GEO BON has opened a nomination process for its co-chair that will serve a mandate of at least 3 years together with Andrew Gonzalez (QCBS and McGill University). Together with the announcement of the relocation of GEO BON’s headquarters from Leipzig, Germany, to Montréal, Canada, Andrew Gonzalez was announced as co-chair elect of GEO BON in July this year. The official transition between the current co-chairs (Henrique Pereira and Mike Gill) and the co-chairs elect is expected to occur during the CBD COP15 in May 2021.

Following information is taken from the GEO BON announcement email:

1. Nomination process

  • The GEO BON Secretariat calls for nominations publicly via the GEO BON website, allfrogs mailing list and social media and informs on the detailed nomination process.
  • Nominations must be endorsed and submitted by at least one member of the GEO BON Implementation Committee (See the composition of the IC on geobon.org/about/governance)
  • Nominees must be contacted before their nomination.
  • Nominees can come from any party with an interest in GEO BON and may or may not already be members of the Implementation Committee.
  • Self-nomination is not accepted.
  • Nominations are submitted to the Executive Secretary of GEO BON, following this template: https://geobon.org/downloads/docs/nomination-form-for-geobon-co-chair.docx.
  • The Executive Secretary then collates all nominations and shares them with the Implementation Committee at least one week prior to the first meeting during which the nominations will be discussed

2. Nomination timeline

  • Open call for nomination: July 31st 2020
  • Deadline to submit nominations to the Secretariat: September 30th 2020
  • Selection by the Implementation Committee: October 2020
  • Announcement of the selected co-chair: no later than October 31st 2020

3. Nomination criteria
Candidates and IC members willing to nominate them should consider the following criteria:

  • Familiarity with GEO BON
  • Gender and geographical balance brought by the candidate
  • Strong motivation to make GEO BON succeed
  • Willingness and ability to dedicate approximately 20% of their time to GEO BON
  • Experience in obtaining funding
  • Experience in establishing and leading organisations or programmes
  • Experience at the science-policy interface and working with different stakeholder groups
  • Good scientific credentials
  • Funding available to support their activities as co-chair
  • Capacity to attract additional funding for the secretariat will be considered a plus

4. Election

During a call of the GEO BON Implementation Committee (IC) to be organized in October 2020, the IC members will go over the nominations and discuss the candidates before proceeding to the election. The exact modalities of the selection and election will be finalized once all the nominations have been received by the Secretariat and will depend on the number of nominees and potential Conflicts of Interest.

Once the second co-Chair elect confirms that he/she/they accept his/her/their position, the results of the election will be made public to the network, within a week of the election.

4. Term of Office

The term of the co-chair elect will officially start during the CBD COP15 (May 2021) and last for a period of 3 years, renewable once. Between October 2020 and May 2021, the elected co-chair will hold the title of “co-Chair elect”.

You can direct your questions on the process to the GEO BON Secretariat by email with the subject line “co-chair selection enquiry” to laetitia.navarro@idiv.de.