Pledging to work towards reconciling economic and environmental policy in the world, Steiner, who succeeds fellow German Klaus Töpfer as the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), formally began his four-year term on Thursday.

"For too long, economics and environment have seemed like players on rival teams," Steiner said in a statement released by the Nairobi-based agency. "We need to make these two sides of the development coin team players, players on the same side."

Steiner said the UNEP would focus on how markets, economic incentives and international treaties can be made to work in a way which is "pro-environment, pro-poor and thus pro-sustainable development."

Guiding environmental activities

When the UNEP was founded in 1972 to promote sustainable development through its scientific advisory groups, it was the first UN institution located in a developing country. Its most widely recognized activity is Earthwatch, an international monitoring system designed to facilitate the exchange of information on significant environmental risks among governments.

In 2001, Steiner became director of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), the world's largest environmental network with over 1,000 members that include states, government agencies and non-governmental organizations in 140 countries.

After growing up in Brazil, he went on to study politics and economics at Oxford University before gaining a master's degree from the University of London with specialization in development economics, regional planning, and international development and environment policy. He also studied at the German Development Institute in Berlin and at Harvard Business School.

Grassroots and international experience

A spokesman for Kofi Annan described Steiner as having worked both at grassroots and at the highest levels of international policy-making to address the connections between environmental sustainability, social equity and economic development.

Prior to his assumption of the directorship of the Conservation Union, which is based in Gland, Switzerland, Steiner served as head of the World Commission on Dams, the chief technical advisor of a program for sustainable management of Mekong River watersheds, and as a senior policy advisor for the IUCN's Global Policy Unit, where he developed partnerships between the environmental community, the World Bank and the UN system.

During his predecessor's tenure, the UNEP was successfully restructured into five priority areas: environmental assessment and early warning, development of policy instruments, enhanced coordination with environmental conventions, technology transfer and support to Africa.