Vice-Chair

Executive Director Policy, Germanwatch

Christoph Bals is the Policy Director of the environmental and development organization Germanwatch. In 1991 he was a founding member of this NGO and has been working for Germanwatch since 1992. Christoph Bals is engaged since then in the politics of climate and development – in close contact with the most vulnerable as well as decision makers from politics and economy. He is chairman of the board of trustees of the “Stiftung Zukunftsfähigkeit” (Foundation for Sustainability) and deputy chairman of the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII) which is pushing for insurance for the people of developing countries against climate risks. He is also a founding member of the Renewables Grid Initiative (RGI) and has been a member of the board until 2018.
Bals is also member of the Sustainable Finance Committee of the Federal Government, of the political coordination of the international Climate Action Network and in the speaker board of Klima-Allianz Deutschland. Bals has taken part as an active observer in all the UN climate summits to date.

He has co-initiated many political initiatives in the area of climate and development as well as climate and economics – the European Business Council for Sustainable Energy, e-mission 55 and atmosfair, for example. Bals also shaped a number of target-oriented discourses with constructive players among businesses and unions. He furthermore developed suggestions on how religious communities can play a constructional role for a necessary transformation in a pluralistic society.
Bals studied theology (dipl.), economics and philosophy in Munich, Belfast, Erfurt and Bamberg.