At the heart of this community-driven initiative are three UN Community Volunteers assigned to FAO: Fatoumata Ka, Abdoulahat Ngom and Amadou Fall.  

Dyah joined the Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) Project as a UN Youth Volunteer in 2018. BIOFIN is a global partnership that addresses the challenges of biodiversity financing in a comprehensive way. This initiative provides an innovative methodology that enables countries to measure biodiversity expenditure in the medium term and identify financial solutions that are most suitable for bridging biodiversity and financial disparities.

Astrid Aulanier-Rebeschini (France) and Gilbert Kilimo (Kenya) are UN Volunteers working to combat accelerated nature degradation by promoting biodiversity conservation strategies. Astrid, who is 23 years old, supervises biodiversity management with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Benin. Her passion for issues related to biodiversity and global warming brought her to Cotonou. Her role as a UN Volunteer is to make a lasting impact on the lives of people through the implementation of projects to protect biodiversity.

The Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) is a global initiative under UNDP that currently operates in 41 countries to create sustainable financial solutions that not only protect biodiversity, but also let it flourish. As part of the initiative, Joshua Mabeta, a national UN Volunteer Research Assistant with UNDP, has been working to achieve the broader biodiversity conservation goal by developing the Biodiversity Finance Plan.

As a part of the maritime disaster assistance project, Thevuni contributed to supporting one hundred vulnerable fisheries households affected by the MV X-Press disaster through a cash-for-work programme to clean up the Negombo lagoon. Until the successful completion of the project on 31 January 2022, Thevuni facilitated coordination between government institutions and project implementation partners. She monitoring project progress, reviewing and editing reports and communications materials from the implementing partners. 

"I started to get involved in the study and conservation of the Lomas because of my thesis. However, if I have been at it for four years, it is due to the people and organizations with whom I collaborate. United, we are achieving goals that, until recently, seemed too far away," María states soon after our interview begins. 

It is often said that experience is the best teacher. As a UN Volunteer helping communicate complex environmental issues, my everyday challenge is to make nature relevant to people’s everyday experiences and needs. Our experiences and immediate needs shape our outlook on life. However, biodiversity and environmental issues are often too complex and difficult to relate to. Most people, in their daily routines, live and work in cities, spending the bulk of their time indoors, surrounded by concrete walls and engulfed in a world that seems largely man-made.

The UNDP project "Conservation and sustainable management of key globally-significant ecosystems for various benefits" started in Kazakhstan in 2019. It introduces a new, conservation-centered and financially self-sufficient approach to the management of forests, climate and land integrity, particularly in the pilot biodiversity areas of Zhambyl and Turkestan.