IUCN - The World Conversation Union

Dr Talal Al-Azimi is Director of Administration at the Environment Public Authority in Kuwait. He is a senior management expert, with considerable experience in the development of environmental policies, law, national policy and programmes for conservation and ecologically sustainable development. He has made outstanding contributions to the environmental cause. His work with the Environment Public Authority of Kuwait has seen the agency successfully expanding and deepening its environmental work. Enabling the recovery of the coastal and marine ecology following the war has been one such example. He has further played a critical role in promoting environmental work within the Gulf Cooperation Council and has also helped commendably in developing a cadre of specialists in environmental policy in Kuwait. Dr Al-Azimi has played a frontline role in cultivating the Kuwait Environmental Protection Society, a highly successful NGO.

Ali Darwish, Lebanon, is Chief Technical Advisor in Agriculture for the German Technical Cooperation Agency since May 2005. Prior to this appointment, he worked as Project Manager for the National Action Programme to Combat Desertification (for the implementation of UNCCD), UNDP/Ministry of Agriculture and as a Free Lance Consultant-Agriculture, Environment and Development. He is Chair of the Lebanese National Committee for IUCN.

He is also Treasurer of the Green Line Association, Lebanon (an NGO member of IUCN); Regional Focal Point, International NGO/CSO Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty; Member, National Steering Committee for the GEF Small Grants Programme, Lebanon; Member of the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) and Steering Committee Member of the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP).

His professional experience has included the design, coordination and implementation of several initiatives on Sustainable Management of Natural Resources, Poverty Alleviation and Rural Development; a major contribution to the setting up of a Lebanese Organic Farming System (institutional and legal); working with many international agencies on development priorities in Lebanon and the region; and lobbying on trade related issues, food sovereignty and sustainable livelihoods.

Javed Jabbar, Vice President (2005-2006) and Regional Councillor for West-Asia (2005-2008), brings a diversity of relevant perspectives and substantive experience in formulating and implementing public policy as a Minister in 3 cabinets of Pakistan and as a Senator (1985-91) as well as in civil society initiatives. He devotes most of his working time to voluntary service to over 12 public interest organizations including as Chair of the Pakistan National Committee for IUCN since 2003. Grass-roots development organizations that he has founded and led now work with over 1600 village and urban communities throughout Pakistan directly engaged in water resources management, agriculture, conservation, poverty reduction and female empowerment.

Ten books comprising his writings on a range of subjects have been published. He has written and directed several award-winning short films and Pakistan’s first full-length English language feature film “Beyond the last mountain”.