Han Bin, Deputy Director of the Department of International Economic and Financial Cooperation of the Ministry of Finance. Mr Han joined the Ministry in 1998 and worked in the Treasury Department, the Finance Department and the Clean Development Mechanism Fund (PPP Center), with experiences in financial supervision/reform of state-owned commercial banks and financial asset management companies, rural financial development, sovereign debt management, international financial regulatory reform, PPP model promotion/application as well as international development cooperation. From 2011 to 2014, he was the Deputy Executive Director for China at the World Bank. From 2015 to 2019, he served as the Deputy Director of the Clean Development Mechanism Fund (PPP Center). Before joining the Ministry of Finance, Mr Han worked in the Foreign Loan Management Department of the former Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. He holds a Master's Degree in Economics from the University of International Business and Economics and a Master of Business Administration from Cranfield University.

Mr Rolf Dieter Reinhard is the Deputy Head of the Economic Department of the German Embassy in Beijing. He has been with the Federal Ministry of Foreign Office for over 30 years. Prior to his current position, he served at the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, as European Real Estate Manager in Berlin and as the German ambassador in Egypt, Indonesia, Great Brittan and Bangladesh, as well as the Consulate General in Japan.

Hagen Ettner is the German Director of the Sino-German Center for Sustainable Development. He holds this position in GIZ China since the opening of the Center in May 2017. He joined GIZ in 2005 and served in several positions in Berlin and Eschborn before moving to Tajikistan in 2012. There he worked in a flagship economic development programme which focussed on agricultural value chain development, rural inclusive growth and economic resilience. From 2015 he headed the British-German co-funded programme. Mr. Ettner studied political sciences in Mannheim, Germany and Ekaterinburg， Russia and holds a master’s degree.

Dr Ma Jun is Director of the Center for Green Finance and Development at Tsinghua National Institute of Financial Research. He is Chairman of the Green Finance Committee of the China Society of Finance and Banking, and a Member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China. He also serves as Special Advisor to UNEP on Sustainable Finance, Member of the Global Steering Committee of UNEP Finance Initiative and Co-Chair of G20 Green/Sustainable Finance Study Group.

Professor Lü Zhi is a conservation biologist in China whose research focuses on ecosystem services of forests and grasslands, and conservation strategies of endangered species such as the giant panda and the snow leopard. She has studied community-led conservation through various experiments testing conservation tools based on economic incentives, cultural values and policy measures. She has also worked on conservation policy at regional and national levels, and on biodiversity conservation in urban areas. Professor Lü Zhi holds a PhD from Peking University in animal ecology. She has worked in various positions for the National Institutes of Health in the United States, Harvard University Center for Population and Development and at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as a visiting professor.

Dr Birgit Gemeinholzer is a professor at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen with a research focus on plant evolution, population genomics, and data management. She specializes in basic research in the fields of resort-specific nature conservation actions and technology development for accelerated biodiversity assessment and storage. She leads numerous scientific projects and publishes in peer reviewed international journals. Birgit Gemeinholzer is a member of various scientific and political bodies, including the DFG Senate Commission on Biodiversity Research and the e-Infrastructure Initiative of the Belmont Forum.

Prof Cui is Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Forestry and Director of the Wetland Research Center at the National Forestry and Grassland Administration. She is also a member of the National Wetland Science Committee and the Director of Beijing Wetland Center and the Director of the Wetland and Restoration Laboratory. She serves as Associate Editor for the "wetlands" journal from the United States. Prof Cui’s research focuses on wetland ecological processes, wetland protection and restoration technologies, evaluation of wetland ecosystem services and wetland management. She has won several national prizes and with over 200 scientific publications, Prof Cui has been selected by the Communist Party of China to be part of the “10,000 Scientific and Technological Innovation Talent Program”. She is also part of the "Beijing Leading Talent for Science and Technology Program". She has served three times as a team leader and special expert for the International Science and Technology Committee of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.

