On the occasion of the international day for biological diversity, the French Embassy and French Institute in Sweden are proud to welcome Julia Marton-Lefèvre to the City of Stockholm’s webinar on Biodiversity in cities on the 14th of may 2020.
Julia Marton-Lefevre was born in Hungary, educated in the United States and in France, and having lived in several continents, she considers herself a global citizen. Julia is an expert in environment and sustainability. She has given hundreds of speeches throughout her career, written articles, and contributed to several books. She enjoys contacts with the younger generations who will need to take leadership positions in the quest for sustainability.
She was Director General of IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature from 2007 to mid-January 2015. Prior to this, she was Rector of the University for Peace (UPEACE), a graduate-level international university, mandated by the United Nations, providing education, training and research on issues related to peace and conflict. Earlier offices held by Julia Marton-Lefevre include Executive Director of LEAD, Leadership for Environment and Development International, a programme established by The Rockefeller Foundation to bring together and train mid-career leaders from all parts of the world in improving their leadership skills around the issues of sustainable development and Executive Director of the International Science Council (then known as ICSU). She began her international career in a programme on environmental education at Unesco.
At present, she is focusing on using her broad experience to advise organizations achieve their goals. She chairs several international groups: the Executive Committee of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement; the Donor Council of the Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund; the Board of Trustees of the recently merged CGIAR Centers in the field of agricultural research; the Alliance between Bioversity International and CIAT (the International Center for Tropical Agriculture), and the Strategic Advisory Council to the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), In 2019 she was elected to be a member of the Bureau of IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
Her other present board memberships include the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation; the Global Footprint Network, the Turkana Basin Institute, the Oceanographic Institute- Prince Albert 1st of Monaco Foundation, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and the advisory board of TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity). In the corporate world she is a member of the Critical Friends advisory group to the CEO of Veolia Environment S.A, as well as the Sustainable Development Council of EDF.
Julia was the Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Environmental Scholar and a Fellow of Davenport College at Yale University in 2016 and she continues to have regular links with Yale University’s School of the Environment. Julia also serves on the boards of directors of several other universities: Oxford University’s James Martin School, the Global Institute of Sustainability (Arizona State University), the Center for International Environmental Studies of the Graduate Institute of Geneva, and the Environmental Leadership and Training Initiative of Yale University.
Julia received the AAAS Award for International Cooperation in Science; and has been honoured as a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur as well as the Officier dans l’Ordre National de Mérite by the government of France and as a Chevalier dans l’Ordre de Saint-Charles by HSH Prince Albert of Monaco. She also received the ProNatura Award from the government of Hungary, the Presidential citation from the Republic of Korea and a Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Council for Science and the Environment. She is an elected a member of the World Academy of Art and Science and the World Future Council and the Royal Geographical Society.