She started at the Environment Agency, then the Ministry of Environment in 1996 and since 2009 has been working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Norway. She currently works on climate change, air pollution and global health through a development cooperation perspective. She represents Norway in the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.

Q: You were one of Norway’s climate negotiators at the United Nations conference on climate change for 10 years. When did the talks start to include health issues?

A: From the beginning after the UN Framework Convention entered into force, we had to make progress in terms of getting countries to commit themselves to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Later it became evident that these emissions were increasing rapidly and countries were experiencing severe effects as a resultput health on the agenda and the coalition decided to give equal focus to climate change and clean air. As a result, the coalition set up a health taskforce – I am the co-chair with Carlos Dora of WHO – and now our 40 member countries and 50 member organizations are pushing for a resolution at the WHA next year. Norway took the lead on this initially and now Bangladesh, France, Panama, the United States and Zambia are also involved. The subject of the general debate at the WHA this year was climate change and health and, in their national statements, countries talked about how they were affected by this, including the problems they face with air pollution. That, and the WHO Climate and Health Conference, will hopefully