Technical Panel

In total, there are 4 scopes:

  1. Economics and politics of global change
  2. Socio-economics and development
  3. Monitoring of ecosystem services
  4. Fund-raising and finance for environmental assets

For each of these scopes, we have at least two international experts. Currently, there are vacancies in scopes 2 and 3. If you feel qualified to fill these positions, please do not hesitate to submit your application to info to our secretariat.

Scope 1: Economics and politics of global change

Dr. Michael Dutschke (GCS Executive Chair)

Michael was one of the two founders of the Global Conservation Standard in 2010 and is still its Executive Chair . He looks back on 25+ years of experience with the design of climate change mitigation mechanisms in land use. He has been a policy advisor on the design and implementation of flexible compliance mechanisms in national and international climate policy since 1997, advising European and diverse developing country governments and numerous intergovernmental institutions, including CATIE, CIFOR, FAO, GEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNFCCC, The World Bank, environmental NGOs, and private sector enterprises.

Before founding his company biocarbon economics in 2007, he worked at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics, for GFA Envest GmbH, and at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Since 2016, he has been working in the field of communal climate policy and awareness-raising, focussing on sustainable transport and mobility. Currently, he is a Senior Officer at the Ministry of Agriculture of Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

He co-authored the first version of the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard launched in May 2005 and was coordinating author of the Global Conservation Standard (www.globalconservationstandard.org) in 2009 and 2010. He was Lead Author of the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2004 and 2005, he was a member of the CDM Executive Board’s Afforestation & Reforestation Working Group. Since early 2010, he has been chairing the Global Conservation Standard.

Michael’s focus is on policy development, capacity and institution building and project implementation for climate and rural development, including sustainable mobility and transport.

Dr. Kazsara Khatun

Kaysara received her Ph.D. in the Geographical Sciences from Bristol University. She has over 20 years of professional experience in the private, NGO and academic sectors working in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Central/South America. Her work is international, multi-scaled, and collaborative in nature. She has expertise in several socioeconomic and political themes related to the management and preservation of terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Themes include climate change adaptation and mitigation, regional livelihoods, and nature-based solutions,  reflecting a keen interest in policy formation and implementation. She utilizes complex and interdisciplinary approaches from both the natural and social sciences and has a strong commitment to empirical research.

Kaysara has been involved in projects (or in an advisory capacity) with CATIE (Costa Rica), CIFOR (Indonesia), European Commission (Belgium), Environment Agency (UK), IIED (UK), IISc (India), GCS (Germany), Government of Ecuador, Government of Myanmar, MCDI (Tanzania), Charles Darwin Foundation (Galapagos, Ecuador), Not1more.org (UK), Winrock International (USA), Nature Conservation Research Centre (Ghana), Natural History Museum etc.

Scope 2: Socio-economics and development

Damien Kuhn

Graduated in Agronomy, water and forest engineer from ENGREF (ParisTech University), Damien is specialised in economics and ethical leadership. He is convinced that a better world where human beings and nature live together is possible. Keys to achieve this vision lie in entrepreneurship, collective action and innovative financial mechanism such as payments for environmental services and public-private partnerships.

Former COO of Kinomé, a social business (“Fellow Ashoka”) which objective is to make forests a solution for human and economic development, he developed partnerships worldwide and managed a portfolio of community-based forestry projects. He led from its creation to its deployment in 33 countries. 

Damien is now the Vice President of Forestry Partnerships & Development at Terraformation, working with forestry teams around the world to help them grow through training, equipment, tech and finance. 
Having a strong background in innovative financing of land and ecosystem restoration projects, he advised numerous governments (Ivory Coast, Senegal, Guinea, Congo, etc), international organizations (The World Band, United Nations agencies etc.) and companies (Danone, Barry Callebaut etc.) on their forestry, climate and sustainability policies. 

Scope 3: Monitoring of ecosystem services

Dr. Peter Schlesinger

Peter’s work has been in the area of land cover and land-use change supporting climate mitigation programs in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and East Africa. He brought GIS and remote sensing technologies to forest activists/scientists in the Amazon and Russia, supported by US philanthropy and NASA with fieldwork in Central Siberia & the Russian Far East, At the forefront of climate change mitigation programs, in development, support, and training. he has been assisting national and jurisdictional REDD+ programs.

