How is the CBD Alliance governed?
The Alliance is governed by an advisory board selected by the CSO community, and is composed of civil society members from each of the following regions and major groups: Latin America, Middle East/Central Asia, North America, Europe, Russia/CIS, Asia, Oceania, Africa, Youth, Indigenous, Women. The current advisory board composition is below. Projects and activities receive on-going feedback and input from the entire CBD Alliance through the list serve and around CBD meetings (SBSTTAs and COPs). Project funds are managed by Kalpavriksh. Project activities are currently managed by two co-facilitators, advised by the Advisory Board.Advisory Board (2006-2008)
COP 9 Host Country Board Member
Christine von Weizsacker, Ecoropa
Christine is a biologist and a researcher-activist working on technology assessment for civil society since the mid-seventies. She wrote the NGO-strategy paper on Biodiversity for UNCED in Rio in 1992 and participated in the negotiations of the CBD and its Protocol on Biosafety since 1994. Christine has written many publications in scientific and other books and journals. Currently she is coordinator of biotechnology programme of Ecoropa, a European Ecological Network celebrating its 30th Anniversary this year. Christine is also co-founder of Diverse Women for Biodiversity, a member of Biodiversity WG of German NGO Forum on Environment and Development, and is also involved with the Board of German Consumer Testing Group, the Scientific Committee on Consumer and Food Policy of German Ministry of Agriculture, and the Food and Consumer Protection Committee of the Federation of German Scientists.
Susanne is the advocacy adviser of the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development (LPP). She co-coordinates the Biodiversity Working Group of the German NGO Forum Environment and Development, including NGO activities with regard to CBD COP9. Susanne has almost three decades of development cooperation experience in the fields of agricultural biodiversity, agricultural research, food security, gender, and have worked in advocacy, research policy, evaluation, and project development/fundraising. She has been affiliated (including freelance work) with FAO, International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), IUCN, German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), and German NGO Forum Environment and Development, among others. Her training is in human nutrition (MSc), with a PhD in rural development, and a post graduate training in development economics. She is looking forward to working with the CBD Alliance and to meeting everyone soon, latest in 2008 during COP9 in my hometown Bonn.
Oceania Board Member
Rex Rumakiek, Pacific Concerns Resource Centre, FujiOrginially from West Papua (Indonesian New Guinea) but exiled in Australia, Rex has been an activist for his entire adult life. He is also a Founding member of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) Movement. He has been Board member at different times with two regional organisations, NFIP and PIANGO (Pacific Islands Association of Non Governmental Organizations). Rex has a Masters Degree in International Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. He has attended numerous international conferences and had tasted sweet and bitter encounters in the art of active campaigning, whether demonstrations in the streets, debates in the corridors of power, or debates on Radio and TV. In September 2004 Rex joined the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) Secretariat of NFIP as the Assistant Director for Decolonization. His main responsibility is to assist Indigenous peoples in the Pacific to attain their rights of self-determination, including the right to their lands, culture, natural resources, self-government and even political independence.
Alternate: Sandy Gauntlett, Pacific Indigenous Peoples Environment Coalition, New Zealand
Sandy is a lecturer at Te Wananga O Aotearoa in Indigenous Environmental Management. He is also the chairperson of Pipec (Pacific Indigenous Peoples Environmental Coalition) and a forests and climate campaigner for FoENZ. Sandy is a current Advisory Board member for article 8j (CBD), past advisory board member to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, current regional focal point for Global Forest Coalition and a TLCEPA and WCPA member (IUCN). Much of Sandy’s work focuses on protected areas and Indigenous Peoples, forests and climate change, climate change and biodiversity, climate justice and climate refugees.
Asia Board Member
Ashish Kothari, Kalpavriksh, India
Ashish lives in Pune, India, and works with Kalpavriksh, an Indian NGO working for the last 27 years on environment, development, and conservation issues. Ashish is also co-chair of the IUCN Theme group on Indigenous/Local Communities, Equity, and Protected Areas (TILCEPA). Within the CBD, he has been focused mainly on protected area issues, along with Article 8j and national implementation (esp. since he was the technical coordinator of India's National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan process).
Middle East/Central Asia Board Member
Elsa Sattout, Greenline, Lebanon
Elsa is a member of GreenLine - A Lebanese Scientific Association for Conservation working on various CBD related issues and seeking to protect Lebanese environment. Elsa has been working on biodiversity conservation and sustainable use since 1998 contributing to the growth of information exchange platforms and communities to support the implementation of National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans in her home country and the Mediterranean region. Substantively she has been working on protected areas, biodiversity assessment and statistics, mountain biodiversity, ecosystem management, parataxonomy, biodiversity monitoring and local community participation. She has been involved in the CBD and biosafety issues for over two years through the development of National biosafety framework for Lebanon.
