Ramsar chooses next Secretary General
Message from the Chair of the Ramsar Convention Standing Committee
On behalf of the Standing Committee of the Ramsar Convention, I take great pleasure in announcing that Mr Anada Tiéga has been unanimously selected from an exceptionally strong field of candidates to become the next Secretary General of the Convention.
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| Mr Anada Tiéga |
A citizen of Niger, Mr Tiéga earned his BS degree from the University of Niamey and his MS degree in Forest Watershed Management from the University of Arizona (USA). He has many years' experience in working with wetland conservation and sustainable use both at local level and internationally, and he has a strong record of successful work in coordinating large groups of government officials, donors, regional collaborative commissions, non-governmental environmental organizations, and field scientists and practitioners. He served for some years in the environmental administration of Niger, including as National Director of Wildlife and Fisheries in the late 1980s, following which he became Niger's Country Representative for The World Conservation Union (IUCN). In the mid-1990s, he served as IUCN's Regional Coordinator for West Africa.
In 1998, Mr Tiéga became Regional Coordinator (now called "Senior Advisor") for Africa for the Ramsar Convention at its headquarters in Gland, Switzerland, and in his nearly six years with the Ramsar Secretariat he built productive relationships with the authorities and organizations in the Africa region, thoroughly learned the workings of the Convention at the global level as well, and gained a strong sense of how the Secretariat works and what the Parties and the public expect from it. Most recently he has been serving, since 2003, as the Project Manager for the Lake Chad Basin GEF project on "Reversal of Land and Water Degradation Trends in the Lake Chad Basin Ecosystem", based in N'Djamena, Chad, a position in which he has collaborated closely with the Lake Chad Basin Commission, the World Bank, the UNDP, the UN Office of Project Services, and the regional governments, and in which he has gained a great deal of experience in fundraising, capacity development, stakeholder engagement, and staff and budget management.
Mr Tiéga has had the opportunity to think long and hard about the needs of the Ramsar Convention and about the challenges we face in the years ahead at global, national, and local levels. In his discussions with the Standing Committee's selection panel, we were all deeply impressed by his breadth of knowledge and depth of vision.
Through his previous close associations with the Ramsar Convention, Mr Tiéga is already very well known to many in the Ramsar family, including our Administrative Authorities in the Parties, the International Organization Partners, and of course the staff of the Secretariat as well. I am certain that all of our Ramsar constituency will join me in welcoming Anada Tiéga back into the Convention's community and look forward to working closely with him from August 2007 into the future.
Paul Mafabi
Uganda
Chair, Ramsar Standing Committee