2026 Category: Speakers

Farrukh Shad manages region’s Energy, Sustainability Services and Sustainability Consulting organisation at Schneider Electric, with the mission to help large enterprises deliver climate mitigation actions and reduce carbon emissions using technological solutions. Leading a global team, he crafts unique strategies and solutions that help clients navigate the multitude of challenges in emerging markets in the region as they work towards meeting their and their suppliers’ renewable energy and carbon neutrality goals.

Syed Ghulam Mustafa Shah has served in Pakistan’s National Assembly for over two decades and currently holds the office of Deputy Speaker. Representing Nawabshah in Sindh, he chairs the Standing Committee on Climate Change and Environment and has been instrumental in advancing Pakistan’s National Climate Change Policy at the federal level. His constituency sits on the Indus floodplain, one of the regions most devastated by the 2022 super floods, and he has consistently used his platform to ensure that the climate crisis facing southern Pakistan is treated as a national legislative priority. He was also part of Pakistan’s broader parliamentary...

Syed Awais Qadir Shah presides over the assembly of the province that bore the worst of Pakistan’s 2022 super floods, and he brings both an engineer’s technical grounding and a legislator’s determination to the climate challenge. Before becoming Speaker of the Sindh Assembly, he served as the province’s Minister for Transport and Mass Transit, giving him direct experience of the infrastructure pressures that climate adaptation places on the government. He hosted the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Asia Regional Conference in 2026, where he put climate change at the centre of the agenda alongside democratic resilience and poverty. His focus on flood...

Kamran Siddiqui works at IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency, in its Energy and Infrastructure programme, bringing an international perspective and multilateral expertise to Pakistan’s domestic energy conversations. IRENA is the principal intergovernmental body driving the global renewable energy transition, and its Programme Officers work with member governments to develop the policies, targets, planning frameworks, and investment environments needed to accelerate deployment of clean energy. His engagement with Pakistan’s context links the country’s national energy ambitions to the global architecture of knowledge, standards, and financing that IRENA facilitates. In a country that has committed to sixty percent renewable energy by...

Michael Ashley Stein has spent years making an argument that the climate movement has been slow to hear: that persons with disabilities are among the most exposed to climate disaster and among the least represented in the rooms where climate policy is decided. His research shows that people with disabilities are two to four times more likely to die in climate related disasters than those without, a statistic he has taken to the United Nations, to scientific journals, and to the G7. He co-founded the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and has used it to push disability inclusion into...

Dr. Murtaza Syed heads the Ecosystem department at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in Beijing, drawing on over 25 years of experience at the IMF and as Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan. At AIIB, his work focuses on connecting climate economics with infrastructure investment, particularly cross border connectivity projects that combine poverty reduction with lower carbon emissions. A PhD economist from Oxford, he is one of the few professionals who has worked at the highest levels of both monetary policy and multilateral climate finance.

Azam Nazeer Tarar has approached climate action as a question of constitutional rights, and the results speak for themselves. As Federal Minister for Law and Justice, he presented and secured the passage of Article 9A of Pakistan’s Constitution in October 2024, formally making the right to a clean and healthy environment a fundamental right of every citizen. This marked the beginning of environmental constitutionalism in Pakistan and created a legal basis for holding the state accountable for environmental harm. He has also argued at international parliamentary forums that climate change is a human rights crisis, calling on high emitting nations...

Kashif Thanvi leads Acumen’s work in Pakistan, where the impact investment firm has placed its bets on a simple but difficult proposition: that the private sector can and should be solving problems for the people most affected by poverty and climate change, not just serving those who can already afford solutions. Acumen’s work in Pakistan’s agricultural space has included the country’s first climate equity fund worth $90 million designed to back agribusinesses working with smallholder farmers who are disproportionately exposed to climate shocks and have the fewest resources to absorb them. Thanvi works in the space where investment meets impact,...

High Commissioner of the Republic of Maldives to PakistanH.E. Mohamed Thoha has served as the Maldives’ High Commissioner to Pakistan since presenting his credentials to President Asif Ali Zardari. An energetic advocate of bilateral engagement, he has worked to broaden ties beyond diplomacy — championing direct air links, tuna export opportunities and Pakistani investment in Maldivian real estate. He has been vocal about reviving SAARC as a functional platform for South Asian cooperation and has actively engaged Pakistan’s chambers of commerce to unlock trade potential between the two Muslim-majority nations.

Ellen Mpangananji Thom is a seasoned public health expert with over 30 years of experience across Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. Currently with WHO Pakistan, she has emerged as a leading voice on the intersection of climate change and health, highlighting the severe impact of air pollution and environmental degradation on public health in the country. She served as Acting WHO Representative in Pakistan (2023–2024) and continues to advocate for recognizing the climate crisis as an immediate health emergency.