Bernardas Padegimas

Bernardas Padegimas is the Team Lead of the Environmental Policy and Strategy Team at SEI Headquarters working with the management of large-scale programmes and projects and coordination support of the overall organizational transition towards a more effective and efficient project management practices at SEI.

Currently, Bernardas is leading a large project aiming to support Bosnia and Herzegovina’s governments in developing Environmental Strategy and Action Plan (2022-2032) and align BiH environmental policy with the EU.  Bernardas is responsible for the overall technical content development and processes, stakeholder management, team management, managing budgets and task scheduling, procurement processes and liaising with the donor. In addition to that, he also coordinates project work concerning Strategic Environmental Assessments and supports the team in Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning, Communication Strategy implementation, and mainstreaming of gender equality, social equity, and poverty (GESEP).

Previous roles at SEI include Manager of Mistra Geopolitics Programme Phase 1 and Manager of Stockholm Climate and Security Hub.

Previous to SEI, Bernardas worked at the World Water Council, where he was leading the Climate Department, supporting and advising governments, international and civil society organizations in strengthening the role of water in positive climate change action as part of the UNFCCC framework in order to implement the Paris Agreement successfully. Before that, he was working at the OSPAR Commission, where he supported OSPAR governments with utilization of more coherent implementation of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive in the North-East Atlantic region through the successful delivery of the EU funded project EcApRHA and Intermediate Assessment 2017. Before that, he worked at GRID-Arendal with a number of transboundary water resource management projects in the basins of Lake Victoria, Okavango and Limpopo rivers, Caspian Sea and Druksiai lake, while focusing on environment and security issues, environmental change, natural disaster management and capacity building.

Bernardas holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Impact Assessment and Management from the University of Manchester, UK and a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science from the University of Vilnius, Lithuania.