Luis Gomez Echeverri

After over 30 years in a variety of senior positions with the United Nations, Mr. Luis Gomez-Echeverri joined the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria in 2009, having been appointed Associate Director and Co Editor of the Global Energy Assessment, the most comprehensive energy assessment to date involving some 500 authors and analysts from around the world and published by Cambridge University Press in the fall of 2012. Currently, he is a member of the leadership team, together with the IIASA Director General (DG) and Deputy Director General for Science (DDGS), and is responsible for establishing a Consultative Science Platform on COVID 19 together with the International Science Council and several other partners.

During his time at IIASA, he has been involved in a variety of projects and initiatives including work in China on two reports- one on China’s ‘Livable Cities’ with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and one other on ‘Toward a Low Carbon Economy’ with Renmin University. In both, Mr. Gomez-Echeverri was a lead author as well as a member of the editing team. He is currently an Emeritus Research Scholar at IIASA. Until December of 2015, he was, for approximately four years, a Senior Advisor and team member of Sustainable Energy for All, an initiative of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, launched at Rio + 20. Initially working with the Executive Office of the UN Secretary General, Mr. Gomez-Echeverri was responsible for leading and overseeing the start-up of the SEforALL initiative throughout the developing world in over 50 countries - in the run up to Rio + 20. In the last two years with SEforALL, he was responsible for developing and leading an initiative and major project to promote energy efficiency globally. As part of IIASA and the SEforAll team in Vienna and New York, was one of the members of the team who helped shape and finally negotiate SDG7 - Clean and Affordable Energy - to its successful completion and adoption. Most recently, until the end of 2019, he was a member of the team of a major initiative at IIASA -The World in 2050 - which endeavours to demonstrate how the objectives of sustainable development can be achieved within planetary boundaries. Starting in 2020, Mr. Gomez-Echeverri began two research activities on issues related to the implementation of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. Both activities focus on one of the major bottlenecks hindering the success of the implementation and success of these agreements – the fragmentation of governance and institutions at all levels and in all sectors. Together with Yale University, one of these activities focuses on the fragmentation of climate finance and its consequences on the success of both the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. The other, being carried out in cooperation with a Professor from Oxford and other colleagues, focuses on the consequences of the adoption of the Paris Agreement on the climate change regime governance and its need for transformation.

In his last 15 years with the United Nations, Mr. Gomez-Echeverri occupied several senior positions including that of country Resident Coordinator and Chief of Staff for UNDP, the largest development agency within the UN System. He was responsible for setting up the first Environment and Energy Department at the UNDP in the early 90s and became its first director. The department he created now oversees one of the largest energy and environment portfolios in the UN System. His last position with UNDP was as Deputy Assistant Administrator and Deputy Director of the Bureau for Development Policy (BDP), the Bureau responsible for research, development policy and policy advice to developing countries, with over 100 policy advisors around the world. He was with the Secretariat of the UNFCCC for several years, where he was the Coordinator of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation of the Convention (SBI), the body responsible for supporting the climate change political negotiations, as well as Director of Implementation Programs for the Convention and Director of programs related to finance of the Convention. In 2002, and working with the UN Secretary General, Mr. Kofi Anan, Mr. Gomez-Echeverri was the Leader of a group of some 200 authors who were responsible for preparing the Frameworks for Action in the areas of water, energy, health, agriculture, and biodiversity (WEHAB) for the Earth Summit 2002 in Johannesburg - the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The team was composed of authors from the World Bank, over 20 UN agencies, and many other institutions in the science community. The Frameworks for Action served as the basis for two days of preparatory discussions prior to the Summit negotiations that followed and as the basis for much of the discussion, deliberations and negotiations which followed.

Mr. Gomez-Echeverri received his post-graduate degrees from Yale and Georgetown Universities, US, in the areas of environmental science and management and international economic affairs respectively. He was a Lead Author of the IPCC WGIII Fifth Assessment Report Chapter on Finance (Chapter 16) and contributing author in other policy chapters of AR5. He was a member of the small core team responsible for producing the Synthesis Report of the AR5 as well as the Summary for Policy Makers and Technical Summary. His research interests are in the areas concerned with climate and development linkages, implementation of the Paris Agreement and Development Agenda 2030, governance and institutions, climate change, finance, and development cooperation.




Last update: 22-APR-2020

TWI2050 - The World in 2050 (2019). The Digital Revolution and Sustainable Development: Opportunities and Challenges. Report prepared by the World in 2050 initiative. IIASA

Gomez Echeverri L (2018). Climate and development: enhancing impact through stronger linkages in the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 376 (2119): e20160444. DOI:10.1098/rsta.2016.0444.

Gomez Echeverri L (2018). Investing for rapid decarbonization in cities. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 30: 42-51. DOI:10.1016/j.cosust.2018.02.010.

