The vice-presidency falls to Ana Leiva, director of the Biodiversity Foundation.

The vice-presidency falls to Ana Leiva, director of the Biodiversity Foundation.

The Assembly of members of the Spanish Committee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the largest network of environmental organizations in the country, has unanimously re-elected Carlos Sánchez as president of the entity for a period of three more years.

At this same meeting, held in Malaga, the Committee’s board of directors was renewed, maintaining the balance between public and private administrations, and ensuring that all the areas addressed by the various member entities are represented. Thus, the vice-presidency falls to Ana Leiva, director of the Biodiversity Foundation, and the permanent secretary to Bárbara Soto-Largo, from the Ministry of the Environment, Rural and Marine Affairs.

As for the members, they have been restructured according to the criteria of the global IUCN. The Director General of Biodiversity of the Basque Government, Germán Alonso, will be in charge of Renewable Energies; the general director of Planning and Environmental Information of the Junta de Andalucía, Esperanza Perea, joins the spokesperson for Global Change; the director of the Environment area of Obra Social Catalunya Caixa, Miquel Rafa, will be responsible for Biodiversity; the president of the Galician environmental education center Ceida, Carlos Vales, will assume the position of spokesperson for Green Economy; the president of the Spanish Association of Entomology, Eduardo Galante, will join Ecosystem Management, and Juan Antonio López, head of Aula del Mar, will be in charge of the Marine Environment Conservation committee.

Carlos Sánchez, also president of the Nature and Man Foundation, will be in charge of consolidating the IUCN Spanish Committee, which brings together 36 Spanish environmental entities. Although CeIUCN was created in 1988, it did not have a Technical Office until 2007. During Sánchez’s first presidency, this unit, located in El Astillero (Cantabria), was professionalized, so in the next three years the challenge will be to consolidate it.