Ms. Elizabeth Maruma Mrema is the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. She has worked with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) for over two decades and was the Director of the Law Division at UNEP which is also responsible for international environmental governance as well as multilateral environmental agreements. Prior to joining the Law Division in June 2014, Ms. Mrema was Deputy Director of the Ecosystems Division, in charge of coordination, operations and programme delivery from 2012 and also served for one year as Acting Director to the same Division. In 2018, she was the Acting Director of the Corporate Services Division. Prior to these duties, she also served as Executive Secretary of the UNEP/Secretariat of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) from 2009-2012.

Before joining UNEP, Ms. Mrema worked with Tanzania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and left as a Counsellor/Senior Legal Counsel. A lawyer and career diplomat with LLB (Hons) from the University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, LLM from Dalhousie University, Canada and Postgraduate Diploma in International Relations and Diplomacy from the Centre of Foreign Relations and Diplomacy in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.