Dr. Arab Hoballah (Nationality: France) has worked at UNEP for more than 18 years. Since October 2005, he has been Chief of the Sustainable Consumption and Production Branch of the United Nations Environment Programme. In January 2015, Dr. Arab Hoballah was officially appointed as the Director of the Department of Sustainable Lifestyle, Cities and Industry by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), responsible for sustainable consumption and production and urban and industrial development, and chaired the Management Committee of the SUC Sustainable Cities and Communities Project. In March 2017, President Arab Hoballah officially served as Executive Director of the United Nations SEED Sustainable Development Organization.
Since 2011, he has been responsible for coordinating the preparations for the Rio+20 United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development and has been overseeing the implementation of the “Cities We Want” initiative, the only one of its kind explicitly set out in the UNEP 10-year framework on sustainable consumption and production, as well as coordinating, on behalf of UNEP, the International Awards for Liveable Communities; Prior to this, Dr. Arab Hoballah served as the Deputy Director of the Blue Plan, Deputy Coordinating Officer for Mediterranean Action Planning and Coordinating Officer for the Mediterranean Commission on Sustainable Development (MCSD) within the Regional Seas Program of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). He assisted in the development of sustainable development strategies and coastal zone management planning in several countries and was awarded the “Special Baobab Award” by Mr. Achim Steiner, the UN Under-Secretary-General in 2014.