Kevin Rafferty is a writer, author, and commentator of forty years standing on matters financial, environmental, and political and one of the most respected experts on Asian affairs. Amongst his numerous accolades is that of International Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards. His journalistic career encompasses the Financial Times, where he was Asia editor and later regional editor; the Observer; New Society Magazine and the Guardian, for which he was Asia correspondent. He was founder-editor of Business Times, Malaysia, which was described by Norman Pearlstine (editor in chief of Time/Fortune as "the best daily newspaper in developing Asia". He has also been executive editor for the Indian Express Group, managing editor for the World Bank; Asia-Pacific bureau chief for Institutional Investor; business editor and later editor of the Hong Kong Standard; special correspondent in Asia for Euromoney; and consultant and editor in chief for Business Day, Bangkok. He still writes for a number of these titles, is editor in chief of Plain Words Media, a consortium of journalists founded with former World Bank spokesman Tim Cullen,which covers international economic and development issues and has latterly added the South China Morning Post to the many titles to which he contributes.

Charles Secrett is a Special Advisor (Environment & Sustainability) to the Mayor of London and Visit London. He is also Chair of the Board of Triodos Bank Renewable Energy Fund; a Trustee of The Building Exploratory and Vice-President of London Wildlife Trust. Formerly, he was Executive Director, Friends of the Earth (1993-2003) and a member of the UK Round Table on Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Commission (1994-2003).

Professor Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015. Professor Sachs is also President and Co-Founder of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofi t organization aimed at ending extreme global poverty. He is widely considered to be the leading international economic advisor of his generation and is also one of the leading voices for combining economic development with environmental sustainability. As Director of the Earth Institute he leads large-scale efforts to promote the mitigation of human-induced climate change. In 2004 and 2005 he was named among the 100 most infl uential leaders in the world by Time Magazine.

The Rt. Hon Simon Upton was New Zealand Minister of the Environment between 1990 and 1999. He now works internationally with governments, businesses and research institutions on climate change and wider sustainability issues. Until recently he chaired the Round Table on Sustainable Development at the OECD in Paris, a post he held for six years. Simon Upton is regarded as one of New Zealand’s leading intellectuals, who can contribute to debate across the whole range of science, the humanities, and business.

Professor Louise O. Fresco was appointed University Professor of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in June 2006, and holds a chair in the fi eld of the foundations of sustainable development in an international perspective. She is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry in Stockholm and corresponding member of the Real Academia de Ingeniería in Madrid, as well as a member of the North Netherlands Society for Sciences. She also holds visiting professorships at the Institute of Earth Sciences at Stanford University and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation in Palo Alto (US). In addition, she is Distinguished Professor at Wageningen University. Professor Fresco previously served as Assistant Director-General of the Agriculture Department of the FAO (the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome) from January 2000 to May 2006, and before that as Director of Research (1997-1999).

Currently its Director, Sunita has been working with the Centre for Science and Environment since 1982. She is also Director of the Society for Environmental Communications and publisher of the fortnightly magazine, Down To Earth. For a number of years, she has made one of her principal focuses the study and analysis of the relationship between environment and development, and the concomitant creation of public awareness of the need for sustainable development. She also serves on the boards of numerous organisations and on governmental committees, and has spoken at many fora across the world, as well as authoring books and papers on issues related to her areas of expertise.

Johann Gnadlinger has been living in Brazil as a rural development worker since 1977 and, since1991, has been working at IRPAA (The Regional Institute for Appropriate Small Scale Agriculture), one of the most infl uential NGO’s of the Brazilian Semi-Arid Tropics, where he was responsible for the Water and Climate Section from 1991 to 2002. As a member of Horizont3000 – the Austrian Organization for Development Co-Operation, he has dedicated the last twelve years to environmental and water management, especially in the Brazilian semi-arid tropics. He is also one of the founders of ABCMAC (The Brazilian Rainwater Catchment and Management Association) and is its current President. He has coorganized fi ve Brazilian Conferences on Rainwater Harvesting, and has also acted as secretary general of the 9th International Rainwater Catchment Systems Conference in Brazil, 1999. He was convener of the Rainwater Harvesting Session during the 2nd World Water Forum at the Hague, in 2000, and the 3rd World Water Forum at Kyoto, in 2003. From 1999 to 2003 he was a vice-president of IRCSA – International Rainwater Catchment Systems Association, gaining practical experience of rainwater harvesting in different parts of the world such as Kenya, China, Iran and Mexico. He is one of the originators and promoters of P1+2 (Program One Peace of Land and Two Types of Water), relating the water issue to the sustainable development of the Brazilian rural semi-arid region and its population, and has authored publications on this and numerous related issues.