Executive Education

in Sustainable Finance and Governance

The experience of working in large organisations at international level has left me with a keen sense of the role of organisational culture, bureaucratic inertia, knowledge systems and relevant incentives in enabling or undermining transformation and out-of-the-box innovation. For managers and executives there is the challenge of ongoing learning, shaping high-performing team work and enthusing accountable initiative.

Large public and private organisations have a unique responsibility in shaping a more humane global economy and planetary stewardship. This requires understanding among those in leadership positions of transnational processes, new ways of orchestrating public-priate collaboration, as well as evolving principles and rules of the global financial system. The lessons of global financial crisis and impacts of global climate change illustrate the urgence of trust building and multilateral pursuit of agreed norms and standards.

Working with leading education institutions, international agencies and business organisations, I provide co-leadership in delivering:

Executive education in sustainable finance, introducing managers from non-financial backgrounds to the fundamentals of the banking, insurance and investment industries, covering the full financial service value chain,

Management education in the development of partnerships and voluntary or co-regulatory initiatives at international level, involving public and private sector players, expert and professional bodies, scientific and interest groups, and

University education and research supervision in the areas of global governance and standards development, with special focus on climate change, corporate responsibility and green growth based on my own past involvement in these areas (e.g. climate negotiations, standard setting).

Reporting chapter, in Essential Concepts of Global Environmental Governance (London: Routledge, 2020)

From governmental to company reporting, authored with Klaus Dingwerth, St Gallen University, in leading Global Environmental Governance volume edited by Jean-Frederic Morin and Amandine Orsini.

UNEP and the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), chapter in Kenneth Abbott et.al. (eds) 2015. International Organizations as Orchestrators,  Cambridge University Press 2015.

Co-authored with Klaus Dingwerth of Bremen University, collaboration with a group of leading International Relations scholars. Presents first historical overview of development of the PRI, voluntary initiative with UNEP FI and UN Global Compact.

Corporate Responsibility: The UNEP Experience, chapter in Tully, S. et.al (eds) 2005. Corporate Liability and Responsibility. London: London School of Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing 2005.

Co-authored with Monique Barbut (UNEP, GEF), chapter describes approach followed by UNEP during 1990s and 2000s to corporate environmental responsibility, including the role of reporting in complementing business voluntarism.

Tracking global governance and sustainability: Is the system working? Chapter in Henriques, A. et. al. (eds) 2003. Triple Bottom Line: Does it all add up? London: Earthscan Publishing 2003.

Co-authored with Nancy Bennet, chapter places macro and micro level sustainable development indicators side by side, considering how global indexes, observation systems and multilateral agreements link with bottom-up data reported by industries.

State Sovereignty or Ecological Sovereignty: The regulation of acid rain within the European Union. Bonn: Nomos Publishing, 2000.

Book publication of my PhD, covering developments in EU during the 1980s around the regulation of transboundary air pollution. It includes case study analysis of negotiation of the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive.

An international environmental regime for the Antarctic: critical investigations, in Polar Record (Cambridge University Press), vol. 33, no 186, July 1997.

Based on my Masters degree, article applies international regime theory to the Antarctic Treaty System. It addresses negotiation of the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection, placing a ban of 50 years on mining activities in the Antarctic.

"Throughout his service in UNEP and to the multilateral environmental agenda, his professionalism, skills and enthusiasm have enabled Cornis to make a significant and highly appreciated contribution."
"Cornis was one of my very best PhD students. He is an effective communicator who can hold his own in any academic and practitioner conversation. He uniquely combines his extensive international management experience with a creative understanding of current debates about international affairs."