Mr. David O’Connor is the former Representative to the United Nations of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Prior to this role, he served as Chief of the Policy and Analysis Branch of the Division for Sustainable Development at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, where he led the substantive support for 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.

He was centrally engaged in supporting the Rio+20 processes to define the Sustainable Development Goals and managed the teams that produced the first two editions of the Global Sustainable Development Report. Before the United Nations, he served as Senior Economist at the OECD Development Centre and has published extensively on climate policies and their co-benefits in developing countries.

Education: PhD, Stanford & UCL | MS, University of Wisconsin | BA, Yale University