Madeleen Helmer is Head of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate centre, hosted by the Netherlands Red Cross (NLRC) and serving the International RC/RC family.
The RC/RC Climate centre was established in 2002. The mission is to support all 186 RC/RC national societies in better understanding and addressing the risks of climate change, in particular in the context of disaster risk reduction, disaster management and health and care programs, with a focus on the most vulnerable people.
Before she joined the Red Cross in 2001, Madeleen worked since 1985 with the Pacific Working Group and since 1992 with the European Centre on Pacific Issues, dealing with social, environmental, peace and human rights issues in the Pacific region and the role of civil society in the European aid regime to the Pacific and the ACP at large. Madeleen has been educated at the School of Journalism (1985) She and her partner have two children.

Mr. Ulrich Hess is Chief of Risk Reduction and Disaster Mitigation Policy at WFP. He works on the new disaster risk reduction strategy of WFP and in particular on innovative risk financing mechanisms in China, Ethiopia and other countries. He started work on weather risk management at the World Bank Group, for example assisting successful weather insurance initiatives in India in 2003 and Malawi in 2004 and Ethiopia in 2005. Prior to joining the World Bank as young professional in 1998, Mr. Hess has been working in management and development consulting. He is the editor and co-author of “Managing Agricultural Production Risk”, IRI’s “Index Insurance and Climate Risk” and numerous articles on risk management. Mr. Hess holds a Master in Economics degree from Bocconi University, Milan and a Master in Political Science degree from Freie Universität Berlin. He also studied at Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and Yale Law School.

Walter E. Baethgen is Director of the Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (The Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York), where he has been establishing regional research programmes that aim to improve climate risk assessment and risk management in the agricultural, health, water resources and disasters sectors. Before joining IRI he was Senior Scientist in the Research and Development Division of the International Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development Center.

Walter has acted as a consultant for a number of UN and international bodies, as well as for several governments and the private sector in South America. He participated as principal investigator in several international research programmes. He was a lead author for the Second (1995) and Third (2001) Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and contributing author for the Fourth Assessment Report (2007), as well as review editor for IPCC’s special issue on Technology Transfer (2000).

He has served as a member of scientific advisory committees of several International organizations and as reviewer of several International research programmes. He is currently an Editorial Board member of the peer-reviewed journal Agricultural Systems.

Walter obtained his PhD and M.Sc. degrees in Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He has over 100 publications to his credit.