Christiane Gerstetter
Christiane Gerstetter is Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute and part of the Ecologic Legal team. Her main research interests are climate change, development and trade. She is also interested in human rights as well as legal and political theory. Christiane Gerstetter was admitted to the bar in Berlin (Germany) in July 2009. A native German speaker, she is fluent in English, she also understands and speaks Arabic, French, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish to varying degrees.
Christiane Gerstetter’s current main projects at Ecologic Institute are the CLICO research project, which looks at climate change, water conflicts and human security in the Mediterranean area, various studies for the European Parliament (EP) on development cooperation, a cooperation project with South African researchers and a study on the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol for the European Commission (EC).
In the past she has contributed to several projects dealing with the trade-environment interface, including the IPDEV research project, and various policy briefs on trade and climate change. Her climate-related projects include a legal expertise on German climate change law for the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) and a study on technology transfer in international climate change negotiations.
Christiane Gerstetter has lectured at the Bremen University for Applied Sciences (Germany), the Berlin Academy for Public Administration (Germany) and the University of Bremen on environmental and constitutional law as well as policy consulting.
She completed her compulsory post-graduate legal training in Berlin, including work at the EU Department of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the German Embassy in Sana'a (Yemen). After her studies, she was employed as a researcher at Bremen University in a project on the tensions and interdependencies between international and European trade law and social regulation.
Christiane Gerstetter studied law (focussing on environmental and administrative law), philosophy and international relations in Heidelberg (Germany) and Bremen and passed her law school exam in 2003. Alongside her work for Ecologic Institute, she is also completing a doctoral thesis on the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement.
For many years, she has been involved in NGOs and social movements especially in the fields of development and globalization. Both prior to and after completion of her studies, she spent extended periods of time in Israel, Palestine and Central America, working on issues of human rights and development.