Gomez Echeverri L (2018). A Review of the Nature of Foreign Aid to the Energy Sector over the Last Two Decades. In: Aid Effectiveness for Environmental Sustainability. Eds. Huang, Y. & Pascual, U., pp. 125-184 Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-981-10-5379-510.1007/978-981-10-5379-5_5.

McCollum DL, Gomez Echeverri L, Busch S, Pachauri S , Parkinson S, Rogelj J , Krey V , Minx JC, et al. (2018). Connecting the sustainable development goals by their energy inter-linkages. Environmental Research Letters 13 (3): 033006. DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/aaafe3.

McCollum D, Gomez Echeverri L, Busch S, Pachauri S , Parkinson S, Rogelj J , Krey V , Riahi K , et al. (2017). Connecting the Sustainable Development Goals by their energy inter-linkages. IIASA Working Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: WP-17-006

Nakicenovic N & Gomez Echeverri L (2017). Global Energy Assessment (GEA) and its Impact. In: IIASA Institutional Evaluation 2017, 27 February-1 March 2017, IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria.

International Council for Science (2017). A Guide to SDG Interactions: from Science to Implementation. International Council for Science, Paris. DOI:10.24948/2017.01.

McCollum D, Gomez Echeverri L, Riahi K , & Parkinson S (2017). SDG7: Ensure Access to Affordable, Reliable, Sustainable and Modern Energy for All. In: A guide to SDG interactions: from science to implementation. Eds. Griggs, D.J., Nilsson, M., Stevance, A. & McCollum, D., pp. 127-173 International Council for Science, Paris. 10.24948/2017.01.

Uerge-Vorsatz D, Gomez-Echeverri L, St Clair AL, Jones F, & Graham P (2015). Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all. In: Review of the Sustainable Goals: The Science Perspective. ICSU & ISSC. ISBN 978-0-930357-97-9

Allwood JM, Bosetti V, Dubash NK, Gomez Echeverri L, & von Stechow C (2014). Annex 1 - Glossary. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. IPCC Working Group III Contribution to AR5. Cambridge University Press.

Edenhofer O, Pichs-Madruga R, Sokona Y, Kadner S, Minx JC, Brunner S, Agrawala S, Baiocchi G, et al. (2014). Technical summary. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. IPCC Working Group III Contribution to AR5. Cambridge University Press.

Gupta S, Harnisch J, Barua DC, Chingambo L, Frankel P, Jorge R, Vázquez G, Gomez Echeverri L, et al. (2014). Chapter 16 - Cross-cutting investment and finance issues. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. IPCC Working Group III Contribution to AR5. Eds. In, , Cambridge University Press.

Pachauri RK, Gomez-Echeverri L, & Riahi K (2014). Synthesis report. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. IPCC Working Group III Contribution to AR5. Cambridge University Press.

Pachauri RK, Gomez-Echeverri L, & Riahi K (2014). Synthesis report: summary for policy makers. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. IPCC Working Group III Contribution to AR5. Cambridge University Press.

Somanathan E, Sterner T, Sugiyama T, Chimanikire D, Dubash NK, Essandoh-Yeddu JK, Fifita S, Goulder L, et al. (2014). Chapter 15 - National and sub-national policies and institutions. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. IPCC Working Group III Contribution to AR5. Eds. In, , Cambridge University Press.

Edenhofer O, Pichs-Madruga R, Sokona Y, Agrawala S, Bashmakov IA, Blanco G, Broome J, Bruckner T, et al. (2014). Summary for policymakers. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. IPCC Working Group III Contribution to AR5. Cambridge University Press.

Gomez-Echeverri L (2013). Foreign aid and sustainable energy. WIDER Working Paper No. 2013/093, UNU-WIDER, Helsinki, Finland (September 2013)

Gomez-Echeverri L (2013). The changing geopolitics of climate change finance. Climate Policy 13 (5): 632-648. DOI:10.1080/14693062.2013.822690.

Gomez-Echeverri L (2013). Chapter 5 - Urbanisation: Toward a future balanced development and an ecological civilization. In: China National Human Development Report 2013: Sustainable and Liveable Cities: Toward Ecological Civilization. Eds. Jiahua, P, Beijing: China Translation and Publishing Corporation.

Gomez-Echeverri L (2013). Introduction. In: China National Human Development Report 2013: Sustainable and Liveable Cities: Toward Ecological Civilization. Eds. Jiahua, P, Beijing: China Translation and Publishing Corporation.

Gomez-Echeverri L (2010). China Human Development Report 2009/10: China and a Sustainable Future - Towards a Low Carbon Economy and Society. Beijing, China: China Translation and Publishing Corporation. ISBN 978-7-5001-2498-6

Gomez Echeverri L (2009). Developing countries and a proposal for architecture and governance of a reformed unfccc financial mechanism. In: Climate Finance: Cultures, Histories, and Representations. Eds. Kan, S.A., pp. 165-171 University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-081474138-2