Malia Talakai, Principal Academic Advisor, Pacific Centre for Learning, Teaching and Research at Unitec for the past two years will be leaving Unitec for a while to take on a broader role as a diplomat. She will assume her post as Deputy Lead Negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which sits under the auspices of the Government of Nauru's Mission to the United Nations.
Malia will take up this role beginning next year. She will be working closely with Ambassador Marlene Moses of Nauru, who will take over as Chair of AOSIS in January 2012. The AOSIS team is based at the UN Headquarters in New York.
Malia, whose multidisciplinary background includes law and anthropology, has been actively involved in issues of biodiversity, climate change and social justice in the Pacific since her student days at the University of Auckland. Her advocacy has allowed her to travel the world, attending conferences in New York, New Delhi, Johannesburg, Geneva, and Bonn, among others.
Her diplomatic duties have already begun with her attendance, on behalf of the Nauru Government, in the 17th session of the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP 17) and the 7th session of the Meeting of the Parties (COP 7) to the Kyoto Protocol which will be held in Durban, South Africa from 28 November to 9 December 2011.
The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement that sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The commitment period stipulated in the agreement ends in 2012, a crucial year for negotiating further commitments on behalf of small island nations. Read the full report here.
Source: Pacific.Scoop.
