Mensur Dessie

Mensur Dessie has more than 13 years of experience with extensive exposure to the academic world, governmental institutions, and international organizations such as UNFCCC and UNDP. He is currently the Director for Multilateral Environmental Agreements Negotiation Coordination Directorate at the Environment, Forest and Climate Change Commission (EFCCC) of Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.

Since he joined the Commission, Mr. Dessie has been working on numerous issues both at the national and international levels, ranging from leading the technical national team and representing Ethiopia in various climate change adaptation and mitigation negotiations on behalf of Ethiopia at international climate change conferences ranging from COP23 to COP25 and intercessional meetings of UNFCCC. He is also a technical leader of CRGE Forum TWG and the P4G National Platform both of which are hosted in EFCCC. Furthermore, he has been coordinating the overall negotiation of MEAs and organizing the Commissioner’s bilateral partnership meetings with development partners mainly at the sidelines of climate change conferences. He is actively engaging and guiding the preparation of national climate change policies and strategies. As a director and member of climate change and biodiversity sector of EFCCC management committee, he has been overseeing and guiding overall coordination of the CRGE at national level.  As a technical team leader of the national MEAs Negotiation team, he has been carrying out analyzing and preparing various negotiation position papers, speeches, and talking points for various high-level meetings, primarily related to climate change adaptation and mitigation. He also provides technical advice on the overall implementation of policies, and strategies as well as projects that are funded by government and development partners.

Mr. Dessie has been active in undertaking or producing different institutional and national documents. To mention just a few, he has participated in the evaluation of the preparation of the CRGE Implementation Progress Assessment and the Resource Mobilization Strategy for National Adaptation Plan as well as a technical working paper for Monitoring and Evaluation System of NAP.  He was one of the forefront developers of concurrent UNDP facilitated projects, namely ‘Climate Promise’, and ’Deepening Efforts to Accelerate NDC Implementation in Ethiopia’ as well as UNDP-CRGE Program AWP for the last four years. He has also been contributing to the ToR preparation of the NDC update, and currently is a member of the technical team that follows up and supervises the overall work related to the revision of Ethiopia’s NDC under the auspices of the WB Group.

Mr. Dessie has also contributed to environmental matters by publishing research papers in international journals and proceedings. To mention just a few, An Assessment of Risks and Opportunities Related to Ecosystem Services, in the Case of Mekelle City (published at Journal of Ecosystem & Ecography), Climate Change in Ethiopia: Its State and the Response: Proceedings of the International Conference on Impact of El Niño on Biodiversity, Agriculture, and Food Security, 23-24 February 2017, Haramaya University, Ethiopia. 

Mr. Dessie holds an MSc in Urban Environment and Climate Change Management from Ethiopian Civil Service University (ECSU) in 2014) and BSc in Land Resource Management and Environmental Protection (LaRMEP) from Mekelle University in 2004.