Side Event on:

Food Security and Safety for Development in a Changing Arab World

Date: 19 June 2012 Time: 15:30 to 17:00 (Registration starts at 15:15) Venue: Rio Centro Convention Centre, Room P3-F

Bio Notes
Roula Majdalani is the Director of the Sustainable Development and Productivity Division (SDPD) in ESCWA. She returned to SDPD in April 2010 first as Chief of Productive Sectors Section and then as Director of SDPD in September 2010. Ms. Majdalani holds a masters degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Syracuse University. She worked with Dar Al-Handasah Consultants (London), from 1985 to 1988 as an Urban Planner preparing surveys, sectoral studies and research activities for urban development projects in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan and Morocco. She joined ESCWA in 1989 as Human Settlements Officer in the Social Development Division. She served between 1993 and 1994 in South Africa as a Political Observer in the UN Peace Building Mission. In 2002 she moved to SDPD and worked with the Water Resources Section as a First Economic Affairs Officer on issues related to IWRM and building capacity in the water sector. In January 2008, she was appointed Chief of the Technical Cooperation Section (TCS) in the ESCWA Program Planning and Technical Cooperation Division (PPTCD) providing ESCWA member countries advisory services, training activities and field projects, towards strengthen their efforts in the formulation and effective implementation of national policies, strategies and programmes towards the fulfillment of regional and global commitments.

Carsten Schmitz-Hoffmann is Head of Competence Center Agricultural Trade, Agricultural Economy, Standards in the Planning and Development Division at Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). He is involved in various programmes and numerous

projects all related to trade, cooperation with the private sector, standards and international supply chain management. He is also Director of the GIZ Programme for Social and Environmental Standards which is aiming to support the impact of voluntary standards in the global production of export goods it operates in various sectors from forestry to agriculture, from industrial production to extractive industries. He holds a degree in political science from the University of Marburg. Before joining GIZ in 2001, he gained first experience in working in international cooperation at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Berlin-based Carl-Duisberg-Gesellschaft. His list of publications focuses on the role of corporations in shaping global supply chains towards more sustainability and responsible business.

Marco Marzano De Marinis is the Director of the World Farmers Organization (WFO). Before joining WFO, Dr. Marco Marzano de Marinis worked for the World Intellectual Property Organization, a specialized United Nations Agency based in Geneva, Switzerland. He integrated the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Division and was responsible for agriculture-related Intellectual Property (IP) issues. Previously he had also worked for the European Commission DG Internal Market, Brussels and for the DG Enterprise (IPR Helpdesk, Project), Alicante, as well as working inside the legal department of the International Trade Center (UNCTAD/WTO). He is a qualified attorney, as well as being a professor of IP at the Faculty of International Studies of the Second University of Naples Federico Secondo and at the Faculty of Law of the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He also teaches innovation business management at the Panama University of Technology. Dr. Marzano de Marinis graduated in Law from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy. He sharpened his knowledge on European Legal matters (LLM), at the College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium and he also studied an LLM at the University of Rome Tor Vergata on International Comparative Private Law. He has also studied at the Faculties of Law of Paris (France) and Alicante (Spain). He obtained his Phd at the University of Rome, Faculty of Law. Professor Marzano is, furthermore, author of many publications.

Najib Saab is Secretary General of the Arab Forum for Environment & Development (AFED), and Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Bia Wal-Tanmia (Environment & Development), the leading pan-Arab magazine on sustainable development. An architect by training, who started his career working for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), he has a varied experience, ranging from designing for multi-nationals and lecturing on corporate architecture at the American University of Beirut, to advising various governments and agencies on environment and writing on sustainable development and technology. He is a 2003 laureate of the UNEP's Global 500 Award for environmental achievement, and in 2011 was awarded Zayed International Prize for the Environment. Saab has ten books to his credit, and is co-editor, with Mostafa Kamal Tolba and Mohamed El-Ashry, of the annual reports on the State of the Arab Environment published by AFED. His monthly editorial is simultaneously published by 10 leading newspapers across the Arab region, and is the only regular syndicated column in Arabic on environment issues. (www.najibsaab.com, www.afedonline.org)

Emad Adly is the Chairman for Arab Office for Youth & Environment (AOYE) Egyptian NGO working in the field of environment and sustainable development awareness and General Coordinator the for Arab NGO Network for Environment and Development (RAED). He has been involved in various international, regional and national activities and has prepared many

papers for national, regional and international conferences about the roles of NGOs in the development and establishment of civic society and on environmental related issues. He was also involved in the preparation of different workshops and training materials.