Erik Solheim (born 18 January 1955) is a Norwegian diplomat and former politician, and was Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme from 2016 to 2018.
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 his 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, until he was appointed Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme in 2016. Since he left the government, Solheim has sometimes made critical remarks about the Socialist Left Party, and has refused to say whether he remains a member. Solheim later expressed his support for the "centrist" Green Party and was active as a strategic adviser for the party during the 2015 elections.