Dr Stephan Gampe is the Director of the Forest Department at Bureau for Food, Agriculture and Forests, Weilheim, Germany. He has four decades of experience working in the Bavarian Forest Administration and specializes in silviculture and forest management. As manager of two State Forest Farms, he has a deep understanding of the economic and ecological dimensions of forest management as well as in depth experience with close-to-nature forest management. Stephan Gampe has worked as a consultant for a wide range of forestry related projects in especially Asia, including for World Bank, GIZ and KfW Development Bank.

Mr Helge Bruelheide is the Professor for Geobotany and head of the Botanical Garden at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. His research focuses on biodiversity-ecosystem functioning, community ecology, biogeography and nature conservation. He is one of the founding directors of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig. He has founded BEF-China, a large forest Biodiversity-Ecosystem Functioning experiment in Jiangxi, and sPlot, the global vegetation-plot and trait database. Helge Bruelheide works for the Leopoldina commission on biodiversity change in the agricultural landscape and has been the lead author on a white paper on the establishment of a National Biodiversity Monitoring Centre in Germany. He is one of the principal investigators of the sMon working group on analysing trends in species data in Germany. He also serves on the editorial board of a number of journals and has published more than 220 articles listed in the Web of Science.

Dr Ouyang Zhiyun is Professor of Ecology, and Director of the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also the President of the Ecological Society of China, and the Vice-President of the Ecological Economic Society of China. Prof Ouyang’s research focuses on ecosystem assessments, ecosystem services, ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation. He has led numerous projects on national ecosystem surveys and assessments, national park network planning, giant panda protection, and financial mechanisms for natural conservation. His research on urban ecosystem services has also informed urban planning in cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen.

Ms. Ma YuanYuan (Mary Ma) is Director of Stakeholder Relations at UPM Specialty Papers and in charge of Marketing, Communications and Environmental Affairs. Mary is also responsible for promoting the UPM Biofore – Beyond Fossils corporate brand across China and Asia Pacific. Mary first joined UPM in 2008. Ms Ma holds an MBA in International Management of Resource and Environment from Freiberg University of Technology and a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Nankai University.

Mr Zhao Jinling is the Vice President of Elion Group. He is also the Honorary Executive Director of the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences. Before joining Elion Group, he worked at China Haier Group where he was in charge of IT Management and Operation management. He holds a PhD degree in ecology.

Christine Heimburger started her career with KfW in 1989 as a project manager at KfW’s regional department Asia, where she was in charge of German financial cooperation projects with Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. In 1998, she was seconded to Jakarta to set up a local office for KfW. After her return to Frankfurt in 2001, she joined KfW’s export and project finance business unit where she was responsible for the origination and structuring of commercial financing transactions in Eastern Europe and Asia. In 2003, she took the lead of the Corporate Affairs and Strategy department in KfW IPEX-Bank. In 2012 she returned to the area of development cooperation and took up her present position as Director of the East Asia and Pacific Department of KfW Development Bank. Christine Heimburger graduated in economics and received a doctorate degree from the University of Giessen. Before joining KfW, Dr Heimburger worked at the University of Giessen as a research assistant and as a freelance consultant in development politics.

Ms Liu Zhenjie graduated with master degree of agriculture from China Agricultural University. She is an engineer professor of forestry. She serves as a vice director of the Binhu New Zone Management Commission, which covers Hengshui Lake National Nature Reserve. She is mainly responsible for the protection and management of the reserve. She has published more than 40 papers. She has directed the implementation of several projects such as "IUCN Project to Demonstrate Wetland Sustainable Management at Hengshui Lake" as well as "Strategic Planning of Wetland Sustainable Development and Utilization of Natural Resources at Hengshui Lake" and “Project of Wetland Protection at Hengshui Lake” financed by National Development and Reform Commission and National Forestry and Grassland Administration. She is now the vise director of Sino-German Financial Cooperation Hengshui Lake Conservation and Management Project.

Dr Karin Kemper is Global Director of the World Bank’s Environment, Natural Resources and Blue Economy Global Practice, which provides financing, technical assistance, and knowledge solutions in areas such as the Blue Economy, pollution management, forests and landscapes, and environmental economics. She has served in a range of functions at the World Bank, including as the Senior Director for Environment and Natural Resources and Senior Regional Advisor in the Office of the Vice President of the Latin America and Caribbean Region. Earlier, she was the Director of Climate Policy and Finance and she also held management positions in environment and water resources management in South Asia and the Latin America and Caribbean Regions. An institutional economist, she has published extensively on the economics of water resources management and has led studies on natural resources and environmental management worldwide. Dr Kemper is a German national and holds a Ph.D. in Water and Environmental Studies and a B.Sc. in International Business Administration and Economics from Linköping University in Sweden.

