Thursday, March 28, 2024

Liz catches eye of UN

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“I am a very simple person, who works hard, prays hard and dreams big dreams.”
Forty-nine-year-old Henrietta Elizabeth Thompson, better known as “Liz” was explaining what makes her tick and how she was chosen by Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations secretary-general, to be the executive coordinator for the South for the Rio+20 Conference On Sustainable Development scheduled to be held in Brazil in 2012.
In that key position, pegged at the level of a UN assistant secretary-general, Thompson, a former Barbados Minister of the Environment, will be responsible for ensuring that the world’s developing countries are adequately represented at the upcoming global meeting in Rio de Janeiro and that the issues of greatest concern to the poorer nations in the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific are effectively ventilated.
Her counterpart, Brice Lalonde, France’s climate change ambassador and a former Minister of the Environment, is the executive coordinator for the North, the rich nations of Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.
“I am going to do in this position what I always do and that is to work hard, pray hard and give it my best shot,” she told the Sunday Sun. “After all, failure is not an option.”
The job calls for Thompson to raise funds to help developing countries attend the conference, a follow up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio; assist in the international negotiations that could lead to a global understanding of the importance of a green economy; help forge a plan of action on sustainable development, climate change and other related issues; join in the preparation of a roadmap that would guide the UN on key environmental questions; and be part of the management of the conference secretariat.
Both executive coordinators will work alongside and report to Sha Zukang, the UN under-secretary general, who has responsibility for the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and who has been designated as the Rio+20 Conference’s secretary-general.
“There is an umbrella of activities, roles and responsibilities which we will be covering,” Thompson explained. “A tremendous amount of it is going to revolve around fund-raising for the conference to make sure that developing countries have an opportunity to be properly represented there (in Rio) by their delegations.
“We will certainly be doing a high degree of political negotiation towards mobilising political support; creating dialogue on the issues; preparing a road map for how we get where the UN wants to get in relation to the subject areas of the conference.”
Thompson, an attorney with a Master’s degree in oil and gas law and a Master’s in business administration, feels she is well placed and prepared for the task given her academic training, extensive experience in national, regional and international affairs, and grasp of the issues.
“This is a job which needs deep political experience as reflected in the fact that the other executive coordinator, Lalonde, was also a government minister and it shows the level of seriousness the United Nations is paying to the post and the work that needs to be done,” she insisted.
“I believe I was chosen because of my deep political experience on climate change matters, energy and environmental issues, sustainable development policy questions and the fact that I worked as a Minister of Health, Housing and Physical Development and Planning. From my myriad portfolios, I would have drawn experiences which are critical to sustainable development from the economic, social and ecological perspectives.”
Thompson said she was sensitive to the global policy agenda and the “international policy imperatives” as they related to interests of  various “stakeholders”, including governments. Just as important, was her understanding of the UN Millennium Development Goals, she added.
“I believe I would have been the kind of candidate for whom they would have been looking,” she said.
Thompson, a 2008 recipient of the Champion Of The Earth Award, the top global environment prize, which was shared by Prince Albert of Monaco, former United States Vice President, Al Gore; Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union before its disintegration; Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand; Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s president; and Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, Guyana’s president, said her performance during
the search earlier this year for an executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, (UNFCCC), caught the world’s body’s attention and played a key role in her selection.
“I had to interface with several ambassadors, executives of the international NGO community, and with senior officials of the United Nations and the fact that I reached the final round of the UNFCCC selection process certainly helped,” she added.
Indeed, John Ash, Antigua & Barbuda’s UN ambassador and a co-chairman of the UN Preparatory Committee for the Rio+20 Conference, said at the time and again recently that Thompson was “really an outstanding candidate” who brought credit to Barbados and the Caribbean during the search.
Dr Christopher Hackett, a former Barbados UN ambassador, who guided her campaign for the UNFCCC position but has since retired, said she impressed representatives with her knowledge of the environmental issues.
She was really an exceptional candidate,” he said.
Thompson, who was backed by the David Thompson Administration for the first position, insisted she got the nod “on my own”, meaning that it was the way she presented herself and her background that propelled her to the top of the list of candidates.
“I appreciate the fact that the Government nominated me for the UNFCC post,” she added. “But with respect to the new position, I was chosen because of my own performance. The support of the Government was not required for the appointment.”
She was quick to credit her parents, Harry and Pauline Thompson, for providing her with a solid upbringing and “core values” that emphasised hard work and the ability to reach for the stars.
“My parents raised their children in a way that encouraged them to dream big dreams,” she said.
Thompson, who like the late Prime Minister David Thompson, was born in England, moved to Barbados as a young child, growing up in Baxter’s Road, attending private and public primary school before going on to St Michael’s School in 1972 and then Queen’s College in 1978.
A former Nation newspaper journalist, she studied law at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies and the Hugh Wooding Law School, graduating in 1987.
“It has been a varied and exciting life experience,” she added.
Thompson is married to Cecil McDowald, a businessman and construction project manager.

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