Takehiro Nakamura has been with UN Environment since 1992. He is Coordinator of the Marine and Coastal Ecosystems Unit in the Division of Environmental Policy Implementation. Since 2010 he has been engaged in the development and oversight of activities to support the development of tools and methodologies for the sustainable management and use of coastal and marine resources and ecosystem services. Exampes include ecosystem approaches, integrated coastal zone management, blue carbon and other ecosystem-specific management approaches (particularly mangroves and coral reefs). He has also been involved in the management of transboundary water systems (shared marine and coastal environment, shared river/lake basins, and shared groundwater systems) particularly through projects funded by the Global Environment Facility to address transboundary concerns and global issues relevant to these systems. Many of the projects are designed and implemented based on the ecosystem approach.
He has also started a process of incorporating the ecosystem approach in the Regional Seas programme (coordinated by UN Environment). He has been engaged, among others, in the assessment of ecosystem conditions in river/lake basins for water management purposes, addressing water-related emergencies, setting up institutional mechanisms for shared river basins and the marine environment.
He has Bachelor and Master of Engineering degrees from Kyoto University (1985 and 1987 respectively). In 1991 he gained a Master of Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2007 a Ph.D. in Global Environmental Studies from Kyoto University, with a thesis on the ecosystem approach to river basin management.
