IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

Anders Wijkman, Sweden

12 April 2012 | Article

If elected as President of IUCN I would use my experience from science, international organizations and politics to help strengthen IUCN in terms of its organisation and funding – in order to make it even better suited for its crucial role as a custodian of biodiversity conservation, sustainability and nature-based solutions.

My priorities would be the following:

• Strengthen and expand the work on Knowledge Products, such as the Biodiversity Hotspot Areas and the Red List of both Threatened Species and Ecosystems.

• Strengthen and expand the impact at field level related to biodiversity and ecosystem protection. A main challenge will be to align development strategies with biodiversity protection.

• Helping close the science-policy gap at global, regional and national levels. IUCN must strengthen its policy role. Biodiversity has essential economic, social, cultural, spiritual and scientific values. It´s protection is hugely important for human survival

• Look for synergies with the Rio Conventions. The more or less vertical approach to most environment problems represents a missed opportunity.

• Strengthened support to all the Multilateral Environment Agreements.

• Explore and make more visible the biodiversity aspects of the Green Economy. IUCN has a crucial role to play in helping define how to take nature into account.

 
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