Mark Carney Appointed UN Special Envoy on Climate Action
On 1 December 2019, in Madrid, Spain, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced the appointment of Mr. Mark Joseph Carney, OC, of Canada as his Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance.
As Special Envoy, he will focus on ambitious implementation of climate action, with special attention to significantly shifting public and private finance markets and mobilizing private finance to the levels needed to achieve the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.
This will include building the frameworks for financial reporting, risk management, and returns in order to bring the impacts of climate change to the mainstream of private financial decision making and to support the transition to a net zero carbon economy.
Mr. Carney has held numerous positions in finance in both the private and public sectors. He is currently the Governor of the Bank of England. The Governor will become a member of UN staff at the point at which he ceases to work for the Bank of England. He also served, from 2011 to 2018, as Chair of the Financial Stability Board and Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008-2013.
According to a UN communique, the Secretary-General will count on Mark Carney to galvanize climate action and transform climate finance as the world builds towards the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting in Glasgow in November 2020.
Mr. Carney began his career at Goldman Sachs before joining the Canadian Department of Finance and later serving as the Governor of the Bank of Canada (2008-2013). He was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada in 1965.
He received a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Harvard University in 1988. He went on to receive a master’s degree in Economics in 1993 and a doctorate in Economics in 1995, both from Oxford University.
