IE SPEGA x IE SciTech x RAIA Summer Research Programme 2026
This page highlights six climate leaders that students from IE University’s School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs and IE School of Science and Technology have researched. Using RAIA’s unique methodology, the students examined each leader’s background, motivations, policies, and impact leading up to COP31. The goal is to better understand how individual decision-makers shape climate action on a global scale. This marks the fifth consecutive year of the programme thanks to the generous support and full financing of IE University.
Each profile is divided into introduction, their Stake, their defining moment, their solutions, their impact and conclusion. “Their stake” analyses the key environmental challenges and issues a leader faces, “their defining moment” highlights the key moments that are pivotal to a leader becoming a climate leader, “their solutions” examines the policies and initiatives a leader provides and “their impact” analyses how effective a leader implements the proposed solutions and how impactful they are. In the end, the students answer the questions whether the leaders qualify as a climate leader and if so, into what category of climate leadership they fall.
Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman to lead the European Commission, was born a European before she knew she was German. Born in Brussels in 1958 to Ernst Albrecht, one of the first senior civil servants of the new European Commission and later Minister President of Lower Saxony, she grew up multilingual at the European School of Brussels.
After studying economics at Göttingen, Münster and the London School of Economics without graduating, she turned to medicine, earning her doctorate in 1991. She joined the CDU in 1990 after her father’s electoral defeat and served in every Merkel cabinet, becoming Germany’s first female Minister of Defence in 2013.
As Commission President since 2019, she launched the European Green Deal within ten days of taking office.
Read Daria Holtea, Bianca Albu & Ariadna Alvarenga’s report here:
Europe is the fastest-warming continent, and its climate stakes are intertwined. Deadly heat, which caused an estimated 62,700 excess deaths in summer 2024, compounds floods, droughts, wildfires and the collapse of ecosystems and biodiversity. Politically, von der Leyen must balance climate ambition with competitiveness, defence spending, farmer protests, a sceptical EPP and a rising far right.
Ursula von der Leyen’s defining moment was her candidate speech to the European Parliament on 16 July 2019, where she introduced the European Green Deal. Chosen outside the Spitzenkandidaten process after Green gains and the Fridays for Future protests, she was elected by just nine votes. That narrow mandate made climate action the foundation of her legitimacy as Commission President.
Ursula von der Leyen’s climate policies centre on the Fit for 55 package, which aims to cut emissions by 55% by 2030 through an expanded Emissions Trading System, a carbon border tax and the Social Climate Fund. Her EU Adaptation Strategy prepares member states for unavoidable climate impacts, while the European Union Nature Restoration Law requires restoring 20% of EU land and sea by 2030.
Ursula von der Leyen’s climate solutions in action include a rise in renewable electricity from 34% in 2019 to 47% in 2024 and €38.8 billion in emissions trading revenue in 2024 alone. Yet her second-term shift towards competitiveness diluted the combustion engine ban, delayed ETS2 to 2028 and weakened the European Union Nature Restoration Law amid farmer protests and political pressure.
Ma Jun, founder of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), is one of China’s most influential environmentalists, despite never holding public office. Born in 1968, he worked for the South China Morning Post in Beijing through the 1990s, travelling to China’s rivers, lakes and industrial regions.
What he saw became China’s Water Crisis (1999), often compared to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. As a Yale World Fellow in 2004, he studied Western pollution laws and concluded that China lacked not regulation, but public access to information.
He founded the IPE in 2006 and built China’s first public database of corporate pollution violations, later the Blue Map app. His work earned him the Goldman Environmental Prize, though his reliance on government data means his tools can only show what Beijing chooses to disclose.
Read Sami Kayani Mahmood Kausar, Viktoria Vekova & Daniela Bermudez Bolivar’s report here:
Ma Jun’s stakes are both environmental and political. China holds 20% of the world’s population but less than 7% of its freshwater, much of it polluted, while air pollution causes around 2 million deaths a year and biodiversity continues to decline. Politically, he must push for accountability as an NGO leader in a tightly controlled civil society without alienating the government.
Ma Jun’s defining moment came through his travels as a journalist in the 1990s, when he found rivers running dry and Dongting Lake, once China’s largest freshwater lake, shrunk to a fraction of its size. Documenting this in China’s Water Crisis, he concluded that official reports concealed environmental costs, and that the public needed the data to see them.
