Ensuring a Just Energy Transition across the Commonwealth

Panellist

Dipti is an environmental scientist by training, and activist for twenty years. She works as an International Programme Coordinator on Climate Justice and Energy at Friends of the Earth International based in Mozambique. She focuses on ‘climate justice’, using the term to encapsulate the myriad issues creating our global crisis spanning far beyond the scientific. 

Speaker

Tasneem Essop is currently the Executive Director of Climate Action Network International (CAN-I). She completed serving her second term as Commissioner in the National Planning Commission in South Africa, appointed by the President, where she led the work on Climate Change and the Just Transition.

She previously headed the climate team in WWF International and served as the Head of Delegation for the organisation at the UNFCCC right through to the COP in Paris.

She became a Member of the Provincial Parliament in the Western Cape in 1994 after the first democratic elections in South Africa and held the positions of Provincial Minister of Transport, Public Works and Property Management from 2001 to 2004 and Provincial Minister for the Environment, Planning and Economic Development from 2004 to 2008 when she resigned from politics.

Tasneem was an anti-apartheid activist from an early age in different capacities until the democratic elections in 1994. During this time she was a student and youth activist, a teacher and a trade unionist.

Speaker

Alisi Rabukawaqa-Nacewa has for over the past decade worked in environment conservation, climate activism and indigenous peoples’ traditional rights and knowledge advocacy. She sits on the youth-led grassroots network 350.org Pacific Climate Warriors Council of Elders as the Melanesian representative, providing traditional knowledge on working with Pacific communities and indigenous perspectives to their climate justice work. In 2017, Alisi represented the Youth and Civil Society group at the UN Ocean Conference as part of the Fijian delegation. Alisi was also part of the Pacific Islands Climate Change Negotiators Workshop at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat in 2017. 

Speaker

Sharan Burrow is the General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, representing 200 million workers in 163 countries and territories with 332 national affiliates. The ITUC’s primary mission is the promotion and defense of workers’ rights and interests, through international cooperation between trade unions, global campaigning, and advocacy within the major global institutions.

Previously President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) from 2000 – 2010, Sharan is a passionate advocate and campaigner for social justice, women’s rights, the environment, and labour law reforms, and has led union negotiations on major economic reforms and labour rights campaigns in her home country of Australia and globally. She has also served as a member of the Governing Body of the International Labour Organisation and is represented on a number of international commissions concerning climate action, industrial transition, and economic reform.

Panellist

Simon Kofe is a member of parliament of Tuvalu, and the Minister of Justice, Communication and Foreign Affairs. He is a lawyer by profession and has previously held positions as an associate in private practice in Fiji, Crown counsel in the Attorney General’s Office of Tuvalu, Assistant People’s Lawyer of Tuvalu, Legal Adviser of the Fisheries Department of Tuvalu, and more recently the Senior Magistrate of Tuvalu.