2026 Category: Speakers

Coco Ushiyama runs the WFP’s operations in a country that consistently ranks among the world’s most food-insecure and most climate-exposed at the same time. Those two facts are not coincidental they are directly linked, and she has made that connection central to how WFP works in Pakistan. Under her leadership, the organisation secured a $9.8 million Green Climate Fund grant to build early warning systems and anticipatory action frameworks in flood-prone communities, putting climate resilience at the core of what has historically been understood as a humanitarian programme. She has pushed for a government cooperation framework that treats climate change...

Barrister Murtaza Wahab leads the administration of Pakistan’s largest city and has made the climate crisis a defining theme of his mayoralty. Karachi has been a member of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and is one of the few Pakistani cities developing a dedicated Climate Action Plan in collaboration with UNDP and C40. He has committed the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation as the custodian of this plan and dedicated a core team to its development. At the Pavilion Mayors Conference in Dubai, he spoke frankly about the climate disasters Karachi has faced including the catastrophic 2022 floods and the deadly...

Tom Xiaojun Wang is an environmental activist, writer, and the founder of People of Asia for Climate Solutions, a nonprofit based in Manila that works across the Asian continent to accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels. Growing up in Shanxi Province, China’s largest coal producing region, Wang witnessed firsthand the devastating environmental toll of coal mining on communities, farmland, and air quality. That experience became the driving force behind a career in climate advocacy. Before founding PACS in 2018, he spent over a decade leading communications work for Greenpeace, World Animal Protection, and the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids...

Mian Muhammad Mueen Wattoo heads Pakistan’s Ministry of Water Resources at a time when the country’s water challenges have rarely been more urgent. He has made expanding water storage capacity and flood control central priorities, chairing high level government meetings on both and pushing for the timely completion of critical projects like the K-IV water supply scheme for Karachi. He has also been active in building international partnerships around water security, meeting with delegations from the World Bank, Poland, and Qatar to explore cooperation on flood resilience and sustainable water infrastructure.

Mohamed Yahya, with over 20 years of experience in development and peacebuilding, was previously the UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria, overseeing one of the largest country portfolios in Africa, with a presence in five out of sixgeopolitical zones. Prior to this, he served as the Coordinator for the Africa Regional Programme at UNDP in Addis Ababa, managing regional development initiatives for the African Union and Africa’s Regional Economic Communities. Yahya has also held roles as a post-conflict recovery specialist in Afghanistan and Liberia, and as coordinator for a UN joint initiative on natural resource management. Before joining the UN, he...

Uzma Yousuf has made a straightforward bet: that if Pakistan is to survive what is coming, its students need to understand why. As the driving force behind the Cambridge Climate Quest programme in Pakistan, she has worked to embed climate literacy across school curricula nationwide, reaching students on every educational board through a free, locally contextualised course that draws on Pakistan’s own disasters, the 2010 floods and Lahore’s air pollution crisis, rather than abstract global examples. She has described the programme not as an academic exercise but as a call to action, and has pushed hard to get government ministries...

Makhdoom Fakhar Zaman is a legislator representing PS-57 Matiari-I, elected in the 2024 general elections. With academic training in political science and global business management, he brings a nuanced understanding of governance, public policy, and economic systems to his legislative work. He currently serves as Spokesperson for the Government of Sindh and Parliamentary Secretary for the Home and Interior Department, where he contributes to policy formulation and public communication. His roles on the Public Accounts Committee and the Standing Committee on Agriculture highlight his focus on accountability, institutional effectiveness, and sustainable development.