Mirey Atallah Head of Adaptation and Resilience, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Mirey Atallah leads UNEP’s Adaptation and Resilience Branch, overseeing the agency’s work on ecosystem based adaptation, national adaptation planning, and loss and damage. With over two decades of experience spanning the Arab States and more than twenty countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, she has seen first hand what climate change does to rural communities when adaptation funding fails to keep up with worsening conditions. Her work focuses on making the case that the best climate defences are not just physical infrastructure but integrated, nature based, and locally owned, and she is actively pushing to mobilise both public and private finance to close the global adaptation gap.