Tony Brenton

Who is Tony Brenton?

Sir Anthony Russell "Tony" Brenton, KCMG is a former British diplomat. He entered the British Foreign Office in 1975, where he began his career learning Arabic and spent three years in the British Embassy in Cairo working on Middle East disputes. He later worked in London and Brussels on the development of European Community Foreign and Energy Policy and, also in Brussels, he worked on European Environment Policy for the European Commission, dealing with energy issues, the Chernobyl crisis and the birth of European environment policy.

He took a sabbatical at Harvard University to write The Greening of Machiavelli – The History of International Environmental Politics after setting up and leading the Foreign Office unit that negotiated for the 1992 Rio "Earth Summit", and in particular the first global agreement on climate change. In 1989–90, he headed a UN Department in the Foreign Office in London. Through 1994–98 he worked as a Counsellor in British Embassy in Moscow, responsible for the British aid programme to Russia, analysis of the Russian economy and UK policy towards Russia in the major international economic fields.