Simon Upton is Chairman of the OECD Round Table on Sustainable Development. The round table is an informal forum offering key participants in the sustainable development debate an opportunity to take stock of progress at global level and think laterally about solutions that are difficult to introduce in formal negotiating processes.
The round table enables environment and economics ministers, representatives of the OECD, World Bank, United Nations programmes, World Trade Organization and individuals invited from business and civil society organizations to meet twice a year to tackle some of the more intractable problems that defy negotiated solutions.
Simon Upton is also Director of the Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI), a project sponsored by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). The GSI aims to improve information on the extent and effects of subsidies, especially those harming developing countries or the environment.
He became a prominent figure in international environmental negotiations, chairing the 1998 meeting of OECD environment ministers, and the 7th Session of the Commission of Sustainable Development in 1998-99. He is a consultant and company director in his native New Zealand. He was appointed to the Board of Directors of Holcim (New Zealand) Ltd in November 2007.
Simon Upton is a Rhodes Scholar with degrees in English literature, music and law from the University of Auckland and an MLitt in political philosophy from the University of Oxford.
In 1981at the age of 23, he was elected to Parliament in New Zealand, and became one of the country's youngest Cabinet Ministers in 1990. He held a wide variety of portfolios including Environment, Biosecurity, Science and Technology, and Health and State Services. He was elected to the Privy Council in 2000 and retired from politics in 2001.
In March 2008, Simon Upton became a Visiting Fellow at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Simon Upton is a fanatical tree planter and gardener in his spare time.
[last updated 08-Apr-08]