international forums for policy, advocacy, and research, including as a Coordinating Lead Author on the Nobel Prize-winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as a member of the Board of Governors of Pakistan’s Central Bank, and of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Council, and as a member/secretary of Pakistan’s Presidential Steering Committee on Higher Education. He has also served as the Chair of the Board of Governors of the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), and was a founding member of the Great Transition Initiative (GTI).