Will Day to chair Sustainable Development Commission

Will Day will succeed Jonathon Porritt as chair of the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC); his appointment was announced this week by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Porritt, who has served three terms as chair, will step down from the post on 27 July.

Will Day joins the SDC from a background in international sustainable development, having worked with aid organisations Care International, Save the Children and Oxfam; and in broadcasting with the BBC World Service. He was instrumental in setting up Comic Relief, and has chaired the BBC’’s Children In Need as well as advising Pricewaterhouse Coopers on sustainability. He is also special advisor to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and a senior associate of the University of Cambridge Programme for Industry, where he is a faculty member of the Prince of Wales’s Business and Environment Programme.

“I take this on at a time of growing public and political understanding of the immense social and environmental pressures that are building up around the world and that affect us all,” Day said upon his appointment. “These realities will require thoughtful and decisive action by government at all levels, business and our wider society.”