Mr. David O’Connor
Representative to the UN, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
Mr. David O’Connor is Representative to the UN of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Prior to that, Mr. O'Connor was the Chief of the Policy and Analysis Branch of the Division for Sustainable Development at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, position in which he led the substantive support to the negotiation of the Rio+20 outcome document, The Future We Want, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by world leaders in September 2015. O'Connor was centrally engaged in supporting the Rio+20 processes to define sustainable development goals (SDGs), to develop a financing strategy for sustainable development and to explore options for a technology facilitation mechanism to encourage international cooperation in development and transfer of clean and environmentally sound technologies. He managed the teams which produced the first two editions of the Global Sustainable Development Report mandated by the Rio+20 Conference as a tool to strengthen the science-policy interface at the High-Level Political Forum on sustainable development. Before joining the UN, Mr. O’Connor was Senior Economist at the OECD Development Centre, researching the many areas of sustainable development. He has also published extensively on climate policies and their co-benefits in developing countries.