A new key biodiversity platform for cross sectoral collaboration
For its inaugural launch, World Biodiversity Summit will help define what world leaders and the private sector in biodiversity and climate action need to do in the medium and long term to achieve sustainable development and hinder further biodiversity loss, focusing on partnerships and investment mechanisms as levers of progress. World Biodiversity Summit is a platform for responding to accelerating biodiversity loss, by using the Paris Agreement as a framework to learn from, promoting relevant solutions, innovations, and leadership networks, strengthening nature restoration and conservation. Nature-based solutions will be highlighted, from specificecosystems to global possibilities.
Dirk Aßmann
Director General, Sectoral Department, Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
Current Position: Director General, Sectoral Department at Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.
Mr Aßmann studied mechanical engineering at Duisburg, Stuttgart and Belém (Brazil)
specializing in energy technologies and system engineering. He graduated in 1995. He received a doctorate in social sciences and economics from Osnabrück University in 2001.
Professional experience: Mr Aßmann held positions as research assistant at the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW, Stuttgart) 1991-93, at an ethanol plant in Sao Paulo and at a development project in Belém (Brazil) 1993-94, and at the Institute of Energy Economics and Rational Energy Use (IER), University of Stuttgart 1994-95. He was project manager at Stadtwerke München (Munich City Utilities) 1995-96 and subsequently employed in the energy department of Wuppertal Institute for Climate Environment and Energy 1996-2003
where he eventually held the position of deputy division manager. At the same time, he founded a consultancy and was member of the sustainability council at the German Trade Union Confederation. He has been with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH since 2003. He was hired as Energy Specialist in the planning and development division. From 2007 until 2012 he was Portfolio Manager, Programme Manager and Focus Coordinator for the "Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency programme” in Brazil. Subsequently he was employed as Senior Specialist Planner at the Water, Energy, Transport division for 1.5 years and Division Manager South America for 3.5 years until July 2017.
Dirk Aßmann received the Schuler Foundation’s innovation award in 2006. He has published more than 100 articles on energy related issues and held various teaching assignments at universities.