Bernarditas de Castro Muller (1968), a Filipina former diplomat and a veteran finance negotiator at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has been elected as co-chair of the UNFCC Standing Committee on Finance.

Ms de Castro Muller will help the committee provide relevant advice to UNFCCC State Parties in relation to the Financial Mechanism of the treaty. These recommendations, when adopted, will guide the Global Environment Facility and the Green Climate Fund, the operating entities of the mechanism that provide climate finance in the adaptation and mitigation needs of developing countries.

Bernarditas de Castro Muller has a long experience in the climate negotiations, having participated in the first meeting in 1991 of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee that produced the UNFCCC. She has been deeply involved in negotiating UNFCCC decisions that established the Least Developed Country Fund, the Special Climate Change Fund, the Adaptation Fund of the Kyoto Protocol and the Green Climate Fund.

During the Marrakesh climate talks in November 2016, she was the lead coordinator for finance of the G77 and China negotiating bloc. She helped secure a decision that will allow developing countries as parties to the Paris Agreement to use the Adaptation Fund to finance their climate plans.

Bernarditas de Castro Muller hails from Santa Cruz, Laguna. She graduated from the University of the Philippines, Sorbonne University in Paris, and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva (1968). She served as a foreign service officer until her retirement in 2007.

Original article by Jaime Pilapil in The Manila Times