Rae Kwon Chung is a Korean diplomat and climate policy expert. He was the Republic of Korea’s first Ambassador for Climate Change. He previously served as Senior Adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on climate change and as Director of the Environment and Development Division of UN ESCAP.
He was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report Methodological and Technological Issues in Technology Transfer (2000) and has been actively involved in the development and promotion of the concept of green growth.
Over the course of his career, he has served as a member of the Republic of Korea’s National Council on Climate and Air Quality, adviser to the Chair of the UN High-level Experts and Leaders Panel on Water and Disasters, Chair of the Advisory Board of the Coalition for a Green Economy and G-Global Development in Kazakhstan, and visiting professor at Incheon National University.
He currently serves as a Board Member of the Ban Ki-moon Foundation for a Better Future and as Chair of the International Award Committee of the Global Energy Prize. He is also an Honorary Professor at South Kazakhstan University and founded the Center for New Climate Economy and the Center for New Climate Innovation at Tashkent State University of Economics.
He holds honorary doctorates from Lomonosov Moscow State University and Moscow Power Engineering Institute and is an Honorary Professor of RANEPA.
Rae Kwon Chung graduated from the Department of Economics at Sungkyunkwan University and holds a master’s degree in diplomacy from Georgetown University.