Dr. Juha I. Uitto

Hailing from Finland, Juha has worked extensively in the international environment and development arena for organizations such as UNDP, the World Bank and the GEF. Most recently completing his ten-year tenure as Director of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in Washington, DC, he specializes in the evaluation of international development programs, environmental policy, natural resources management and environmental hazards.

The GEF is the world’s premier public financial mechanism for a number of multilateral environmental conventions, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and the Minamata Convention on Mercury.

The IEO contributes to accountability and learning through rigorous evaluation of GEF policies, results and impact on the ground, and institutional effectiveness.

Juha spent the 1990s at the United Nations University as research and training program coordinator for environment and sustainable development. He has also been a visiting scholar at Rutgers University and the University of Kyoto in Japan.

He is currently Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law Institute and an advisor on environmental and development evaluation to various UN agencies, including the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and UNDP.

He has written several books and numerous journal articles on topics of his expertise and he serves on the editorial boards of the peer reviewed journals Environmental Hazards, Progress in Disaster Science, and Evaluation and Program Planning.

Juha earned his MSc in geography from the University of Helsinki and his PhD from Lund University.

Considered a global leader in evaluating at the nexus of environment and development, he serves on the Board of the International Evaluation Academy, chairs the Evaluation Advisory Panel of IFAD, and co-chairs the Monitoring and Evaluation interest group of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association.

For RTC, Juha oversees project assessment, monitoring and evaluation that ensures projects supported by RTC are safe, socially accepted and scalable to achieve the goal of climate restoration via:

• Applying environmental project evaluation criteria approved by the United Nations, the GEF and the World Bank;

• Verifying social license and prior informed consent from Indigenous, local and impacted communities and stakeholders; and

• Ensuring compliance with applicable domestic and international regulations and legal regimes.


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