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 most recently as Director of Environmental Markets & Forestry within the corporate and investment banking division of BNP Paribas.
Mid-career, Christian took time out to pursue 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 experience on the ground, along with additional community-level voluntary work conducted in South Africa and Kenya over a one and half year period, 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.
