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Kerstin Stendhal has been a UNEP staff member in Geneva for the last seven years, first as Deputy Executive Secretary for the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions and most recently serving as Deputy Secretary for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She started her UNEP career as a Junior Professional Officer in the Convention on Biological Diversity Secretariat in Montreal 1996-1998.

Kerstin is a political scientist with a major in international environmental law from Abo Akademi University in Finland. She started working in the Finnish Ministry of Environment the week after the Rio Conference in 1992 and has over the years led international processes on international environmental governance and synergies in the chemicals and waste cluster as well as in the biodiversity area, including during the Rio+20 conference. She has also worked at various stages for the Nordic Council of Ministers, on environmental economics as well as for the Nordic Council for plant and animal genetic resources, with much focus on access and benefit-sharing issues. She has three sons who attend universities in the UK and Finland.

Kerstin assumed her new role with Ecosystems Division on 1 March 2020. As Branch Coordinator she is also responsible for UNEP’s engagement with the Regional Seas Programme and International Ecosystems Management Partnership (UNEP–IEMP).