Dr. V.B. Mathur is the Chairperson, National Biodiversity Authority, India since September 2019. Prior to this, he served as the Director of the Wildlife Institute of India between 2014-19. Dr. Mathur is the Regional Vice-Chair of the IUCN-World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA-South Asia) and Member of the International Association of Impact Assessment (IAIA). He has now spent over three decades in actively contributing to a wide range of training, research and academic programmes in the field of biodiversity conservation. He has extensive experience as an international trainer and his special interest include natural resource conservation, heritage conservation, environmental and strategic impact assessment and biodiversity informatics. He has been actively contributing on research-policy interface issues and has been the Regional Vice-Chair (Asia-Pacific Region) of United Nations Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (UN-IPBES) multidisciplinary Expert Panel (MEP) (2014-2018). He is currently the UN-IPBES Bureau Member (2019-2022) and also the UN – CBD Bureau Member (2019 – 2021). He is Co-chair of the IPBES Task Force on Policy Support Tools and Methodologies and Member of the IPBES Task Force on Capacity Building. He has also been the Chair of the UN-CBD Informal Advisory Group for developing synergies between seven biodiversity-related conventions. He has been part of the official Indian delegation for CBD and UNESCO World Heritage Committee Meetings since 2006 and has in-depth knowledge about the working of these conventions.