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Christian is a founder and Managing Partner of Althelia Ecosphere and Althelia Climate Fund GP.
Before the launch of Althelia Ecosphere, Christian’s professional background was in commodity structured finance and trading, serving as Director of Environmental Markets & Forestry within the corporate and investment banking division of BNP Paribas.
The vision brought by Christian to Althelia had roots stretching back to 20023, when he stepped away from energy finance and trading career to pursue his long-standing interests in the environment and conservation field, working for a year in sub-Saharan Africa before pursuing an MSc in Conservation Biology from the Durrell Institute of Conservation & Ecology at the University of Kent (Canterbury). During his time there, he focussed extensively on the nexus between social, economic and environmental challenges. Post-graduate field work was conducted in Botswana on human-wildlife conflict and perceived trade-offs between land use decisions such as small and large scale livestock husbandry and wildlife conservation in a water-challenged Okavango landscape. This collective experience highlighted for him the growing importance of securing economically sustainable sources of finance for conservation, as well as the inescapable interdependence between the wellbeing of wildlife and natural ecosystems on the one hand, and growing human populations on the other. A desire to find long term solutions for these pressing challenges was the initial seed for the concept of Althelia Ecosphere, set up through his partnership with Sylvain Goupille forged during their time together at BNP Paribas.
In addition to his work with Althelia, Christian has served as an advisor to the Earth Innovation Institute and is a UK trustee for Kenyan NGO Amara Conservation. Christian is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, has contributed as a guest lecturer at Imperial College London and London Business School, and served as a delegate to the Rio Dialogues as part of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio in 2012. Christian now serves on the alumni advisory board to DICE (Canterbury).
