Turning the Tide:

Michael Igoe is a Senior Reporter with Devex, based in Washington, D.C. He covers U.S. foreign aid, global health, climate change, and development finance. Prior to joining Devex, Michael researched water management and climate change adaptation in post-Soviet Central Asia, where he also wrote for EurasiaNet. Michael earned his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College, where he majored in Russian, and his master’s degree from the University of Montana, where he studied international conservation and development.

Ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan is Permanent Representative of the Republic of Fiji to the United Nations in Geneva. Ambassador Khan was born in Fiji in 1960 and attended school there. She went to university in the United Kingdom, at Sussex University and Cambridge University, where she studied law. She was admitted to the Bar of England and Wales at the Inner Temple in London in 1983, and to the High Court in Fiji as a barrister and solicitor in 1984. She holds a Master of Philosophy degree in Criminology from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Ms. Khan worked for 16 years as a prosecutor in Fiji, and during that time was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions of Fiji in 1994. In 1999, she was appointed Fiji’s first woman High Court judge. She was a judge mainly in the criminal division of the High Court, where she with the three other criminal High Court judges developed Fiji’s sentencing guidelines principles, based on the English Court of Appeal developed sentencing principles. This approach was later passed as legislation in Fiji in 2009.

Simon is from Aotearoa New Zealand and is a member of the Tuhoe and Ngati Ruapani tribes. His doctoral research was on small-scale Maori horticulture and he was awarded his PhD in 2008 from Lincoln University. Prior to that he was awarded a MA (Hons) degree from the University of Canterbury after researching the assessment of environmental vulnerability in the Pacific.
Following the 2010-11 earthquakes in Christchurch, Simon’s research has focused on disaster risk reduction for Indigenous communities with particular interest in urban Indigenous groups. He has taught a variety of courses in Indigenous planning and development and will be teaching Aboriginal Development (INDG 265) in the Fall semester, and a Special Topic on International Indigenous Disaster Risk Reduction (INDG 398) in 2018.

Ms Narayan has actively participated in many events, including, COP23, COY13, Global Landscapes Forum 2019, UN Youth Climate Action Summit as a Green Ticket Recipient, COP25 and COY15. Given the critical situation that the world is in, especially the Pacific, she believes there is a need to bring about more awareness around what the Pacific is going through and the severity of climate change that they are facing.
Ms. Komal is also doing her Master of Arts in Development Studies by Research, focusing on “Climate Change and Planned Relocation in Fiji”. She has also graduated with her Undergraduate Degree in Public Health and her Post Graduate Diploma in Development Studies.
She has recently joined the Sustainable Ocean Alliance as the Pacific Island Representative. The main objective of her role is to increase the presence of SOA in the Pacific and provide an engaging platform for youths from the Pacific to engage more effectively in the Ocean space both regionally and internationally.

Dr. Jale Samuwai is the Climate Finance Advisor for Oxfam in the Pacific, and is currently responsible for covering the 10 Pacific countries in which Oxfam have a program footprint. He holds a PhD in Climate Change from the University of the South Pacific (USP) and is the first graduate from USP to attain this qualification. His PhD thesis specifically looks at climate financing in the Pacific region. In addition, he has published 8 peer reviewed articles on sustainable development issues in the Pacific in ranked journals outlets and has also written 3 technical reports on climate change/finance related issues in the region.

Coral Pasisi is an earth scientist and development planner with over 20 years of experience in the Pacific Islands region, focusing on sustainable development, climate change and associated financing.
She has worked at the government level in Niue as a Sustainable Development Planner, and at the regional level for the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) as a Regional and International Issues Adviser; and for the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP.
In the past five years, Ms Pasisi has worked as a consultant, predominantly for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) as their Regional Adviser for the Pacific. She is also a Member of the Climate Security Expert Network, established by the German government, which currently holds the UN Security Council Presidency, to advance climate security issues.
In addition, Ms Pasisi runs the non-profit organization Tofia Niue, which works in partnership with the local government and global philanthropic organizations, including Oceans 5 and National Geographic Pristine Seas, to protect and sustainably manage ocean resources.

Jacqueline Patterson is the Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. Since 2007 Patterson has served as coordinator & co-founder of Women of Color United. Jacqui Patterson has worked as a researcher, program manager, coordinator, advocate and activist working on women‘s rights, violence against women, HIV&AIDS, racial justice, economic justice, and environmental and climate justice. Patterson served as a Senior Women’s Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid where she integrated a women’s rights lens for the issues of food rights, macroeconomics, and climate change as well as the intersection of violence against women and HIV&AIDS. Previously, she served as Assistant Vice-President of HIV/AIDS Programs for IMA World Health providing management and technical assistance to medical facilities and programs in 23 countries in Africa and the Caribbean. Patterson served as the Outreach Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Research Coordinator for Johns Hopkins University. She also served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica, West Indies.

Richard Teeuw is Professor of Geoinformatics and Disaster Risk Reduction at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His current research focuses on using space technologies to combat Data Poverty, from phone apps for crowdsensing data on community vulnerability, to satellite remote sensing of oil pollution in Nigeria and illegal gold mining in Colombia rainforests. He led a team surveying impacts of Hurricane Maria in Dominica, providing guidelines for Caribbean ‘Build Back Better’ strategies. In the UK Space Agency funded CommonSensing project, he leads a team applying satellite and drone imagery to climate change adaptation, improved disaster response and risk reduction.