Candidate info
Particular qualifications:
Prof Mackey has served two terms on the IUCN Council as an elected Regional Councillor for Oceania. During his time on Council, Prof Mackey Co-Chaired the Programme and Policy Committee where he helped guide the Union in addressing critical issues regarding IUCN's engagements with corporations and important governance reforms, among other things. He also Co-Chaired two working groups. The first of these working groups developed IUCN's biodiversity offsets policy through an extensive whole-of-Union consultation process. The second one was the climate working group which led to a phase shift in IUCN's engagement with the climate crisis and the UN climate negotiation processes including the annual Conference of the Parties. The climate working group also prepared the groundwork for the establishment of the Climate Crisis Commission. He is currently a member of the Steering Committee for the Climate Crisis Commission and leads the Solutions and Innovative Approaches theme and has contributed to the development the new Commission's mandate and work plan. He is a long-standing member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas. His current work with the WCPA includes developing policy discussion papers as a cross-commission collaboration with the Climate Crisis Commission on climate and biodiversity synergies, and the functional role of biodiversity in ecosystem mitigation and adaptation. Prof Mackey is also a long-standing member of the Commission on Environmental Law, including as past co-chair of the ethics specialist group. He is a Lifetime Member of the Australian Committee for IUCN.
Experience in fields of concern to IUCN:
Prof Mackey was a Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report Working Group 2 Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation. He was also an author of the AR6 WG2 Summary for Policy Makers. He has contributed to side events at UNFCCC COPs since 2008; e.g., first ever side event at a climate COP on the contribution of forest protection to climate mitigation at Bali COP13; invited plenary speaker at the COP28 30x30 High Level Event “From Agreement to Action: Harnessing 30x30 to Tackle Climate Change.” Prof Mackey has provided expert advice on matters of climate change and biodiversity to international and national governmental organisations including: the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity; the World Meteorological Society; the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations; the Melanesian Spearhead Group; the E.U. cabinet; the USA Biden Whitehouse Administration; the Australian Government; the Secretariat for the Pacific Regional Environment Programme; and the Global Environment Facility. He has led multiple projects on ecosystem-based approaches to climate change mitigation and adaptation, including capacity building, ecosystem service valuation and community-centred approaches. Case studies include projects in Vanuatu, PNG, Indonesia, Nepal, Brazilian Amazon, and DCR. In his current position as director of Griffith University's Climate Action Beacon, he oversees a transdisciplinary program of applied research that seeks to develop the knowledge, leadership, capacity and responses to enable effective and just climate action throughout society. He has authored and co-authored over 300 publications in the fields of biodiversity, world heritage, climate, policy and planning.