20 January 2012: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has announced the appointment of Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias of Brazil as Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), at the Assistant Secretary-General level.

Braulio Dias, who will succeed Ahmed Djoghlaf, is currently the National Secretary for Biodiversity and Forests at the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, and has been deeply involved with the negotiations and implementation of the CBD. He holds a Bachelor of Science in biological sciences from the University of Brasilia and a Doctor of Philosophy in zoology from the University of Edinburgh. [Biographical Note] [UN Press Release]