Jochen Flasbarth

State Secretary, Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, Germany

Jochen Flasbarth is the German State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. He has held this role since 2013. Before his current appointment, he was the President of the Federal Environment Agency from 2009 to 2013, and the Director-General for Nature Conservation and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources at the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety from 2003 to 2009. He was also the full-time President of the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) from 1994 to 2003. Mr. Flasbarth had a long career of voluntary involvement in the Ministry, dating back to his youth activism in 1979. Some of his roles have included serving as the federal chairman and then President of Naturschutzjugend (German Youth Association for the Protection of Nature), a member of the Deutscher Naturschutzring (German League for Nature and Environment) executive board, and a member of the Federal Government’s Council for Sustainable Development. He studied Economics, Political Science, and Philosophy in Münster and Bonn, and graduated with a degree in Economics in 1989.