Spike Millington

By Alexander Ahn

The Partnership for the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAFP) appointed Spike Millington as its new chief executive officer of its secretariat Wednesday.

The EAAFP secretariat, based in Songdo International City, Incheon, was launched in 2006 as a cooperative initiative aimed at protecting migratory waterbirds, which include 28 globally endangered species, in the East Asian-Australasian flyway.

The organization currently has 27 partners including 14 countries such as South Korea, Japan, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Mongolia, Bangladesh, a number of Southeast Asian countries and the U.S.

The partners also include three intergovernmental agencies, nine international NGOs and one from the international business sector.

Millington has an extensive career as an environmental preservationist. From 1985 to 1998 he lived in Africa and advised the Ethiopian government on its National Conservation Strategy.

He then worked at the Asian Development Bank to combat land degradation in China’s dryland areas, and in 2006 was selected as the United Nations Development Program’s chief technical advisor for the EU-China Biodiversity Program. Millington is currently a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Commission on Ecosystem Management.