Rémi Parmentier

Varda Group Director

One of the two founding directors of the Varda Group, Rémi specialises in political strategy and advocacy, and campaign development, and likes to define himself as a “free-lance agitator.” “Regardless of whether the work is for an NGO, business,  a government or international agency, I consider my work as challenging their practice and their habits with a view to improving them, bringing added value, thanks to our unique prisma.”

Rémi provides on an on-going basis advice, and develops international policies, strategies and programmes for a wide and diverse range of entities and issues.

Rémi has participated in countless international fora over many years. These include for example: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), Meetings of the Parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the London Convention 1972, the OSPAR Commission, Ministerial Conferences for the Protection of the North Sea, UNEP's Barcelona and Cartagena Conventions, UNEP Governing Council, the International Whaling Commission, CITES, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT), the World Bank, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body for the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the World Health Assembly, the European Parliament and the European Commission, among others.

Rémi was a founding member of Greenpeace International (1979) and several Greenpeace national organisations, including Greenpeace France (1977), Greenpeace Spain (1984), Greenpeace International's Mediterranean Project (1986) and Greenpeace Latin America (1987). Among many other projects, in the 1970s he was a crew member of the first legendary voyages of the ship Rainbow Warrior. He has undertaken field investigations on environmental and nuclear issues in a number of countries and regions, including Western Europe, Russia, North and Latin America, the South Pacific and Asia. He is considered the main architect of the worldwide ban on the dumping of industrial and radioactive wastes at sea adopted by the Parties to the London Convention in 1993, a Greenpeace campaign which spanned 15 years. He was a member of Greenpeace International’s Political Team since its creation in 1988, and the organization’s Political Director for several years until he formed the Varda Group with Kelly Rigg in 2003.

Rémi is the author of a large variety of articles published in specialised journals and the general press, and author or co-author of over 200 papers submitted by NGOs to intergovernmental bodies.

With more than thirty five years in the environmental movement, Rémi has known and worked with many of the key players in environmental policy including senior staff at the UN and other intergovernmental organizations, government ministers and representatives, NGO leaders, journalists, and independent policy experts. In his last Greenpeace years, as Greenpeace International’s Political Director, he worked on international trade and the environment, and participated in the Ministerial Conferences of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Seattle in November, 1999 and Doha, Qatar in November 2001. He also represented Greenpeace at the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and its preparatory process.

In 2005, Rémi proposed to and worked closely with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to organize with the international labour movement the first Assembly on Labour and the Environment, which took place in January 2006 in Nairobi, Kenya and triggered UNEP's Green Jobs initiative.

From 2005 to 2010, Rémi came back to one of the first international issues he had ever worked on – the conservation of whales – at the request of the Pew Environment Group on behalf of whom he organized the Symposium on the State of Whale Conservation in the 21st Century held in April 2007 at UN Headquarters and the Second Pew Symposium, "A change in climate for whales", held at the United Nations University, Tokyo, in January 2008 and the Pew Whales Commission in 2009. Since May 2007, Rémi has been a Senior Policy Adviser of the Pew Environment Group, working on marine biodiversity issues.

On his blog, www.chezremi.com, Rémi periodically shares his impressions on his work and on relevant current affairs.