Hemen Mark Butu

Hemen Mark Butu is a climate change adaptation specialist with over 4 years’ experience in leading, planning and delivering projects along the intersection of climate change and development, poverty, resilience, sustainable energy and more. He also has over 4 years of business development and fundraising experience, working with Nigeria’s Bank of Industry. During this time he assisted businesses and projects all over Nigeria to raise over $3 million.

Over the course of his career, he has won multiple awards from the African Minister Conference on Water, Global Green Growth Institute, International Renewable Energy Agency, Kyungpook National University and Seoul National University. He has worked at the Institute for Global Climate Change and Energy, Kyungpook National University, and Intelgenes (now called Meenistry); holding roles from Research Assistant, Doctoral Researcher, and Senior Researcher. Dr Butu has also worked with several international organisations namely Climate Technology Centre and Network (a collaboration of the UNFCCC, UNEP and UNIDO) UNDP, Korea Energy Agency and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Nigeria Office; affording him the opportunity to work in different countries in Africa and Asia namely: Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo, Ethiopia, South Korea and Vietnam.

For his PhD dissertation, he developed a framework for asset-level vulnerability assessment, deviating from the more popular community-level vulnerability assessments. This work also proposed a new formula for approximating vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa.

At the core of his research interest is building critical new evidence for better informed policy making in climate change adaptation and sustainable energy planning in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. His publications have investigated topics around energy and climate change adaptation in SSA. He currently serves as a reviewer and review editor for four major Elsevier and Frontiers journals. He also published a book chapter on the implementation of the Clean Development Mechanism with Taylor and Francis.

He is also a Google Certified Data Analyst and a strong advocate for data-driven decision making.