Dr. Christian Baumgartner Secretary General of Naturefriends International

Dr. Christian Baumgartner studied landscape ecology and is Secretary General of Naturefriends International (www.nf-int.org) since 2005. 1995 he founded respect - Institute for Integrative Tourism and development (www.respect.at). Besides his work as lecturer in Vienna, Krems (A) and China he is member of the Tourism Sustainability Group within the EU Commission, DG enterprise and member in several national and international tourism related advisory boards.

Christian Baumgartner is specialized in development, implementation and monitoring of sustainable tourism and sustainable regional development and guided several concrete tourism development projects in Europe and south-east Asia. Actually he is very engaged in the sustainable tourism development of the middle and lower Danube, including the Danube Delta. He is board member of the Danube Competence Centre in Belgrade / Serbia.

Furthermore Christian Baumgartner is part of the advisory boards of the Austrian and the European eco-labels for tourism accommodation and the one for tour offers, PAN park verifier (www.panparks.org), member of the team that implements the advisory- and support program klima:aktiv mobil for leisure and tourism and in the board of the Forum Nachhaltiges Österreich, the official civil society advisory board of the Austrian Sustainability Strategy (www.forum-nachhaltigkeit.at).