Professor Lebdioui was invited to provide evidence at the annual joint meeting of the UN’s Second Committee (Economic and Financial) and the Economic and Social Council on ‘Leveraging Commodities for Sustainable Economic Development’.

Speaking as part of an expert panel, he argued that natural resources under the right conditions can act as a lever of economic upgrading and technological capability accumulation. He provided the examples of Malaysia, a commodity-dependent nation that has diversified through resource-based industrialisation in terms of job creation, and Chile, which has diversified beyond its extractive sector.

He also subsequently spoke at two UN expert meetings in Geneva organised by the UN Conference on Trade and Development to explore green industrial policies used at regional, national and international levels 

Professor Lebdioui is a development economist, whose research is focused on the economic diversification of resource-dependent nations, green industrial policy and low carbon innovation, commodity value addition and biodiversity-based development models.