CBD Alliance Board for the 2009 - 2010 Term
Asia Board Member
Wilhelmina (Ditdit) R. Pelegrina is the Executive Director of Southeast Asia Regional Initiative for Community Empowerment (SEARICE), a regional NGO, based in the Philippines working with farmers and different organizations in Southeast Asia on practical/field work, policy advocacy and campaigning work towards the conservation and sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity, farmers’ rights and agrarian reform. She has been involved in securing farmers’ seed systems for food and agriculture through community organizing, development of education/learning processes, and facilitating the development of spaces/platforms for farmers to articulate their issues before policy-makers from local to the international levels. At the CBD, she has worked on the issues around ocean fertilization, terminator technology, farmers’ rights and agricultural biodiversity.
Africa Board Member Rodger Lewis Mpande is a development consultant working in the area of agriculture, environment and rural development. Rodger has worked with a broad spectrum of stakeholders in the area of development including UN agencies, Regional Economic Commissions, Government departments, NGOs, private sector and local communities. He serves as an advisor to a number of national and regional environmental non governmental organizations. He is a founding member of the Community Technology Development Trust, one of the most active environmental organizations in Zimbabwe that is spearheading the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Recently, he has taken a leading role in promoting the organic movement in Southern Africa, in addition to campaigning against the introduction of transgenic crops in Africa. At the CBD, Rodger is keen to see the implementation of the Global Plan of Action on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, developing mechanisms to implement the Access and Benefit Sharing of Resources, especially by communities living around protected areas, as well developing alternative systems of sustainable agriculture that are in line with the CBD. Rodger is a strong advocate of developing practical linkages between Climate Change, Biodiversity and Desertification and the Millennium Development Goals at the national and community levels.
Latin America Board Member
Soledad Vogliano is a member of the Network for a GE Free Latin America (RALLT), together with biodiversity and anti-GM activists from all over the continent. She has been active on monitoring the impacts of agribusiness expansion in the South Cone on human rights, biodiversity and food sovereignty, and has worked on land access issues with Centro de Políticas Públicas para el Socialismo (CEPPAS) from Argentina. She is currently working with the Indigenous organization Confederación de los Pueblos de Nacionalidad Kichua del Ecuador (ECUARUNARI) in Ecuador as technical support on food sovereignty. Recently, she participated in several international negotiations on liability for damage related to GMOs.
Russia/CIS Board Member
Ilia Domashov is the Vice Chairman of the Council of Kyrgyz NGO Ecological Movement “BIOM and lives in Bishkek City in Kyrgyzstan. He also is a member of IUCN CEM and of the Global Forest Coalition (GFC). Ilia’s work focuses on “BIOM’s” programs on biodiversity conservation, in particularly on conservation of Red Book species and the realization of ecosystem approach in forest policy in Kyrgyzstan. He also works in the sphere of integration of Sustainable Development principles in management, education and life of communities . Ilia lectures at Biology faculty of Kyrgyz State University and is working on his PhD which research focuses on the conservation of the mountain ecosystem in Kyrgyzstan. For the CBD Alliance, Ilia works with biodiversity activists in 12 countries of the former Soviet Union: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. All of these countries use Russian language as the main means for communication and Ilia assists mostly through e-mail and Internet. The BIOM website is www.biom.org.kg
North America Board Member (shared position)
Ms. Susan Walsh is the Executive Director of Unitarian Service Committee (USC) Canada. Susan cut her teeth in development work with Canada World Youth completing a ten-month contract as a staff member of their India-Canada team in 1984. Upon her return to Canada, she was recruited as USC Canada’s program officer for Nepal and Indonesia, an assignment that lasted five years. Work as the Executive Director of the World Food Day Association was next, followed by a ten-year stint as the Canadian Lutheran World Relief’s Director for Latin America Programs, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. USC Canada drew her back to Ottawa in 2004, this time as the agency’s Executive Director. During these past two decades, Susan has spearheaded strategies designed to promote the legal, cultural, and livelihood rights of Indigenous peoples and marginalized farmers, strengthened though the completion of a doctoral degree in cultural anthropology at the University of Manitoba, and a year of SSHRC-sponsored field research on the biodiversity conservation and resilience strategies of indigenous potato farmers in Bolivia’s southern highlands. Susan is also experienced and trained in mediation and cooperative conflict resolution, gender equity programming, environmental conservation, and participatory action research.
Mr. Faris Ahmed has been active in policy and campaign work on food security, environment, human rights and health for almost 20 years. He has been with the USC since 2005, focusing on campaigns on biodiversity, Terminator technology, industrial agriculture, agrofuels, food sovereignty and climate change. Further he has worked for Oxfam, IDRC, CUSO, and several global networks based in Asia. He has lived and worked in South and Southeast Asia and West Africa and is now based in Ottawa, Canada. Most importantly he is a photographer and musician, who enjoys playing jazz and west african percussion.
