Bonn, 4 March 2019 – the ranks of the Secretariat staff in Bonn have been strengthened by the arrival of three new colleagues who started work in Bonn at the start of the New Year.  The three are Kanako Hasegawa, Associate Programme Management Officer for the Terrestrial Species Team, Jenny Renell, the new Coordinator for the Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic, North East Atlantic, Irish and North Seas (ASCOBANS), and María José Ortiz, Programme Management Officer responsible for the newly adopted Review Mechanism and National Legislation Programme, as well as national reports, capacity-building and outreach to non-Parties.

Kanako Hasegawa will be working on the terrestrial species portfolio including the Gorilla Agreement, Joint CMS-CITES African Carnivores Initiative, and Sahelo-Saharan Megafauna among others.   Before joining CMS, she worked for the Ocean Governance team of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany.  Prior to that, she was based in Nairobi, working for UN Environment’s Regional Seas Programme as well as the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Pollution (GPA) and in Venezuela, working for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Jenny Renell will be a member of the CMS Aquatic Species Team in her capacity as ASCOBANS Coordinator.  She previously worked nine years in the outposted CMS Office in Abu Dhabi, at the Coordinating Unit of the CMS Raptors MOU and the CMS Dugong MOU Secretariat. Jenny is an International Relations major, with a Master’s degree from the University of Lapland, Finland. In addition to Finland and the United Arab Emirates, she has worked in Belgium and Luxembourg.

María José Ortiz is a Specialist in International Environmental Law. She began her career in Manila, first in the Embassy of Spain and later in the management of international projects of cooperation for development. Later she joined the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in Geneva, where she worked on strengthening the capacities of governments and civil society in the preparation and application of international environmental laws. She also worked as a staff lawyer for the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD) in London supporting the participation of developing countries in international environmental negotiations. Before joining the CMS, she led the collaboration of the Legal Response Initiative and InforMEA, an initiative of UNEP´s Law Division, proving legal analysis and managing InforMEA’s e-Learning platform.

The Secretariat would like to extend a warm welcome to the three new colleagues and wishes them well as they familiarize themselves with their new responsibilities and working environment at a busy time for the Convention with COP13 now less than a year away.