Dr. Karen Olsen (PhD) is Senior Advisor and Carbon Market Coordinator at the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre. She has 20+ years of research and work experience with climate and sustainable development in developing countries. Currently she is team lead for UNEP CCC’s carbon market activities ‘Supporting Preparedness for Article 6 Cooperation (SPAR6C), ‘Integrated Assessment for Article 6’ (IAA6), ‘Article 6 Pipeline’ and ‘Sustainable Development Initiative (SDI) on Implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement under the UNFCCC’. She serves as subjective matter expert for the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Market (ICVCM) and has observed the UNFCCC negotiations on Article 6 for many years contributing to technical and policy dialogues. She was technical lead for the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) Transformational Change Methodology and co-lead for the ICAT Sustainable Development Methodology, currently supporting use of the Transformational Change Toolkit in four countries.
She holds a PhD in International Development Studies (2007) from Roskilde University, Denmark, a Master’s degree in Political Science and a Bachelors’ degree in Geography from University of Copenhagen.
