Nick Nuttall is a freelance communications consultant and former Director of Communications and Outreach and Spokesperson [1] for the UN Environment headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change headquartered in Bonn, Germany.
He is also a musician having released his first full album of his songs, entitled Just Because Some Bad Wind Blows, on Reptiphon Records in Berlin on 5 May 2023.
Nuttall was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, UK, the son of Ernest and Olive Nuttall. He was educated at Greenhill High School and attended the University of St Andrews.
After graduating, Nuttall held positions as a stock, bond and commodity broker in the UK and the United States, having begun his working life as a singer with the US pop group The Albany Bridge Band.
Before joining the United Nations, he was the Environment and Technology correspondent at The Times from 1989, having worked for various newspapers and magazines including The Daily Telegraph , The Independent the Evening Standard and London Evening News , Woman and Cosmopolitan .
Nuttall was known at The Times for some of the more exotic front-page stories and is thought to be the only journalist in the UK to have a story about a former hairdresser from Hartlepool who had invented a heat shield or coating for the US space shuttle based on doing perms in his salon—printed on 1 April with the Editor's caveat 'This is not an April Fool.'
Nuttall has won various awards including one of the inaugural BT technology journalist of the year awards for a feature in The Times on Teledildonics and The Tidy Britain Group's Queen Mother's Birthday Awards.
Nuttall joined the United Nations Environment Programme in 2001. He was, until December 2013, the spokesperson, principal speechwriter and creative writer for UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner. Nuttall joined UNEP in 2001 working for former UNEP Executive Director and former German Minister of the Environment, Klaus Töpfer and is credited with collaborating with Töpfer to develop the UNEP theme "Environment for Development" to re-position UNEP in the early 21st century. [2]
During his time at UNEP, Nuttall was responsible for transforming the organization's media profile and, in collaboration with its Executive Director, inspiring several landmark reports including the 2009 Climate Change Science Compendium; the Natural Fix The Role of Ecosystems in Climate Mitigation and the Dead Planet, Living Planet: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Restoration for Sustainable Development. He also spearheaded the communications aimed at popularizing the concepts and ideas behind UNEP's Global Green New Deal/Green Economy Initiative. [3]
In January 2014, he joined UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. He was responsible for supporting the press and communications of Executive Secretaries Christiana Figueres and Patricia Espinosa and across the Framework Convention’s operations. He was the UN's Spokesperson for the securing of a new universal climate agreement at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.
Global Climate Action Summit
Nuttall became Director of Communications and Spokesperson for the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS)which took place in September 2018 joining the team in March 2018. Here he coordinated the communications efforts of businesses, cities, regional governments and citizens across a bold range of announcements aimed at Taking Climate Ambition to the Next Level by 2020. Nuttall participated in the New American Road Trip which left San Francisco after the Summit and took the outcomes of GCAS in an electric car journey across the United States to the UN in New York in September 2019.
Nuttall also worked as Strategic Communications Director at the Earth Day Network for its 50th anniversary in 2020 and has been a visiting professor on sustainability communications at Tongji University, China. He advises Nouveaux Media which specializes in video and digital marketing. Nuttall is currently Strategic Communications Director and a broadcast presenter for the climate action platform We Don't Have Time and is a member of the trustees of TVE
Nick is also a backing singer with the German-based musician Bernadette La Hengst who also produced Nuttall's first full album, Just Because Some Bad Wind Blows, on 5 May 2023. The title song is about climate change and action; two other songs link to climate and environmental issues and the others range from tall family tales to love and life.
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The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the UN process for negotiating an agreement to limit dangerous climate change. It is an international treaty among countries to combat "dangerous human interference with the climate system". The main way to do this is limiting the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It was signed in 1992 by 154 states at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro. The treaty entered into force on 21 March 1994. "UNFCCC" is also the name of the Secretariat charged with supporting the operation of the convention, with offices on the UN Campus in Bonn, Germany.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is responsible for coordinating responses to environmental issues within the United Nations system. It was established by Maurice Strong, its first director, after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in June 1972. Its mandate is to provide leadership, deliver science and develop solutions on a wide range of issues, including climate change, the management of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and green economic development. The organization also develops international environmental agreements; publishes and promotes environmental science and helps national governments achieve environmental targets.
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Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF), formerly known as Women in Europe for a Common Future, is a non-governmental organization created in 1994 following the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The aim of the organization is to "achieve an equitable and sustainable healthy environment for all". WECF is a network of more than 150 women's and environmental organizations in 50 countries worldwide. WECF also works on national, European, UN and international political levels with the aim to increase women's influence in political decision-making processes.
Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen is a Costa Rican diplomat who has led national, international and multilateral policy negotiations. She was appointed Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in July 2010, six months after the failed COP15 in Copenhagen. During the next six years she worked to rebuild the global climate change negotiating process, leading to the 2015 Paris Agreement, widely recognized as a historic achievement.
Safe Planet: the United Nations Campaign for Responsibility on Hazardous Chemicals and Wastes is the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and UN Food and Agricultural Organization-led global public awareness and outreach campaign for ensuring the safety of human health and the environment against hazardous chemicals and wastes.
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The United Nations Climate Change Conferences are yearly conferences held in the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). They serve as the formal meeting of the UNFCCC parties – the Conference of the Parties (COP) – to assess progress in dealing with climate change, and beginning in the mid-1990s, to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol to establish legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Starting in 2005 the conferences have also served as the "Conference of the Parties Serving as the Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol" (CMP); also parties to the convention that are not parties to the protocol can participate in protocol-related meetings as observers. From 2011 to 2015 the meetings were used to negotiate the Paris Agreement as part of the Durban platform, which created a general path towards climate action. Any final text of a COP must be agreed by consensus.
The 2016 United Nations Climate Change Conference was an international meeting of political leaders and activists to discuss environmental issues. It was held in Marrakech, Morocco, on 7–18 November 2016. The conference incorporated the twenty-second Conference of the Parties (COP22), the twelfth meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP12), and the first meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA1). The purpose of the conference was to discuss and implement plans about combatting climate change and to "[demonstrate] to the world that the implementation of the Paris Agreement is underway". Participants work together to come up with global solutions to climate change.
Janos Pasztor is a Hungarian diplomat. His current role is Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and Executive Director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative. He was Assistant Secretary-General in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations in New York City and Senior Adviser to the Secretary-General on Climate Change between January 2015 and December 2016. Previously he has held positions at the World Wide Fund for Nature International where he was Policy and Science Director and acting Director for Conservation.
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