Simon Upton was elected Chair of the Commission on Sustainable Development’s Seventh Session (1998-1999). Since 2001 he has been Chair of the OECD Roundtable on Sustainable Development.

He had become a prominent figure in international environmental negotiations in the climate change process (1994-1999) and by chairing the 1998 meeting of OECD environment ministers. In 1999 the World Economic Forum in Davos named him as the Environment Minister in its annual ‘Dream Cabinet’.

Mr Upton was first elected to the New Zealand Parliament in 1981 at the age of 23 (representing the National Party - New Zealand’s principal party of the centre-right). He became one of New Zealand’s youngest Cabinet Ministers in 1990. Between then and 1999 he held a wide variety of portfolios including Environment, Biosecurity, Science & Technology, Health and State Services. In his time as New Zealand’s Environment Minister, Mr Upton was responsible for passing two groundbreaking statutory codes, the Resource Management Act 1991 and the Hazardous Substances & New Organisms Act 1996. Mr Upton was appointed a member of the Privy Council in 2000 and retired from politics at the age of 42 early in 2001.

Mr Upton is a Rhodes Scholar who has degrees in English literature, music and law from the University of Auckland and an MLitt in political philosophy from Oxford University. He has been a prolific contributor of papers and articles on a wide variety of science and environment topics and was the first non-scientist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal New Zealand Society in recognition of his contribution to research and science policy in New Zealand.

Mr Upton is from a farming family and maintains an interest in agriculture and forestry. His private interests include music (he plays the piano), literature, geology and botany, skiing and landscape gardening.
Now based in Paris, Mr Upton is married to Bhaady Miller, an accountant. They have two young children.