Karim Selouane
Bio: Karim SELOUANE has over 20 years’ experience, ranging from industry to academia, as well as supporting public and private players in strategies for managing the climate resilience and adaptation of territories, cities, infrastructures and natural resources.
In October 2024, Karim joined AFD (French Agency of Development) as Head of the climate change adaptation program – AdaptAction. Before, Karim has been Head of resilience and adaptation to climate change at Vinci Construction between 2015-2024 and in 2018, as an intrapreneur, he founded and became CEO of RESALLIENCE (from 2018 to 2024), an engineering office dedicated to adapting cities, territories, infrastructures and their uses to climate change. In 2021, Karim helped set up the Climate Change Adaptation Working Group of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP’s) Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC), of which he was subsequently appointed co-chair. In this capacity, he intiated the development and publication of the “Adaptation of the Building Sector to Climate Change: 10 Principles for Effective Action” and further promoted the related call for action at COP26, COP27 and COP28. Later in 2024, Karim actively contributed to the organisation of the first Buildings and Climate Global Forum co-organised by France and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), leading pannels and recommandations on climate change adaptation and on climate finance and insurance mechanisms.
In 2022, he was elected as a member of the Mission Board on Adaptation to Climate Change of the European Commission. The same year he joined the Expert group for the thematic review of SDG 9 led by UNIDO and UNDESA and started as co-pilot of the CEN’s standardization commission through the European Resilience Cities Task Force (AFNOR, CEN, ISO).
In September 2024, Karim was appointed member of the Board of Directors of the AFPCNT (Association Francaise de la Prevention des Catastrophe Naturelles et Technologiques).
In 2018, Karim became member of the “Community of users on secure, safe and resilient societies: urban critical infrastructures” from European Union. Karim also became a member of the sustainable city working group of UN Habitat and UNEP and actively contributed to the first cities summit in Nairobi (March 2019) and the UNSPBF (sciences policy business forum) “Data for the Planet Program Task force” in Canberra (November 2019) and in Vienna (September 2023). From 2020 to 2023 he was a member of the Coalition for Climate Resilient Investments (CCRI).
Karim is a doctor and engineer from the Ecole National des Mines de Paris and the Ecole Nationale des Sciences Geographiques.