About

Christian is an adaptation and water resources expert with more than 15 years of experience in conducting research and providing consultancy on climate and water risks and the water-energy-food-environment nexus. He is especially interested in the value of water, and the link between climate variability, risk, resilience and decision making.

Background

From 2016 until 2020, Christian was a Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute He worked with Declan Conway on the UMFULA project which focused on decision making under uncertainty in Central and Southern Africa and the El Niño project, studying the impact of the 2015-2016 El Niño on small and medium enterprises in three capital cities in the same region. Christian also managed the Kuwait Programme Research Grant project on ‘Understanding the Changing Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Kuwait and the Gulf Region’. While at Grantham he developed a novel approach to assess the financial feasibility of water conservation in agriculture.

Christian holds an engineering degree (MSc equivalent) in hydrology from Wageningen University in the Netherlands and a combined PhD degree in Environmental Economics and Earth System Science from the same university. His doctoral thesis focuses on flexibility in land and water use for coping with rainfall variability in Asia and Africa. His research has been published in journals such as OneEarth, Nature Sustainability, Earth’s Future and ERL.

Christian is now living in Sydney, Australia, where he founded Uncharted Waters, a research start-up conducting hydro-economic analysis on regional to global water and food security challenges combining detailed hydrology-crop modelling, open source data and machine learning. He is also a visiting scientist at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands.

Research interests

  • Socio-ecological resilience
  • Water, food and energy securities
  • Sustainable financing mechanisms
  • Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
  • Environment, Social and corporate governance (ESG)
  • Environmental justice
  • Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL)

Research

Research - 2022

Research - 2021

The authors of this paper examined past and future climate variability with the aim of understanding the main source of climate risk to development plans across the water, energy, and food sectors in southern East Africa, a relatively neglected region in terms of climate science and targeted for extensive infrastructure development. Read more

Research - 2020

Research - 2019

Research - 2018

The El Niño event in 2015/2016 was one of the strongest since at least 1950. Through surveys and interviews with... Read more

Research - 2016

Policy

Policy - 2019

Climate change will lead to increases in the occurrence of chronic heat exposure over longer durations and there is an urgent need to focus on managing the risks this poses, as well as the immediate risks from shorter-lived heat events. This policy brief looks at the problem with a focus on developing and emerging economies, and provides recommendations for action by government, utilities, property developers and investors, development support and finance organisations. Read more

Policy - 2017

Events

Events - 2018

News

News - 2021

News - 2020

News - 2019

News - 2016

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