Europe Board Member (shared position)
Ricarda Anette Steinbrecher, PhD is with EcoNexus, UK. Ricarda is a biologist and molecular geneticist and has been a scientific advisor to many national and international organisations, processes and campaigns. She has been closely involved in the negotiations and implementation of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety since 1995 and the Convention on Biological Diversity and SBSTTA since 1998. A particular focus of her work are the Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTs) - such as Terminator Technologies - their design, performance and risks and, more recently, genetically engineered (GE) trees and their risks to global forest ecosystems. She is a board member to many organisations, is co-director of Econexus and serves on the Working Group on Agriculture & Biodiversity (incl. Biotechnology and Biosafety) of the Federation of German Scientists.
Mariam Jorjadze is a biologist and a director of the Biological Farming Association Elkana – a Georgian NGO working on organic farming, protection of agricultural diversity and rural development. Her working experience has been focused on the areas of organic farming, ecology, biosafety, agricultural biodiversity and agricultural research for development. She has more then ten years experience in cooperation with non-governmental organizations on both the national and international levels, as well as with local and international institutions working in the field of agrarian policy, research & development and agricultural biodiversity. Since 1996, she has been involved in advocacy & lobby actions for farmers’ rights in her home country and internationally.
Oceania Board Member
Les Malezer
International Indigenous Forum for Biodiversity (IIFB) Board Members – (2 representatives)
Joji Cariño is an 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 yearsto promotethe respect for Indigenous peoples' rights at local, national and international levels - as an educator, community development worker, researcher/writer and policy advocate. 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.
Malia Nobrega is proud to be from Hanapēpē Valley on the island of Kaua`i where her parents, Gilbert and Rosalyn Nobrega, still reside. She is truly a Native Hawaiian educator committed to her people, her language, and culture. She has taught students of all ages at the Hawaiian Language Preschool on her home island, at various Hawaiian Language Immersion Schools, as well as teaching University students in Hawai'i and at schools throughout the Pacific. Malia is currently an instructional designer for online classes for the Pacific Rim Program at Park University.Malia is an advocate of Indigenous rights and works at all levels - locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally. She is committed to education as well as using media and technology to share the voice of Indigenous peoples around the world.
COP9 Host Country Germany Board Member (shared position)
Christine von Weizsäcker is currently with 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 the scientific sector, as well as other books and journals. Currently she is the coordinator of the 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 the Biodiversity Working Group of the German NGO Forum on Environment and Development, and is also involved with the Board of the German Consumer Testing Group, the Scientific Committee on Consumer and Food Policy of the German Ministry of Agriculture, and the Food and Consumer Protection Committee of the Federation of German Scientists.
Friedrich Wulf is with the German Forum for Environment and Development and Pro Natura (Friends of the Earth Switzerland). Friedrich also is a biologist and a comparative newcomer to global biodversity policy, active in this field only since Germany started its NBSAP in 2005 and SBSTTA 12 in Paris. Dedicated to Nature Conservation since the 1980s, he started out on a practical level as a field researcher but has been successfully active in pushing the implementation of EU nature directives since 1996 for the big German NGOs NABU ((BirdLife Germany) and BUND (Friends of the Earth Germany). He was one of three German NGO experts responsible for the EU concluding that Germany should substantially extend their Natura 2000 Network of Protected Areas. As Nature Conservation Officer for BUND from 2006-2008, the CBD COP 9 was a major topic on his agenda, developing positions and lobbying them for BUND, the German League for Nature Conservation (DNR) and the Biodiversity Working Group of the German Forum Environment and Development. Since August 2008, he co-coordinates this latter group as a volunteer; in November he switched from BUND (Friends of the Earth Germany) to Pro Natura (Friends of the Earth, Switzerland) where he is employed as International Coordinator for Biodiversity and where he will be the Secretary of IUCN Switzerland. Friedrich’s fields of interest are CBD implementation (NSBAPs), the GSPC, Agrobodiversity inclunding Agrofuels, Forest Policy, Protected Areas and – recently- the possible contributions of Climate Change Mitigation to biodiversity. Having witnessed both SBSTTA 12 and COP 9, he is aware that networking and good co-ordination of NGOs can strengthen their impact considerably. He hopes the CBD Alliance will be a forum for information, fruitful discussions and a more cooperative approach of the NGOs in influencing the CBD process. He wants to use his position as link within the FoE network, from the German Forum Environment and Development and with the German Presidency to help make COP 10 a bigger success than COP 9 was.
COP10 Host Country Japan Board Member
Teppei Dohke is with the Japan Committee for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Teppei is working under the Nature Conservation Society of Japan which is one of biggest nature conservation NGOs which has been dedicated to nature conservation throughout Japan for more 50 years. Nature Conservation Society of Japan provides the office for IUCN-Japan. His main work is as the coordinator for the secretariat of the Japan Committee for IUCN, where he has contributed to collecting information on biodiversity conservation and CBD related works, via which project public awareness is raised. Teppei has been worked for 5 years as the coordinator for IUCN-Japan and has established a broad stakeholder network which includes Japanese NGOs, government, local government and the private sector.