The selection process for the Head of the UN-REDD Programme Secretariat has been completed and the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Mr. Achim Steiner, has appointed Mr. Mario Boccucci for this position.
Mr. Boccucci brings to the UN-REDD Programme 20 years of experience on operational and policy work on sustainable management of terrestrial ecosystems, forest management, governance of natural resources, biodiversity, land uses and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Mr. Boccucci is currently the Chief of the Terrestrial Ecosystems Unit in UNEP, where he has been responsible for the development and operationalization of strategies for forests, drylands, cultivated land, mountains and REDD+. Prior to joining UNEP in Nairobi in 2008, Mario was with the World Bank as Senior Climate Change and Forests Specialist. He also worked for the World Bank in Indonesia. Mr. Boccucci is known to most in the UN-REDD community as he has been involved since the Programme’s first Policy Board in Panama in 2009.
Mr. Boccucci’s experience spans across the wide spectrum of REDD+ issues, in the field, in country offices and at headquarters. His first job in 1991 was with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Belize on monitoring and assessment of land cover. He then went on to more remote sensing work in Morocco before joining the European Commission, based in Fiji, where he developed and supervised large programs for agriculture development, participatory land use management and stakeholders engagement for the South-Pacific region.
The UN-REDD Programme would also like to take this opportunity to recognize the excellent done by Ms. Mette Loyche Wilkie in the past six months as the Interim Head of the UN-REDD Programme Secretariat. The Programme congratulates her for her very effective leadership of the Secretariat and to thank her and FAO for taking up this demanding additional task at a very busy time. Ms. Loyche Wilkie has agreed to continue to manage the UN-REDD Programme Secretariat until 20 January 2013. Mr. Boccucci will be taking up his new post on 21 January 2013.
