Matthias Reiche

Matthias Reiche (Associate) holds a degree in Forestry and studied Forest Sciences at the University of Göttingen. At AREPO, he advises on issues related to natural resource management, nature-based climate action, and national and international forest policy.

His professional career combines many years of experience in German forest and environmental administration with extensive expertise in international forest policy. After holding several senior positions in the North Rhine-Westphalian forest and environmental administration, he moved first to the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMLEH) and subsequently to the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

On behalf of the German Federal Government, Matthias Reiche contributed to key international forest policy processes. These included negotiations on the United Nations Strategic Plan for Forests, as well as the development of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, and the FLEGT process (Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade).

As a long-standing forest policy adviser at the BMZ, he was responsible for the ministry’s positioning on international forest policy issues. At the same time, he supported and coordinated forest policy projects and programmes implemented by GIZ and KfW. A particular focus of his work was on natural resource management in Central Africa and Southeast Asia.

Matthias Reiche gained further international experience in bilateral development cooperation. He was responsible for the German Government’s economic cooperation with Vietnam and worked in Indonesia on conflict management in the field of natural resource conservation. In addition, he spent several years at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome. There, as part of the Natural Resources Division, he focused in particular on the forest-agriculture nexus and Climate-Smart Agriculture.

For more than ten years, Matthias Reiche has also worked as an evaluator, including for GIZ, FAO, and other international organisations. At AREPO, he has contributed to several evaluations of IKI programme proposals and supported the evaluation of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture’s (BLE) international forestry research programme.