Centre for Corporate Governance in Africa

Cornis van der Lugt (PhD MBA / Stellenbosch, Paris) is Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for Corporate Governance in Africa (University of Stellenbosch Business School), as well as Geneva-based consultant with over 20 years’ experience in the sustainability field at international level.

From 2009-2011 he was Coordinator of the Resource Efficiency Subprogramme of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Based in Paris at the UNEP Division of Technology, Industry and Economics (DTIE), he was responsible for private sector collaboration and corporate responsibility (CESR) from 2000-2009.

During the 1990s he served in the South African Government as multilateral diplomat and conducted his doctoral studies in Germany and The Netherlands. As UN manager in the 2000s he was among others nominated expert representing the UN Global Compact in the ISO 26000 process (2004-2009) and served on various expert working groups of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).

His work has included co-developing guidance for managers and benchmarking reports on good practices with partners such as SustainAbility, Standard & Poors, KPMG, World Resources Institute and AccountAbility. He was one of the contributing authors to the ‘TEEB for Business’ report (Earthscan 2011), the ‘Green Economy Report’ (UNEP 2011) and continues to contribute to recognised international research publications. He holds a PhD and Masters in Business Administration from the Haute Ecole de Commerce (HEC, Paris). He is also Senior Associate of BSD Consulting International (headquartered in Zurich).