Kerstin Stendahl

Deputy Secretary

IPCC

Kerstin Stendahl is the Deputy Secretary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She has always worked on issues relating to international environmental law, governance and policy. Throughout her career, at national, regional and international levels she has devoted particular attention to gender issues, by highlighting and developing training opportunities and award schemes as well as emphasizing gender aspects of recruitment policies and practices and in day-to-day work. Kerstin started at the Ministry of the Environment in Finland in the summer of 1992, right after the first Rio conference on sustainable development. She has worked on forest biodiversity issues in the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal and on environmental economics as well as genetic resources for food and agriculture for the Nordic Council of Ministers. She also made a foray into the field of environmental science/policy issues as a Scientific Advisor with the Academy of Finland. In 1996 she was elected one of three co-chairs for the intergovernmental process on synergies among the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions as part of her dossier on the strengthening of international environmental governance. In 2012 she took up office as Deputy Executive Secretary of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions. At the beginning of 2017 she moved to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.