Jan STEFFEN

Jan Steffen studied marine science in Kiel and received his PhD in 1998 at the Centre for Tropical Marine Ecology in Bremen, Germany.

Following field research on coral reef resource management in Indonesia, he worked for the Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation KEHATI and became the co-founder of the Indonesian Coral Reef Foundation.

He worked for 10 years for UNESCO’s Regional Offices in Indonesia and Samoa, aiming to source and provide funding and technical support for locally managed marine areas, biosphere reserves and natural world heritage sites.

As IUCN’s regional marine program coordinator for the Pacific, based at IUCN’s Oceania Office in Fiji, Jan Steffen continued to support governments in their efforts to establish MPA networks, strengthen locally managed marine areas and to gather information on the environmental impact of deep sea mining.

For the last 12 years Jan Steffen has been working for GIZ, coordinating regional projects and programmes in South-East Asia and the Pacific Island Countries and focusing on ocean governance, marine spatial planning and marine conservation, currently with emphasis on the 6 Coral Triangle Countries, namely the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.