After serving for 33 years at the prestigious Wildlife Institute of India including as the Dean (2005 –2014) and subsequently as the Director (2014 – 2019) Dr. Vinod B. Mathur was appointed by the Government of India as the 11th Chairperson of the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) on 1st September, 2019. The NBA is a statutory body of the Government of India for providing advisory and regulatory services on all matters relating to biodiversity conservation and management.
Dr. Mathur joined the Indian Forest Service (IFS) and topped the 1983 – 85 IFS Professional Course at the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy (IGNFA), Dehradun and also the XLV Foundational Course at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) in 1985. He obtained his doctorate degree from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom 1991. He 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).
Dr Mathur 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) Multi-disciplinary 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.