January 2014: The C40 Cities climate network announced in a blog post just before Christmas that it had appointed Mark Watts as its new Executive Director. Mr Watts was previously Ken Livingstone’s energy and environment advisor, leading in the development of a number of key London climate mitigation and adaptation programmes, including London’s first Energy Strategy in 2004 and the 2006 London Climate Change Action Plan.
Cities Today provides a profile, relating that “Watts’ ties with C40 go back to the foundation of the organisation as he was the officer in London’s City Hall tasked by then Mayor Ken Livingstone to build a new network of major cities. The C20, as it was at the time of its launch in 2005, grew out of conversations London was having with cities such as Stockholm, San Francisco and Toronto about forming a strategy on climate change.”
Mark will be joining the Boris Johnson’s current energy advisor, Matthew Pencharz, at the C40 Cities Summit, to take place in Johannesburg in a few weeks time.