Nicolas Bertrand was appointed Chief of Staff of the United Nations Environment Programme in June 2023, having served as Senior Adviser to the Executive Director since 2019.
From 2015-2019 he was Chief of Staff at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), where he managed the Director General’s Office and provided advisory support. In this capacity, he was a member of the Risk Management Committee, the Editorial Board and served as Focal Point, International Gender Champions. In conjunction with this role, he served in 2017-18 as Acting Head, Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation. At UNEP, from 2009-2015, he worked on green economy, international payments for ecosystem services, corporate ecosystem valuation and natural capital accounting. In 2012-2013, he served as acting coordinator of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) project. Previously, he managed the business engagement portfolio at the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2006-2008) and, prior to this, worked on economics and business at IUCN, where he contributed to the creation of the first programme on business and biodiversity.
A national of France, Switzerland and the UK, he obtained a BSc (Econ) and MSc (Econ) from University College London and an MPhil from the Paris-based Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Environmental Engineering.
