Sellheim Environmental was founded by Dr Nikolas Sellheim in 2021. The main focus of our 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.
“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.
About Dr Nikolas Sellheim
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. He is also a Fellow of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative (PRPI) as well as on the International Advisory Board of the Sixth International Symposium on Arctic Research (ISAR-6), organised by the Japan Consortium for Arctic Environmental Research.
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 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) and the Convention on Biological Diversity. He has furthermore attended and presented at academic conferences worldwide. Nikolas is the author of three monographs and co-Editor of three edited volumes. He has (co-) authored 35 peer-reviewed publications.
For a full list publications, please click here.
sellheimenvironmental.org 