Jochen Flasbarth, President, German Federal Environment Agency

Jochen Flasbarth, President of the German Federal Environment Agency, will be speaking on Thursday, April 18th from 10:15-11:45..

Read about Jochen Flasbarth’s accomplishment’s here. 

Jochen Flasbarth has led Germany’s largest national environmental authority since September 2009.

Flasbarth’s last post was as head of the Nature Conservation and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources Directorate at the Federal Ministry for Environment (BMU). Prior to that he served as director of the NABU (Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union) for eleven years, an association which he modernized. Since the mid-1980s Flasbarth has performed various volunteer duties at a number of environmental organizations, including that of acting as member of the steering committee of the Deutscher Naturschutzring and as founding member of the Verkehrsclub Deutschland (association for sustainable mobility and a major German transport and environmental organization). As member of the supervisory board at the Wuppertal Institute he cooperated closely on climate and resource protection research projects.

The main focus areas of his environmental policy activities have included nature conservation as well as ecological transport policy, climate protection, and ecological finance policy.

As an environmental expert Jochen Flasbarth was a member of the National Committee for Sustainable Development convened by then-Minister for Environment Angela Merkel, as well as the National Sustainability Council founded by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He played a key role in the success of the UN’s Biodiversity Strategy in Bonn and has since headed the presidency of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Flasbarth studied economics, political science and philosophy at the Universities of Münster and Bonn.