Dr. Christiane Gerstetter
Christiane Gerstetter works as a Senior Fellow in the Ecologic Institute's legal team in a part-time position. Her main research interests are international trade policy, EU environmental law, and transformation processes. Her main regional interest is the Middle East. Christiane Gerstetter was admitted to the bar in Berlin (Germany) in 2009. A native German speaker, she is also fluent in English and understands and/or speaks Arabic, French, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish to varying degrees.
One of her main current projects is the EU-funded NATURVATION project which researches nature-based solutions in cities.
On environmental crime and compliance assurance, Christiane Gerstetter was the coordinator of the EU-funded research project EU Action to Fight Environmental Crime (EFFACE) as well as one of the leading authors of a study on wildlife crime. She also coordinated a project on environmental criminal law in Germany and supported the EU Commission in implementing the Action on Environmental Compliance Assurance and Governance.
On trade, she co-authored several studies on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), including studies for the European Parliament on the impact of TTIP on European Union environmental and food safety regulation and studies on investor-state dispute settlement and regulatory cooperation in TTIP respectively. Earlier trade-related projects include a legal study of the international legal framework relevant to support systems for renewable energy, policy briefs on trade and climate change, a study on the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol for the European Commission, and a project dealing with the WTO compatibility of environmental labels.
Her development-related work includes studies for the European Parliament on development cooperation and research on climate change adaptation, water conflicts and human security in the Mediterranean area as part of the CLICO project.
Christiane Gerstetter is an experienced and passionate moderator and has facilitated a wide variety of events and formats in German and English for the past 20 years. Among others, she focused on planning and moderating events as part of her work on the Scientific Coordination of Research Projects on a Sustainable Economy (NaWiKo).
Christiane Gerstetter completed her post-graduate legal training in Berlin, including work at the EU Department of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Embassy in Yemen. Prior to that, she was a researcher at the University of Bremen in a project on the tensions and interdependencies between international and European trade law and social regulation.
Christiane Gerstetter studied law, philosophy and international relations in Heidelberg and Bremen and passed her law school exam in 2003. She completed her PhD thesis on dispute settlement within the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the University of Bremen.
Besides her work for Ecologic Institute, Christiane is also a legal researcher at ClientEarth.
For many years, she has been involved in NGOs and social movements. Since June 2016, she has been a member of the investment committee of Oekoworld, an ethical asset management company. She lived and worked in the Middle East and Central America where she focused on issues of human rights, non-violent conflict transformation and development.