Mark Schauer is the Coordinator for the ELD Initiative’s Secretariat at GIZ, responsible for the overall coordination of the ELD project. Before Mark joined GIZ, he worked for the United Nations Environment Programme as the Head of the Central Office of TEEB and the Division for International Nature Conservation of the German Federal Ministry for Environment (BMU) as a coordinator for projects which linked economic and ecologic issues. He holds a Master Degree in Forestry Management. After his graduation, he worked in Europe, southern Africa and southern Asia on natural resource management and nature conservation, focusing on this issue’s interconnectedness with economics, poverty alleviation and institutional support programmes.