From a museum in Worcester to the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, the distance is more than 7,000 miles. The environmental challenges confronting both places, however, are deeply connected.
That idea — that protecting the natural world requires work at every level, from local communities to international negotiating tables — was at the heart of the EcoTarium’s 201st Annual Meeting, where the museum presented its highest honor to one of the world’s leading environmental diplomats.
Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, assistant secretary-general of the United Nations and deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, received the 2026 Edward Howe Forbush Naturalist Award during the museum’s June 9 meeting.
The award recognizes lifetime achievement in conservation, environmental stewardship and science education. Mrema, an environmental attorney and diplomat, has spent more than two decades in leadership positions at the United Nations Environment Programme and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2023.
Mrema accepted the award virtually from UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya.
“The EcoTarium is proud to present Elizabeth Maruma Mrema with the Edward Howe Forbush Naturalist Award in recognition of her leadership and diplomacy in establishing international agreements to protect and restore the biodiversity of our natural world across the globe,” EcoTarium President and CEO Noreen Johnson Smith said while presenting the award, according to the museum’s announcement.
“Ms. Mrema shares our mission of connecting people with science and nature while inspiring action to protect the ecosystems on which we all depend,” Smith said. “She is a dynamic leader and a singular force of nature.”
Mrema played a central role in one of the most significant international conservation agreements in recent years. As executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, she helped build consensus around the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an international agreement sometimes described as the “Paris Agreement for Nature.”
The framework established four long-term goals for 2050 and 23 targets for 2030 aimed at halting and reversing biodiversity loss.
In accepting the EcoTarium award, Mrema emphasized that progress on environmental problems depends not on individual achievements but on sustained cooperation.
“No meaningful achievement in environmental protection is ever the work of one individual,” Mrema said, according to the announcement. “Lasting environmental progress is always a collective endeavor.”
She credited scientists, negotiators, park rangers, Indigenous leaders, community advocates, educators, policymakers and young people with advancing conservation efforts around the world.
“I join you not as an individual success story, but as a witness of what humanity can achieve when we choose cooperation over division, partnership over isolation, and hope over despair,” Mrema said.
Her remarks also reflected a tension that has long shadowed efforts to confront environmental decline: The scale of the problems can be daunting, while the work of solving them is often incremental.
“At times, the scale of these challenges can feel overwhelming, but I remain optimistic,” Mrema said. “Not because the challenges are small, but because I have seen what humanity is capable of when it works together.”
She pointed to international negotiations that have brought nations with competing interests to common ground, communities that have restored damaged landscapes, species brought back from the edge of extinction and young people who have mobilized broader movements.
“Progress happens when people persist. Progress happens when institutions endure. Progress happens when partnerships are sustained over time,” Mrema said. “That is the essence of multilateralism. It is not perfect, it can be frustrating, it can be slow, but it remains humanity’s best mechanism for solving problems that no one country can solve alone.”
The global message found a local counterpart at the annual meeting.
Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Tom O’Shea discussed the Massachusetts Biodiversity Initiative, a statewide effort built around protecting and restoring biodiversity, supporting community health and connecting residents with nature through education.
“The EcoTarium is one of our key partners in educating people about nature and restoring biodiversity in our communities,” O’Shea said, according to the announcement. “Honoring Ms. Mrema for her work with UNEP is a clear reminder that conservation requires collaboration on both a local and global scale.”
The EcoTarium also hosted a celebration of the first Massachusetts Biodiversity Day on May 22, proclaimed by Gov. Maura Healey and recognized locally through a proclamation by Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty. The event coincided with the International Day for Biological Diversity and brought together local leaders, educators, community partners and members of the public.
Mrema said institutions such as the EcoTarium play a role extending well beyond teaching visitors about the natural world.
“The work you do goes far beyond education,” she said. “You help people understand that conservation is not simply about protecting animals or preserving landscapes. It’s about protecting the very systems that sustain life itself.”
The award presented to Mrema carries its own conservation symbolism. It is topped with a hand-carved piping plover, a threatened shorebird whose recovery efforts have relied heavily on habitat protection and public cooperation. The carving was created by three-time world champion woodcarver Ed Desrosiers of Auburn.
Mrema recently was appointed to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Commission on Environmental Law Steering Committee. Massachusetts and California have also joined the IUCN, becoming the first states in the country to participate directly in the global conservation organization.
Near the conclusion of her remarks, Mrema invoked the words of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangarĩ Maathai: “It’s the little things that citizens do, that’s what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.”
Mrema then carried the thought further.
“One tree may seem small, one community may seem small, one country may seem small, but when people, communities, and nations come together around a common purpose, they can transform the world,” she said. “That is the promise of conservation. And that is the power of multilateralism. And that is the responsibility we all share.”
