Sellheim Environmental was founded by Dr Nikolas Sellheim in 2021. The main focus of our consultancy work rests on the interplay between conservation and livelihoods and we aim to achieve a strong link between resources and resource users. As highlighted by the Convention on Biological Diversity and myriads of scholarly sources, effective protection of the natural environment without the help of indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) is not possible. We therefore aim to support IPLCs, their livelihoods and, ultimately, flora and fauna to ensure a sustainable development for us all. Our Operating Rules and Bylaws can be accessed here.
“Involving IPLCs is perceived as important not only because it makes conservation more equitable, but also because it has the potential to produce better biodiversity outcomes or more effective conservation”
Dawson et al., 2021 (here)
Dr Nikolas Sellheim, Director
Nikolas Sellheim is an independent consultant working on international conservation law issues, livelihoods and marine mammals. Prior to his consulting work, he was a researcher at the Helsinki Institute for Sustainability Science (HELSUS), where he worked on a post-doc project entitled “Livelihoods, cultures and local communities in international conservation law”, funded by the Finnish Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation. He furthermore worked in the research project All Youth Want To Rule Their World (ALL-YOUTH) at the University of Helsinki throughout 2020.
Nikolas holds a doctorate in law (2016) from the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland, in which he focused on the European Union’s ban on trade in seal products and the way Newfoundland sealers have been represented in the drafting process. The research included 3-month anthropological fieldwork in the sealing industry in Newfoundland. His dissertation Legislating the Blind Spot. The EU Seal Regime and the Newfoundland Seal Hunt is freely available here.
Nikolas is co-Editor-in-Chief of Polar Record, the journal of the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, UK, published by Cambridge University Press and a Fellow of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative (PRPI).
From 2017-2018, Nikolas conducted his first postdoc Polar Cooperation Research Centre (PCRC) at Kobe University, Japan, where he conducted research on the Arctic legal order as well as on small-type coastal whaling, including fieldwork in the dolphin drive in Taiji. The stay was funded my the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) under the title “Development of international law on the conservation of marine mammals.”
Nikolas has served as an observer to meetings of the International Whaling Commission, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO) and other intergovernmental biodiversity and conservation meetings. He has furthermore attended and presented at academic conferences worldwide. Nikolas is the author of three monographs and co-Editor of four edited volumes. He has (co-)authored more than 40 peer-reviewed publications.
For a full list publications, please click here.
Dr Natalia Loukacheva, Fellow
Natalia is is a Senior Research Scientist at the ARCTICentre, University of Northern Iowa (USA). Prior to that she was an Associate Prof. and Canada Research Chair in ‘Aboriginal Governance and Law’ at the University of Northern British Columbia, a Researcher at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, the first Nansen Prof. of Arctic Studies in Iceland, an Adjunct Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School (Canada), a fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, and an Associate with the Stefansson Arctic Institute. She was the founding Director of the Graduate Polar Law Program and taught Polar law at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. She authored The Arctic Promise: Legal and Political Autonomy of Greenland and Nunavut, and edited and led the first ever Polar Law Textbook and many other publications.
Gerald Zojer, Fellow
After having a career as mechanical engineer and in the project management of an international oil and gas exploration company, Gerald studied International Development at the University of Vienna, where he graduated as (Magister) in 2014. Currently he is doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Lapland.
Due to his background in engineering, Gerald has been driven throughout his academic career by his interest in the interrelations between technological and societal developments. Following constructivist approaches of sciences and technology studies he has a particular interest in how technological progress affects socioeconomic developments. He has worked in the fields of energy politics, environmental politics, and political ecology. Recently he has mainly focused on the interplay between digitalisation and power politics. In the last few years he has worked as researcher in the Arctic Center (University of Lapland) and as assistant professor at UiT the Arctic University of Norway where he was teaching Societal Cybersecurity. Gerald is also entrepreneur and founder of KaamosCreations, which offers services to promote digitalisation for privacy oriented individuals and small organisations with a focus on utilising ethically sound software.
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