Posted on September, 14 2006

Hans Verolme has been appointed interim Director of WWF’s Global Climate Change Programme. A Dutch national, Hans comes to the position with extensive experience of climate change issues and a thorough knowledge of development challenges, having worked across the globe and lived in India and Kenya. These past nine years, Hans has resided in Washington, DC, where he served for 5 years as senior adviser to the British Embassy on environment and energy policy before joining WWF US as head of their climate change program.

"The challenges for the climate are massive and rising,” said Verolme. “The focus of my work will be to further prepare WWF for the task at hand. That is quite a task to be honest. We are seeing the impacts of climate change on our conservation efforts and have gradually increased efforts to strengthen our ability to respond to those changes. We are now actively engaged in some 20 countries in policy campaigns with a focus on the energy sector. In addition to our high-level lobbying we have built bridges with the business community including through strong performance based partnerships. We are now looking ahead at what it will really take from WWF for the world to stay below 2°C of warming."

Hans succeeds Jennifer Morgan, who has been seconded to Third Generational Environmentalism (E3G) where she will lead the organization’s energy and climate security work.

Contact:
Martin Hiller
Communications Manager
WWF global climate change programme
+41 79 347 2256