His experience includes the application of both climate change adaptation and mitigation methodologies and standards for carbon credit projects and programs, as well as validation and verification.

He has moved beyond classical remote sensing classification methods to study and explore forest transitions and rural agriculture using optical and radar sensors. 

Earlier in his  career as a research associate in an ecological science NGO, he trained scientists to use GIS technology. 

As a US Peace Corps Volunteer agriculture extension agent in Mauritania, he taught Halpulaar women and children how small-scale vegetable cropping and afforestation can improve health, and opportunity, and diminish dependence on food aid.

He authored and co-authored scientific articles, reports, and manuals.

Scope 4: Fund-raising and finance for environmental assets

Dr. Gianluca Gondolini

Gianluca is an experienced agro-environmentalist with 25+ years working experience, managing international projects in Africa, Europe and Latin America. His areas of expertise include sustainable forest management, sustainable agriculture, environmental conservation, climate change adaptation and mitigation, monitoring, reporting and evaluation, and humanitarian assistance. He has been instrumental in fostering climate-smart agriculture worldwide and he has been involved in a number of REDD+ initiatives in agriculture. He is working with food value chains of tropical crops, promoting the adoption of social and environmental practices including mitigation and adaptation, payment of environmental services, tropical landscape management, food security and rural livelihoods. He is lead auditor on forest management and forest and agriculture carbon projects (validation/verification). Also, Gianluca is knowledgeable on policy and practices changes, humanitarian advocacy, strategic and participatory planning and context analysis. He works with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as senior consultant on climate-smart agriculture and to promote the sustainable production and trade of tropical commodities. Before joining the FAO, Gianluca worked six years with the Rainforest Alliance, an environmental non-profit organization, as Africa Regional Manager for the Sustainable Forestry programme and successively as Regional Manager for the Latin America Sustainable Agriculture programme. In that role, he developed the programme for climate-smart production in association with the voluntary certification standards such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Sustainable Agriculture Network, the Verified Carbon Standard and GHG protocol. Prior to this, Gianluca worked for 13 years with a number of International NGOs such as Oxfam GB in sustainable agriculture and rural development programs in Africa and Latin America. Gianluca has an educational background in tropical agro-forestry and food processing and a Master of Sciences in Environmental Management from the Imperial College and SOAS, University of London. 

Dr. Ederson Zanetti (GCS Vice-Chair)

Bachelor as Forest Engineer by Federal University of Paraná (2000), Msc in silviculture (sustainable forestry and land use management) by Albert-Ludwigs Universitat Freiburg (2003) and Phd Candidate on Sustainable Forest Management at UFPr (2011). Specialized on public and private forest policies, was responsible (2006-2009) for the Global Climate Change and Environmental Services research area at the National Center for Forestry Research – CNPF/Embrapa. Teacher of sustainable forest management practices and policies at the Brazilian Amazon and in the US, while a scholar-in-residence within a Fulbright program. Already acted as professional forester at 13 different countries (Brazil, Canada, China, Russia, USA, Germany, Switzerland, Suriname, Bolivia, Ghana, Paraguay, Hong Kong and Italy), working at themes including tropical silviculture and forest plantations with native and introduced species, Reduced Impact Logging Sustainable Forest Management, Forest Certification (both FSC and CERFLOR/PEFC), global climate change and project development for Payments for Ecosystem Services (Carbon – REDD, REDD+ and HWP, Water, Biodiversity and others), biomass and residues for clean energy supply. Worked with energetic forest project, with the project of alternative species for bioenergy production and as an advisor for forest sector investors, nationally and internationally.

Currently working with IT R&D for timber ERP systems and ecosystem services evaluation. Ministers short training courses (up to 40 hours), on Environmental Goods and Services and Payments for Ecosystem Services, Carbon Certification (including REDD, REDD+ and HWP), Water Certification (including water banks) and Biodiversity Certification (including Biodiversity Banks). External reviewer of CDM Forest Methodologies (UNFCCC CDM AR ROE), active on supporting companies and landowners for developing ecosystem services projects, recently involved on public and private strategies for insertion of ecosystem services within production and services provision chains in order to enhance competitiveness at Green Economy (Natural Capital into GDP), towards inventorying of positive and negative impacts to ecosystems.