Nike Sommerwerk is a Senior Expert at Fresh Thoughts with a focus on Water and Biodiversity. She is a German PhD Freshwater Ecologist with more than 20 years of – also international – research experience on the functioning, protection and quality classification of inland water ecosystems, human-ecosystem interactions and biodiversity monitoring.
Nike also works at the Berlin Natural History Museum where she leads the Research Cluster “NaturBerlin”. Together with her interdisciplinary team, she analyses the multidimensional change of urban and peri-urban biodiversity and the resulting consequences. Nike also analyses biodiversity and sustainability policy (regional to global) and does research on the effectiveness of science-policy-economy-society interfaces. She designs and implements well-attended public debates on biodiversity and sustainability policy and serves as a panellist.
Prior to joining Fresh Thoughts and the Museum, Nike was the scientific coordinator of the global water project “Development of International Water Quality Guidelines for Ecosystems – IWQGES” for UN Environment at the Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) of the United Nations University (UNU), Bonn, Germany. The 300-page guideline was adopted by the UN Environment Assembly, UNEA-3 in 2017 and published in 2018.
In the past years, Nike has also worked on other topics such as the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive (mainly biological quality elements), River Basin Management of the Danube, Patterns and determinants of European freshwater biodiversity, hydromorphological river restoration measures, Updating river monitoring schemes, the Nagoya Protocol, Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS), Digital Sequence Information (DSI) and also Development cooperation, Stakeholder & volunteer engagement, Strategic network development, etc.
Nike is fluent in English, Hungarian and German and has worked in Serbia, Hungary and Austria with in-country expertise in Bulgaria, Croatia and Kenia.
associated projects
BOOST-INConceptual design and content support for the BMUV Agricultural Congresses 2024-2026
MARCLAIMED
Mission ocean, seas and waters implementation support platform
Water for the Green Deal
