Khatuna Akhalaia 

Georgia Country Coordinator

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For more than 20 years Khatuna has been working on issues of chemical and toxic wastes, particularly obsolete pesticides. For 12 years (since 1998) Khatuna has been working in the Land Protection, Waste and Chemical Management Department of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Georgia. Her duties included preparing national annual reports for Georgia on three main conventions on management of waste and chemicals — Stockholm, Rotterdam and Basel Conventions. Khatuna put a lot of effort into forming the legal framework of chemicals and waste management issues in Georgia.

Besides government work Khatuna was involved in numerous projects focusing on issues of agriculture and environment, including: World Bank Project on use of farm biomass as alternative energy and as fertilizers for gardening in villages and USAID financed project on tangerine and hazelnut orchards development and training of farmers. Most of the environmental projects that she worked on were related to waste and chemicals management. Most of such projects were funded by GEF and implemented by FAO, UNEP, UNDP, WB, WHO. While working for UN FAO projects Khatuna managed the FAO-035 project for 5 countries (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkey.  In 2020 she joined Protecting Every Child’s Potential project implemented jointly by Pure Earth, Clarios Foundation, and UNICEF as the Country Director. Khatuna is also the Director of ECO Life Consulting that provides support on environmental and health and safety issues to companies implementing the ISO 14001 and ISO 22000 requirements. 

Education: 

• Plant Protection Specialist, Agronomy Faculty of Agrarian University Georgia (Tbilisi, 1990); 
• MA in Environmental Management and Planning/Agribusiness Management and Environmental Protection), College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of Georgia USA (Atlanta, GE, 2000).

Based at: Tbilisi, Georgia.

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