Khadija Catherine Razavi, Centre for Sustainable Development (CENESTA), Iran
Africa Board Member
Rodger Mpande, Community Technology Development Trust, Zimbabwe
Rodger Mpande is an environment and development professional resident in Zimbabwe and working in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region on biodiversity and desertification issues. His affiliate organization, Community Technology Development Trust, works on translating international environment instruments into community based programmes. Rodger Mpande has done extensive work in the area of biotechnology and biosafety and is currently driving an initiative on Access and Benefit sharing in Traditional Knowledge with a focus on Traditional Medicine in the SADC region.
Russia/CIS Board Member
Andrei Laletin, Friends of the Siberian Forests, Russia
Andrei is chairman of the Council of Russian grassroots NGO "Friends of the Siberian Forests" and lives in Krasnoyarsk (Central Siberia). He also works for Danish NGO "NEPCon", is a member of the CG of the Global Forest Coalition (GFC) and an NGO focal point for the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF). Andrei’s work focuses on the development of conservation and sustainable use projects for Russian forests, including FSC certification. He has an undergraduate degree in biology and a PhD in ecology. For the CBD Alliance Andrei works with biodiversity activists in 12 countries of the former Soviet Union: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekustan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. All these countries use Russian language as main means for communication and Andrei translates relevant information and distributes it mostly through e-mail and Internet. FSF website is www.sibforest.org
Europe/Women Board Member
Joyce Hambling, SEEDS, UK
Latin America Board Member
Isaac Rojas, COECOCeiba-Friends of the Earth Costa Rica, Costa Rica
Isaac has worked with COECOCeiba-Friends of the Earth Costa Rica since 1992, focused on on community rights, ABS, IPR, trade, GMOs and forests. Isaac has coordinated some national networks and now along with a colleague from COECO, he coordinates the Forest Program of Friends of the Earth International.
North America Board Member
Gabrielle Kretzschmar, New Brunswick Partners in Agriculture, Canada
With her family, Gabrielle owns and manages an independent family farm enterprise, a 400 acre cattle and horse ranch in the New Brunswick province of Canada. She is currently the vice-president and treasurer of the former ‘New Brunswick Farm Women’ (founded in 1986), now known as ‘New Brunswick Partners in Agriculture’, a provincial non-profit agriculture producer organization. Gabrielle’s ‘environmental’ work began in the early to mid 1990s, when she became a member of former provincial ‘Agriculture Advisory Committee on the Environment’ (AACE). Since that time, she has been involved with many environmental projects and processes. Gabrielle is currently the Co-Chair of the Agriculture Caucus of the Canadian Environmental Network, and also a member of the Advisory Committee for the New Brunswick Climate Change Hub. Her primary interest is in the links between agriculture, health and the environment.
Indigenous Peoples Board Member
Joji Carino, Ibaloi-Igorot from the Cordillera region, Philippines
Joji has worked as a policy advisor and European desk coordinator for the Tebtebba Foundation, (Indigenous Peoples' International Centre for Policy, Research and Education) with current responsibility as Team Leader, Indigenous Peoples' Capacity-Building Project for CBD Implementation. She has worked for more than 30 years to promote respect for indigenous peoples' rights at local, national and international levels - as educator, community development worker, researcher/writer and in policy advocacy. Joji engaged with CBD issues from 1994 covering issues of forests, freshwater issues, traditional knowledge and related provisions of the CBD, protected areas, access and benefit-sharing and indicators relevant for indigenous peoples in the CBD Strategic Plan and 2010 target.
Women Board Member
Simone Lovera, Global Forest Coalition, Paraguay
Simone is involved with Sobrevivencia/Friends of the Earth-Paraguay, but her main project at the moment is campaigns coordinator for the Global Forest Coalition, an international coalition of NGOs and Indigenous Peoples Organizations involved in international forest policy. Global Forest Coalition sees gender as an important cross-cutting theme for our work.
Youth Board Member
Henry Steinberg, USA
Henry Steinberg is a recent graduate from the College of the Atlantic (COA) in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a degree in Human Ecology and a concentration in environmental policy. In the past few years Henry has organized youth for organizations such as GreenpeaceUSA and SustainUS (a United States-based youth group focussing on youth and sustainable development) and has worked as a legal research assistant at both COA and the non-profit Center for Food Safety in Washington DC. Currently Henry is working with SustainUS and COA to brainstorm and implement strategies to increase the youth presence at COPs, MOPS, and other UN gatherings. In regards to the CBD, Henry's primary interests lay in protected area managegement, participation and equity. After attending the CBD COP8, Henry conducted research in Ballena National Park in Costa Rica as a case study in co-management, participation, and equity, comparing the international conservation paradigms and their reflection in Costa Rican national and regional conservation policy.