Keynote Speakers

John Howchin

John Howchin is currently the Global Ambassador for the UN convened Global Tailings Management Institute, an outcome of the Investor Mining and Tailings Safety Initiative, setup post the tragic Brumadhino accident in Brazil. He also runs the advisory firm Transition Inc.

John has been working for the responsible investment community for the last 20 years and held the role as Secretary-General of the Council on Ethics for the First, Second, Third and Fourth Swedish national pension funds for 12 years. Before that, in 2007 at Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) in Oslo, Norway he was the first person responsible for environmental issues and he wrote the initial Climate Change expectations document and spent three years focused on corporate lobbying on climate change legislation in the US.

In 2000, he co-founded the company Green Index, who together with the insurance company Folksam produced the first climate change index in the world, covering the companies at the Stockholm stock exchange. Green Index together with Etikanalytikerna (today ISS-Ethix) also performed the first norm-based screening for the AP-funds in 2001.

John started his career at ABB where he worked with corporate sustainability.

Presentation title: “Mariana and Brumadhino: Lessons learnt, steps taken and the way forward”

Professor Sten Bergström

Professor Sten Bergström has a background in civil engineering. He is now retired after long service with the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, among others as Director of research. He was responsible for the development of the widely used HBV hydrological model and engaged in the work on new Swedish guidelines for design floods for dams. He has also been working on the adaptation of infrastructure and community planning to global warming.

Presentation title: “A Swedish perspective on extreme floods and adaptation to climate change”