Juan Mayr Maldonado
Juan Mayr Maldonado is the current Colombian ambassador to Germany.
Biography
Juan Mayr Maldonado has been environment Minister in Colombia, President of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and of the Biosecurity Protocol Negotiations, and Board Member of ICRAF (World Agroforestry Center). Juan Mayr Maldonado has also served as Vice President and Regional Counselor of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is a member of the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on civil society and the Inter-American Development Bank’s Blue Ribbon Panel. He is also a member of the National Reconciliation Commission and Advisor for the Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator of the United Nations in Colombia, United Nations Development Programe (UNPD), and General Coordinator of the National Committee for Biodiversity and Competitiveness.
On 30 August 2011, President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón appointed Mayr Ambassador of Colombia to Germany during a ceremony at the Palace of Nariño; Ambassador Mayr Maldonado presented his credentials to President Christian Wulff on 19 October 2011 at the Bellevue Palace.
Notable Work
Juan Mayr was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1993,[3] for leading a struggle for protecting biodiversity in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. He lived two years with the Kogi, and founded the Fundación Pro-Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in 1986. In 1994 the Colombian government returned 19,500 hectares of traditional lands to the indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada.
