Joke Waller-Hunter (15 November 1946 - 14 October 2005) was a Dutch

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

official who worked on several

environmental A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...

issues including the

Kyoto Accord The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part ...

Biography

She was born Joke Hendrina Hunter in

Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English) is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland. Haarlem is situated at the northern edge of the Randstad, one of the most populated metropoli ...

, daughter of Cornelis Hunter and Hendrina van Smalen. She studied French and, as a student in 1969, married Herman Waller, of the old patrician famil
Waller
from

Nijkerk Nijkerk (; Dutch Low Saxon: ''Niekark'') is a municipality and a city located in the middle of the Netherlands, in the province of Gelderland. Population centres Some people state that ''Groot Corlaer'' is a population centre on its own, but ...

, who died at the age of 48 in 1991. She started working for the province of

North Holland North Holland ( nl, Noord-Holland, ) is a province of the Netherlands in the northwestern part of the country. It is located on the North Sea, north of South Holland and Utrecht, and west of Friesland and Flevoland. In November 2019, it had a ...

, and after that for many years at the

Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment The Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment ( nl, Ministerie van Volkshuisvesting, Ruimtelijke Ordening en Milieu or ''VROM'') was a Dutch ministry. It was responsible for policies on public housing, spatial planning, the env ...

. Her efforts at the

Earth Summit The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Conference or the Earth Summit (Portuguese: ECO92), was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to June 14, 1992. Earth Su ...

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

in 1992 drew much attention, and even earned her the moniker ''Dutch Maffia'' amongst opponents of a treaty. She was the first UN Director for the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, a position which she served from 1994 to 1998. From 1998 to 2002 she was director of the OECD Environment Directorate. She then joined the

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established an international environmental treaty to combat "dangerous human interference with the climate system", in part by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in th ...

as Executive Secretary. She was awarded an honorary

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

from the

Vrije Universiteit The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research ...

in September 2005 citing ''her contribution to society through her outstanding work in the field of sustainable development and protection of the global climate''. After her death as the result of breast cancer at the age of 58 in a hospital in

Lohmar Lohmar ( Ripuarian: ''Luhme'') is a town in the Rhein-Sieg district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Geography Lohmar is located about 20 km east of Cologne and 15 km north-east of Bonn in the Bergisches Land area. Because it is on ...

, the UN organized a memorial ceremony in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

and a memorial concert in

Montréal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-p ...

. Childless, she left her estate to the Dutch environmental organization Both ENDS.

Sources

Joke Waller-Hunter
at

UNFCCC The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established an international environmental treaty to combat "dangerous human interference with the climate system", in part by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the ...

site.
"Mother of Kyoto"
at www.bothends.org (Dutch) 1946 births 2005 deaths Dutch officials of the United Nations Dutch environmentalists People from Haarlem {{UN-bio-stub