On December 10th, 2024, the Permanent Observer Mission of the Sovereign Order of Malta to the United Nations, in partnership with the Permanent Mission of the Principality of Monaco, brought together a panel of experts in various fields surrounding the question of climate policy to discuss relevant modes of engaging the problem.
The event was held in one of the UN’s designated conference rooms and was streamed on UN Web TV. The event was moderated by Mr. Kurt Vogt and the panelists included Dr. Anthony Annett, Professor Achinthi Vithanage, Mr. Dorian Van Raalte and Dr. Klaus Lackner.
Mr. Benjamin Valli, Counselor at the Permanent Mission of the Principality of Monaco, gave opening remarks introducing the general topic of discussion, followed by H.E. Ambassador Paul Beresford-Hill who gave an introduction to the moderator. Explaining the Order’s connection to the question at hand, Ambassador Beresford-Hill noted that: “The Order of Malta, with its 900-year history of humanitarian and diplomatic engagement, remains deeply committed to addressing global challenges with compassion and collaboration. Today’s event reflects this commitment.”
Mr. Kurt Vogt, moderated the discussion and pulled together the different speakers’ thoughts and ideas. Mr. Vogt serves as the Managing Director of HPL, LLC, a firm specialising in advisory services focused on sustainable finance across the Americas. With more than three decades of banking experience, he has held leadership roles in cities such as Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Monterrey, and New York. In May 2017, Mr. Vogt earned a Master of Science in Sustainability Management from Columbia University in New York City. Prior to his current role, he was a Managing Director at HSBC, overseeing Sustainable Finance in the Americas, a position he held after joining the bank in 2014. Before HSBC, Kurt spent many years at Citi, where he began his career in 1983 and held a variety of managerial positions. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Universidad Iberoamericana and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Before introducing the first panelist, Mr. Vogt opened the discussion by pointing out that, while the 74 lowest income countries produce only 10% of greenhouse gases, they feel the impacts of climate change most acutely. He gave the four ingredients to address this problem: 1) Rethink the relationship between humans and the natural world, 2) Establish legal frameworks to support sustainable development, 3) Increase search for technological solutions and 4) Use the financial sector to drive these efforts forward.
Dr. Anthony Annett, Author and member of the College of Fellows of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, focused on the theological and ethic side of climate change. Dr. Annett dedicated sixteen years to the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, where he held roles in the European, Fiscal Affairs, and Communications departments. During his tenure, he served as an economist in various countries and regions. Most recently, he spent five years as a speechwriter for two consecutive Managing Directors, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Christine Lagarde.
At the panel, he drew from Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si” and “Laudate Deum”, quoting that the mandate for dominion over the earth was often misunderstood as a kind of “disordered anthropomorphism”. The modern tendency to absolute utilitarianism brings with it the problems of “individualism, unlimited progress, competition, consumerism, the unregulated market”, all of which lead to a neglect of our common home. Dr. Annett echoed the Pope’s call for a collective solution to the problem, based on community agreement, as “self-improvement on the part of individuals will not by itself remedy the extremely complex situation facing our world today”.
Professor Achinthi Vithanage is the Professor of Law for Designated Service in Environmental Law at Pace University. Originally from Sri Lanka, she has lived in the United Arab Emirates, practiced law in Australia, and completed higher education in Australia, Japan, China, and Spain. Since moving to the United States, she has been recognised as one of the nation’s leading environmental and energy lawyers, earning a spot on LawDragon’s inaugural list in 2021 and being named in their 500 Leading Environmental Lawyers Guides for 2023 and 2024. Active within the American Bar Association’s Section on Environment, Energy & Resources (SEER), she is the founding Co-Chair of the Environmental Law Society Network, and a former Co-Chair of the International Law Committee. Additionally, Professor Vithanage serves on the Secretariat for the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Academy of Environmental Law, is a member of the World Commission on Environmental Law, and helped establish the International Association of Energy Law, a global network of emerging energy law academics. She represented the ABA as a delegate at COP28 and the 2024 Bonn Climate Change Conference and sits on the Editorial Advisory Board for the Environmental Law Institute’s Environmental Forum publication.
Professor Vithanage addressed the legal perspective of the issue, bringing out the fluctuating nature of environmental law and the importance of having the ethical perspective reflected in it. Environmental law has the potential to do much good in the area, but it has to be achieved through commitment to legal enforcement. She gave the image of sticks and carrots, the sticks being the active enforcement of policy, the carrots incentives for striving towards green goals such as CO2 mitigation and climate justice.
Mr. Dorian Van Raalte is an Investment Manager in the Forestry Division at Gresham House, where he oversees the acquisition and asset management of commercial and carbon forestry assets in the UK and internationally. He also plays a key role in shaping and implementing the firm’s natural capital strategy. His research focuses on climate finance, nature-based solutions, and development finance, with an emphasis on scaling investments into nature. He is particularly interested in mobilising private sector capital to support environmentally sustainable and inclusive projects in emerging and developing markets.
With extensive experience in climate finance and natural capital investing, Mr. Van Raalte has worked with several global specialist asset managers focusing on alternative investments. Before joining Gresham House, he was part of the founding team at Sail Ventures, a Netherlands-based alternatives investment firm, where he helped establish the &Green Fund. This global blended finance climate fund, focused on sustainable agriculture and forestry, grew to over US$400 million, anchored by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI) and supported by multilateral and bilateral institutions, development finance organizations, and private investors.
As a senior investment specialist in a lean team, Mr. Van Raalte was responsible for expanding Sail’s portfolio, structuring ESG-integrated investments, and catering to both early-stage ventures and established multibillion-dollar companies worldwide. Under his tenure, Sail Ventures earned the Asset Manager of the Year award from Environmental Finance twice. He holds a first-class Bachelor of Business Science in Finance and Accounting and a Postgraduate Diploma in Accounting (Hons) from the University of Cape Town, along with a first-class MSc in Climate Change, Management, and Finance from Imperial College London.
Mr. Van Raalte made remarks on the financial context in which these discussions were happening, outlining the work that Gresham house does for the advancement of sustainable asset classes. Agriculture, Forestry and Land use are major contributors to climate change, accounting for around 20% of global emissions. He presented a case study of the &Green Fund and gave the example of it’s role in financing Brazilian Crop integration and livestock production. Further, Mr. Van Raalte gave the example of Gresham house’s engagement in addressing the growing timber supply-demand gap.
Dr. Klaus Lackner is the founding director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions and a professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment within the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. His research focuses on capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air, carbon sequestration, carbon footprint analysis, innovative energy and infrastructure systems, and their scalability. He also explores the role of automation, robotics, and mass manufacturing in transforming infrastructure systems, alongside energy and environmental policy. Notably, his work on self-replicating machine systems was highlighted by Discover Magazine as one of seven ideas with the potential to change the world.
In 1999, Dr. Lackner was the first to propose the technical capture of carbon dioxide from the air as part of carbon management strategies. During his tenure at Columbia University as the director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, he spearheaded groundbreaking approaches to future energy challenges and the development of environmentally sustainable technologies for fossil fuel usage. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Lackner was also recognised for his contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Dr. Lackner spoke on the practical application of groundbreaking technology and the continued need for research and development. He mentioned alternative solutions to slaying the dragon that is fossil fuels, such as the tool he created of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and converting it into energy. While still in the early stages of use and financially unsustainable, Dr. Lackner pointed out that similar technology has been at the same point, only to become much more affordable over time. An example of this is the windmill, which saw a rapid reduction in price per unit over its lifespan.
