David Nabarro’s resume reads like a timeline of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the last decade: global nutrition and food security, the Ebola virus epidemic, climate change, the Sustainable Development Goals.
As the United Nations secretary-general’s special adviser on the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and climate, Nabarro is now tasked with helping ensure the early years of two of the most momentous international agreements in history, the SDGs and the Paris climate agreement, actually amount to something real.
And in Nabarro’s view — and that of his boss U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon — the dual charges are deeply interrelated.