Erik Solheim

Erik Solheim (born 18 January 1955) is a Norwegian diplomat and former politician. He served in the Norwegian government from 2005 to 2012 as Minister of International Development and Minister of the Environment, and as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme from 2016 to 2018. Solheim is a member of the Green Party. Erik Solheim has 4 children from two marriages.

Solheim was formerly a politician for the Socialist Left Party (SV); he led its youth branch, the Socialist Youth, from 1977 to 1981, was party secretary from 1981 to 1985, and served as a member of the Parliament of Norway from 1989 to 2001. He was leader of the Socialist Left Party from 1987 to 1997. During Solheim's tenure as party leader the party moved closer to the centre and abandoned many former hard-left stances. Within the party, Solheim was considered part of the right wing, and his reforms made him strongly unpopular on the left wing of his own party.

In 2000 Solheim left Norwegian politics to take up an appointment as a special adviser in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs working as a participant in the Norwegian delegation that unsuccessfully attempted to resolve the Sri Lankan Civil War before the outbreak of Eelam War IV. Solheim returned to Norwegian politics in 2005 when he was appointed Minister of International Development. In 2007 he additionally became the Minister of the Environment, and he held both offices until 2012.

After leaving the government in 2012, he returned to his previous position as a special adviser in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and from 2013 to 2016 Solheim was chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee in Paris. He was Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme from 2016 to 2018. In November 2018 he stepped down following an internal UN audit that criticized his frequent international travel and some internal rule breaking.Since he left the government, Solheim sometimes made critical remarks about the Socialist Left Party. Solheim later expressed his support for the centrist Green Party and was active as a strategic adviser for the party during the 2015 elections. He became a member of the Green Party in 2019. Born in Oslo, Solheim attended high school at Oslo Cathedral School and, after serving conscription for the Norwegian Air Force in Bodø (1974–75), graduated from the University of Oslo in 1980 with a cand.mag. degree after studying history, sociology and political science. After 11 years in parliament he worked for five years for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs before being appointed Minister.