David Cooper

Dr H. David Cooper is Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School and member of the executive committee at the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. He chairs the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, the UK statutory advisor on nature, and is a Coordinating Lead Author for the Second Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. He is also a Fellow of the British Ecological Society, Special Advisor, China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, and member of the Board of Botanic Gardens Conservation International.

David had a long career at the United Nations, first at the Food and Agriculture Organization and later at the Convention on Biological Diversity, bringing together governments, scientists, Indigenous Peoples, civil society and business to negotiate ambitious, science-based agreements and to support implementation. As Deputy Executive Secretary and Acting Executive Secretary of the CBD, David was instrumental in facilitating the finalization and adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at COP-15 in Montreal in 2022. David was a lead author for various editions of the CBD’s Global Biodiversity Outlook and for the Biodiversity Synthesis of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and has contributed to several other international reports and assessments. He has edited four books on agricultural biodiversity and has written numerous papers on biodiversity science and policy. He holds an MA in Agricultural and Forest Sciences and a DPhil in Plant Physiology, both from the University of Oxford.