Core Team

Cornis van der Lugt: Senior Research Fellow

Cornis van der Lugt is a Geneva-based consultant with twenty years experience in the environmental field at international level. His current focus areas are business strategy, reporting and value chain management. He continues to do research on the green economy and green business.

From 2000 - 2010, Cornis was based in Paris at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), responsible for business partnerships and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in collaboration with the UN Global Compact and Global Reporting Initiative. He was among others nominated expert in the ISO 26000 process to develop an international standard on social responsibility. His work at the UN included co-developing guidance for managers and analytical reports on emerging good practices with partners such as SustainAbility, Standard & Poors, KPMG, World Resources Institute, AccountAbility and the USB.

Before moving to Geneva, he was Coordinator of UNEP's Resource Efficiency Sub-programme. Prior to UNEP, he served as multilateral diplomat in the South African Government and, among others, participated in climate negotiations of the Kyoto process during the 1990s.

Cornis holds a PhD in International Relations (EU environmental regulation - universities of Stellenbosch, Freiburg, Leiden) and an Executive MBA from the French business school Haute Ecole de Commerce (HEC, Paris). His languages are English, Afrikaans, German, Dutch and French. He was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1967.