Michele’s research investigates the multiple ways in which climate change is governed from the global to the local level across the public and private spheres, with particular emphasis on how different governance arrangements interact with one another. Her current projects focus on the evolution of carbon markets, the legitimacy of transnational climate governance, and the role of local authorities in transitioning to a clean energy economy. She is co-author (with Harriet Bulkeley, University of Durham) of Cities and Climate Change: Urban Sustainability and Global Environmental Governance (Routledge, 2003) as well as numerous articles and book chapters on climate change governance. Michele is a member of the editorial boards of Global Environmental Politics and Environment and Planning C: Policy and Government. She is also on the Scientific Steering Committee for the Earth System Governance Project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change.

Career appointments include Junior Fellow of Society of Fellows (University of Michigan, 1983-1986), Assistant to Associate Professor Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota (1986~current). Books include "Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest" (Cambridge University Press, 1998) - received two academic awards (American Sociological Association section and Ohira Foundation, Japan); "Comparing Policy Networks: Labor Politics in the United States, Germany and Japan" (co-author, Cambridge University Press 1996); "East Asian Social Movements: Power, Protest and Change" (co-editor, Springer, 2010). Journal articles include American Sociological Review, Social Problems, Policy Sciences. In his current research he acts as the principal investigator of 20 country study “Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks” (Compon) (National Science Foundation and other funding).

She is currently completing a book on regional environmental governance under the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and an edited book on comparative environmental regionalism. She has held grants from the Australian Research Council, the Canadian government, the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences and the United States Institute of Peace. Prof. Elliott is a member of the Australian Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation Asia Pacific (CSCAP), the Board of Directors for the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS), the International Advisory Group of the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) Initiative on Global Environmental Change and Human Health, and the Executive of the Environmental Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

She is a member of several governmental advisory bodies, both at national as well as prefectural and municipal levels. She is associate member of Science Council of Japan, and member of several academic associations on environment and international relations.

She has published many articles and book chapters both in Japanese and English. Some of her recent publications include: “Climate Change in Asia: Perspectives on the Future Climate Regime” (co-authored with Agus P. Sari, Moekti H. Soejachmoen and Norichika Kanie, in 2008, published at United Nations University Press), or “Process Matters: Building a Future Climate Regime with Multi-Processes”, article published in Climate Policy journal, in 2007.

His recent publications include “Post-2012 Institutional Architecture to Address Climate Change: A Proposal for Effective Governance. Global Warming and Climate Change”, in Grover, V.I. ed. Global Warming and Climate Change: Ten Years After Kyoto and Still Counting, Vol. 2., NH, Science Publishers (2008), and “The long-team challenge of climate change – Possible allocations for Japan and Asian countries in 2050”, in Yasuko Kameyama, Agus P.Sari, Moekti H.Soejachmoen and Norichika Kanie eds. Climate Change in Asia United Nations University Press(2008). He received his Ph.D. in Media and Governance from the Keio University.

Malone holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Maryland-College Park. Her book Debating Climate Change (Earthscan, 2009) uses both discourse analysis and social network analysis to explore bases for agreement in the arguments used in the global climate change debate.

Beyond the contributors profiled below, distinguished policy makers and members of the research community will provide an input in the workshop sessions. They include:

During the last 10 years, Mr. Fujitsuka has been in the Environment Agency/Ministry of the Environment and he has been working on basic environment plan, pollution abatement program, life cycle assessment, green purchasing, eco-labelling, CSR, low pollution/energy efficiency vehicle, water management, CDM and co-benefit approaches, etc. He joined a lot of international conferences and workshops for environment management as well as technical assistant activities in developing countries. Recently he served in Indonesia as an environment policy adviser of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and he joined the Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) as the Director of its Secretariat. Mr. Fujitsuka holds graduate and post graduate degrees in Civil Engineering from Gifu University. He is a Professional Engineer in Japan and an APEC Engineer. He is an acting member of Japanese Society of Civil Engineering and Japanese Geotechnical Society.

Prior to APN, Ms. Garcia worked in Environmental Forestry Programme of the College of Forestry and Natural Resources in University of the Philippines Los Baños as a researcher where she provided technical and administrative support to the foreign and local counterparts of projects related to climate change and watershed management. She was also involved in several projects supported GEF, UNEP and UNITAR. Ms. Garcia completed her degree in Mathematics in University of the Philippines, Los Baños

Prior to her current position, she worked as an Urban Renewal Planner and Coordinator at the Bureau of Construction from 1983 to 1994. She was also a visiting research associate at the United Nations University from 1996 to 1997. She is in her current position at the Bureau of Environment from 1998. She received her Master in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Additional input will also be provided by the organizers as follows:

• Dr Shobhakar Dhakal is one of the two executive directors of the Global Carbon Project. His expertise is on direct and embodied urban energy use and urban carbon emissions quantifications (including key sectors), modeling, policy analyses, and cross-comparative studies and he has over 30 scholarly publications. He was appointed as an IPCC AR5 Coordinating Lead Author for WGIII Ch.12 "Human Settlements, Infrastructure and Spatial Planning". He also leads the Urban and Regional Carbon Management initiative.
  
