Fanny Douvere is the Coordinator of the Marine Programme at the World Heritage Centre of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris, France. Her work focuses on strengthening the capacity of Marine World Heritage site managers to safeguard the “Crown Jewels of our Ocean”. She also provides support to national governments in their efforts to identify new potential marine World Heritage sites and promotes wider use of the World Heritage Convention for the conservation of the ocean’s most special places.

Prior to her current position, she co-initiated the Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) Initiative at UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. Her work focused on documenting and analyzing existing MSP practices and the development of guidance for marine managers. In 2009, she co-authored the now widely-used UNESCO guide, Marine Spatial Planning: A step-by-step approach toward ecosystem-based management.

In addition to her work at UNESCO, she advised the United States Executive Office of the President (Council of Environmental Quality) on the development of the US framework for coastal and marine spatial planning and co-presented a series of lectures on MSP to executive and senior staff of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Last May, she completed her PhD on marine spatial planning at the University of Ghent, Belgium.