Renato Redentor Constantino, International Policy Adviser, Climate Vulnerable Forum

Known widely as “Red,” Renato Redentor Constantino is a Manila-based policy strategist and essayist who spent over two decades as executive director of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC) in the Philippines. He served as adviser to the Climate Vulnerable Forum — the coalition of 55 nations most threatened by climate change — and played a critical behind-the-scenes role in anchoring the 1.5°C warming limit in the Paris Agreement, a threshold that vulnerable nations famously insisted upon with the rallying cry “1.5 to stay alive.” A member of the Philippines’ Adaptation Fund board and a published author on climate narratives, he bridges literary advocacy with hard-nosed climate finance and policy reform.