Ma Jun’s solutions centre on transparency. The Blue Map turns scattered government records into a public map of polluters, which citizens use to report violations. The Green Supply Chain Initiative links polluting suppliers to the global brands buying from them, while the CITI and PITI indices publicly rank companies and cities on how they act on that information.
Ma Jun’s solutions in action include the Blue Map’s 10 million downloads and a randomised trial showing that PITI ratings cut pollution violations by 37% and prevented around 2,000 premature deaths a year. Pressure from brands such as Apple has pushed over 30,000 suppliers to address violations, though domestic firms have proven far harder to move than multinationals.
Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan climate justice activist born in Kampala in 1996, has become one of Africa’s most recognised voices in the climate movement. Inspired by Fridays for Future, she began in January 2019 as a lone striker outside the Ugandan Parliament, protesting the droughts and floods hitting Ugandan communities.
She rose to global prominence in 2020, when the Associated Press cropped her out of a photo of young activists at Davos. She turned the incident into a broader critique of how African voices are erased from the climate debate.
She founded the Rise Up Movement and the Vash Green Schools Project and became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 2022, though as an activist she has no formal power to shape Ugandan climate policy directly.
Read Maïa Ines Mallet De Vandègre, Trixie Claudette Nebres & Lucia Piederiet’s report here:
Vanessa Nakate’s stakes are environmental and political. Uganda is the 14th most climate-vulnerable country in the world, and wetland loss, deforestation driven by firewood and charcoal, and recurring floods and droughts threaten livelihoods. Politically, she must push for climate justice in a restricted civic space while Kampala backs the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.
Vanessa Nakate’s defining moment came on 24 January 2020, when the Associated Press cropped her out of a photo with Greta Thunberg and other activists at Davos. Her video response went viral. By framing the incident as structural exclusion rather than a personal slight, she brought African voices to the centre of the global climate debate in the 21st-century.
Vanessa Nakate’s climate solutions combine advocacy and grassroots action. The Rise Up Movement amplifies young African climate activists. The Vash Green Schools Project installs solar panels and clean cookstoves in rural Ugandan schools, cutting firewood use. Through the #StopEACOP campaign, she challenges the East African Crude Oil Pipeline and its financiers.
Vanessa Nakate’s climate solutions in action include solar power and clean cookstoves in rural Ugandan schools, and a #StopEACOP campaign that pushed major banks and insurers to rule out financing the pipeline. Yet EACOP is nearing completion, and her influence remains strongest at community and international level rather than on the national level, in Ugandan policy.
Juan Carlos Navarro, born in Panama City in 1961, is Panama’s Minister of Environment and one of Latin America’s most experienced environmental figures. In 1985, he co-founded the National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON) and became its first executive director, turning conservation into a national cause.
He later served as Panama’s first Environmental Ambassador and as Mayor of Panama City from 1999 to 2009, ran for president in 2014 and founded the solar company NSOLAR.
Appointed minister by President José Raúl Mulino in July 2024, he now presides over the Forum of Environment Ministers of Latin America and the Caribbean. His central goal is to end the fragmentation of Panama’s environmental governance.
Read Giulia-Elena Curt, Lucia María Sven Piederiet & Yassine Abada’s report here:
Juan Carlos Navarro’s stakes are environmental and economic. Mining leaves toxic legacies, such as the Remance gold mine, while the closed Cobre Panamá copper mine divides the country. Droughts threaten Gatún Lake, which supplies both the Panama Canal and the capital’s drinking water. Deforestation from cattle ranching, agriculture and fires erodes forests that make Panama carbon negative.
Juan Carlos Navarro’s defining moment came in 1985, when he returned from Harvard and, instead of entering his family’s energy business or politics, he co-founded ANCON. As its first executive director, he built Panama’s leading conservation NGO from scratch, helping to protect the forests of the Canal watershed and turning his personal conviction into a public mission for the country of Panama.
Juan Carlos Navarro’s climate solutions target fragmented governance. The Nature Pledge (Pacto de Panamá con la Naturaleza) unites Panama’s climate, biodiversity and land commitments in one ten-year framework. The PAGIRH water plan moves water management from sector-by-sector rules to integrated basin planning. Through ANCON he built lasting partnerships between civil society and the state.
Juan Carlos Navarro’s climate solutions in action include inspections, fines and biodigesters that cut pollution in the La Villa river basin, and a Nature Pledge already showcased at UN biodiversity and desertification meetings in Panama. Yet the Pledge’s governing committee, CONACLABIT, has not been established, and Panama’s integrated water management score remains around 40%.