Ovais Sarmad, a senior Indian official, in the second week of May 2017 was appointed as the Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The appointment was made after consultation with the Conference of Parties through its Bureau.
Sarmad was appointed to the post at the assistant secretary-general level by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sarmad will succeed Canada’s Richard Kinley.
At present, Ovais Sarmad serves as Chief of Staff to the Director General of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
He joined IOM in 1990, in Geneva, where he served notably as chief of budget, director of resource management, director of the Global Administrative Centre and chief of Mission to the Philippines.
He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Hyderabad’s Osmania University. He also holds a professional certification in management accountancy from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants in London.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an international environmental treaty negotiated at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992.
The treaty entered into force on 21 March 1994. Its objective is to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”.
One of the first tasks set by the UNFCCC was for signatory nations to establish national greenhouse gas inventories of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals, which were used to create the 1990 benchmark levels for accession of Annex I countries to the Kyoto Protocol and for the commitment of those countries to GHG reductions.
The UNFCCC is also the name of the United Nations Secretariat charged with supporting the operation of the Convention, with offices in Haus Carstanjen, and UN Campus (known as Langer Eugen) Bonn, Germany.