Ms Zhao Lu is a project officer at the Representative Office for China of the European Investment Bank (EIB) where she works on EIB´s forestry project portfolio in China. Previously, she worked as a consultant and analyst for Indufor Ltd, a global consultancy company in the forestry sector. Ms Zhao holds a Master’s Degree in Forest Economics from University of Helsinki.

Shion is a Senior Water Resources Specialist currently working with the Asian Development Bank’s East Asia Department responsible for leading the design, processing and implementing loan projects and technical assistance programs in the People’s Republic of China and Mongolia, particularly serving as a focal for ADB’s Yangtze River Economic Belt program. He joined ADB in 2015 as the urban and water sector focal point in the Independent Evaluation Department responsible for water sector project and country program evaluations in South Asia, with a primary focus on Sri Lanka’s water and sanitation sector. Prior to joining ADB, he worked in a range of water infrastructure planning and policy development roles in the Queensland Government, including most recently leading the Asset Efficiency and Optimization program at Seqwater, a major government-owned bulk water supply authority in Australia, responsible for strategic asset management planning and policy initiatives for a range of climate resilient water supply infrastructure planning and catchment management. He has a PhD in Resource Economics from Central Queensland University, and qualifications in civil engineering and business management from the University of Queensland, Australia.

Dr Xu Jing is a senior engineer at the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences. He is also a biodiversity policy expert at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment on the negotiation and implementation of the CBD and its Protocols, as well as IPBES. He has attended COP11-14 to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), providing technical comments and recommendations to the Chinese delegation. Since 2014, he joined the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) initiative, where he was engaged in developing technical guidance on the evaluation of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and coordinating relevant pilot studies. Dr Xu received his master degree in the University of Hull in the UK and his PhD degree from Minzu University in China.

Since 2011 Stephan Opitz is Member of the Management Committee of KfW Development Bank. He is responsible for the operative business in Asia and Europe. Before that, he worked in various areas within KfW Bankengruppe such as development finance, export and project finance as well as Product Development. He studied industrial engineering at the Technical University Berlin and macro economics at Paris Dauphine France, and completed postgraduate studies at the German Development Institute (Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik “DIE”).

Based in Beijing, Wolfram Erhardt is Country Director China of KfW Development Bank. From 2014 to 2017 he headed the origination unit in the field of Structured Trade & Export Finance at UniCredit Bank AG in Munich, Germany and was in charge of structuring ECA-covered export finance transactions worldwide. In his position as Head of Finance of the Nabucco Gas Pipeline Project in Vienna, Austria, from 2009 to 2013, Wolfram Erhardt oversaw the project financing and established all budgeting, accounting, treasury, tax, and controlling functions of headquarters and five subsidiaries across Eastern Europe. Former roles in KfW from 2000 to 2008 included Country Director Turkey and Vice President at KfW IPEX-Bank, KfW’s commercial export and project finance arm. Wolfram Erhardt holds a doctoral and a master’s degree in Business Economics from Hohenheim University, Stuttgart, Germany.

Rainer Agster is the Director of Private Sector Cooperation at adelphi, a leading think tank and public policy consultancy on climate, environment and development. Private sector engagement in international cooperation for sustainable development and green finance are important aspects of his research and consultancy work. Over the past 15 years, Rainer Agster has conducted numerous projects in Africa, China, South Asia and the South Caucasus. He is currently focussing on the areas of climate change adaptation, energy efficiency, green finance and sustainability entrepreneurship. Rainer Agster advises banks in India, Nepal and Turkey on climate protection, energy efficiency and renewable energy. Rainer Agster is an experienced facilitator of national and international stakeholder dialogues and consultation processes and develops complex national and international programmes and projects for donor agencies as well as for international organisations.