Aban Marker Kabraji


Aban Marker Kabraji, is a Pakistani biologist and scientist of Parsi origin. She is regional director of the Asia Regional Office of IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Previously, she was country representative for the IUCN Pakistan office. On 19 February 2020 the position of regional director of the IUCN Asia Regional Office was advertised with an expected start date of 1 July 2020, indicating Kabraji's impending retirement from her position.

Family

She is the eldest of three children, and the niece of Jamsheed Marker.

Work

Kabraji provides strategic leadership for the Asia Regional Office of the IUCN in Bangkok, Thailand. This includes oversight of 11 country offices with nearly 300 staff and some 70 environmental initiatives. Kabraji has been with IUCN since 1988, when she joined the Pakistan office as country representative. Since then she has amassed extensive experience negotiating with governments, IUCN members and partners to support implementation of major global conventions such as Convention on Biological Diversity, Ramsar and CITES.
Kabraji co-chairs the IUCN-UNDP regional initiative Mangroves for the Future and is the nominated chair of TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network. She has also co-chaired the advisory committee for Ecosystems for Life, a Bangladesh-India water dialogue programme. Kabraji has been a member of the External Advisory Board for the Yale Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry and the Governing Board for the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Kabraji is a McCluskey fellow and visiting professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a member of the Advisory Committee of the United Nations Centre for Regional Development.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Kabraji was involved in the conservation of the endangered green turtle population off the coast of Karachi and Baluchistan.