Nikhil SEKHRAN

Nik Sekhran is the Chief Conservation Officer at the World Wildlife Fund- US, overseeing WWF’s global work on nature conservation and climate change. He earlier served at the United Nations Development Programme, where he was the global head of Biodiversity and ecosystems, and later the chief for sustainable development. Over a 34-year career, he has worked on-the-ground on conservation and development in over 45 countries. His specific focus has been the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity including wildlife, fish stocks, and forests, ecosystem management, and conservation-compatible development, including nature-based tourism, sustainable agriculture and fishing. An economist by training, he began his career in the Ministry of Finance in Papua New Guinea. He has an interest in unlocking finance to underwrite the costs of nature conservation, and conceived and launched BIOFIN, a UN initiative to mobilize finance from all sources to meet global and national biodiversity goals.