Luc GNACADJA is a renowned international expert on governance issues for sustainable development. He is the founding president of the think tank GPS-Dev (Governance & Policies for Sustainable Development) whose mission is to facilitate the transformation of governance systems to make them more conducive to sustainable development.
He has extensive experience and high-level credentials in reflecting, advocating for, and integrating environmental issues into public policy to promote sustainable development, as well as a proven leadership capacity to facilitate change and transformation in regional and multilateral contexts.
Architect by profession and CEO of an architecture and urban planning consultancy based in Cotonou, he was Minister of Environment and Urban Development of Benin (1999-2005) and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (2007-2013). In the latter capacity, he was a guiding voice and a leading advocate for sustainable land development in the negotiations leading up to the Rio+20 Summit in 2012 and is the architect of the concept of “Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN)” now integrated into the 2030 development agenda as target 15.03 of the SDG.
GNACADJA received the 2003 “Green Award” from the World Bank for promoting environment-friendly public reform in Benin, and the “Cook Prize in Desert Architecture” from the Ben-Gurion University of the Neguev in 2014 for “his lifetime contribution to a sustainable built environment”.