• Mr Ruben Zondervan is executive officer of the Earth System Governance Project. His current research interests include amongst others the governance of geo-engineering and the policy of sciences. Ruben Zondervan studied political science, modern history, law, and economics in Freiburg im Breisgau and Potsdam, and holds a M.Sc. (cum laude) in Environment & Resource Management from the VU University Amsterdam. Prior to his current position, he worked at the University Oldenburg, the VU University Amsterdam, the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Riga, and at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
  
• Dr Jose Puppim de Oliveira, organizer and Assistant Director and Senior Research Fellow at the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) since August 2009. He has academic interests in the political economy of sustainable development. He is particularly interested in researching patterns of environmental governance and policy implementation at different levels, looking at how global policies are translated into local policy implementation. In UNU-IAS, Jose coordinates the Sustainable Urban Futures programme.

He had his first and second degrees, respectively, in Fisheries and Aquatic Biology, and Environmental Resources Management from the Lagos State University, Nigeria. With the support of the Japanese Government Scholarship (Monbukagakusho) award, he took his Ph.D. in Environmental Science specializing in Marine Biogeochemistry from the Graduate School of Environmental Science, Hokkaido University, Japan in March 2009.

His research interests span several aspects of global environmental change, including biogeochemical cycle of carbon and nitrogen in coastal ecosystem; land-ocean interaction; biodiversity, and examining the gradients and responses of physical, chemical and biological components of the aquatic ecosystems to environmental change, Also, he is interested in the application of GIS in coastal ecosystem studies and integrating social and biophysical issues for sustainability and climate change research.

Through his work as a practitioner, researcher and teacher, he has been closely engaged in environmental and sustainable trade-related research around the Pacific Rim countries and beyond since 1992 and has travelled widely within the region. His main areas of expertise are in global environmental governance, responsible investment, sustainable forestry, and climate change.

His Ph.D. research was focussed on private sector governance, most notably global non-state market driven systems for environmental management (ISO 14000 series), as well as forest management certification (Forest Stewardship Council - FSC, and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes - PEFC).

He has worked extensively with the forest industry in Australia over the past decade, particularly with those with interests in planted timber resources, most notably managed investment schemes such as Timbercorp, Integrated Tree Cropping and Hancock Victoria Plantations.

Previously he has worked on sustainable forestry governance projects, linking local socio-economic relationships with carbon governance through integration of people’s (local) indicators with global scale standards for forestry governance and sustainable carbon management, using an approach based on criteria and indicators.

A native of Indonesia, Joni Jupesta holds a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Indonesia, a Master of Science degree in Quality, Safety and Environment from the University of Magdeburg, Germany, a Master of Business Administration degree from the Hochschule Esslingen, Germany and a Ph.D. degree obtained at the Department of Management Science and Technology, Tohoku University-Japan. Since October 2007 he conducted his Ph.D. research as a Japanese Government scholar on energy systems to analyze the introduction of biofuel in the transportation sector in Indonesia, from the energy, economics and environmental perspective. He published his research work in several peer reviewed journals papers: Journal of China Sciences, Sustainability and Applied Energy and forthcoming in Research Policy and Sustainability Accounting, Policy and Management journal. In 2007 he worked as a Research Associate for Sustainable Energy Development at the Department of Energy Systems at the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. Earlier, in 2001-2003, he worked as a quality engineer in a chemical company in Indonesia.

Before coming to Japan, Anar worked more than 6 years as a NGO professional in Bangladesh on environmental related issues. After receiving her Ph.D. she is planning to work as a researcher in the environmental and sustainable development field.

Her recent publications include journals such as The China Quarterly (“Self-motivated vs. Forced Disclosure of Environmental Information in China—A Comparative Case Study of the Pilot Disclosure Programs”), Nature (“Small but Effective Moves towards A Greener China”), Public Administration and Development (“Clean Air in Urban China: The Case of Inter-agency Coordination in Chongqing’s Blue Sky Program”) and a publication with the OECD (“Eco-Innovation Policies in the People’s Republic of China”).

Tek is actively advocating the ‘mountain agenda’ since 2003 and is now responsible for overall management of APMN, the Asia Pacific Node of global Mountain Forum. Author of over two dozen papers, available both online and in print (published in UK, Bolivia, India and Nepal), Tek spent over four years teaching Environmental Education, Environmental Economics, Climate Change, GIS and RS to BSc and higher secondary level students (in TU and HSEB affiliated institutes in Kathmandu). He pioneered moderated e-dialogue and e-networking among the environment professionals working in Nepal through the establishment of the ‘Environment Professionals Group: Water, Climate Change and Biodiversity Information Network’, from 2005 and onwards, with membership of over 430 people, and was lead person behind establishment of the Climate Himalaya in Nepal in 2007. Between 1998 and 2007, Tek worked with over twelve national organisations in Nepal, including professional associations and media houses.

Now, Jue Yang is acting as Assistant Fellow at NIES, working in the area of global environmental research with a focus on environmental governance and environmental agreements using statistical analysis approach. Her particular interest is on the formation of environmental regimes, working together with the University of Arizona. Her personal research interests span a variety of topics in environmental assessment, environmental governance based on social network approach and quantitative analysis. She has also been working in the fields of forest products certification and public opinion in the forest sector and collaborated with the forest program at IIASA, Austria. She is currently finalizing her Ph.D. dissertation on the diffusion of the voluntary-regulation system, especially the diffusion of forest certification.