Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen is Associate Professor with the Public Administration and Policy Group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. She has a PhD in political science from Linköping University, Sweden and did her postdoc at Yale University. 

For the past 20 years she has researched global public governance of the environment and particularly analysed the varying possibilities to hold states to account for the moral and legal obligations they take on in such governance. Sylvia has published in leading journals in the domains of global energy, climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development governance. She has followed the UNFCCC process for some 15 years including serving on the steering committee of the Research and Independent NGOs (RINGOs) observer constituency to the UNFCCC. She is a Senior Research Fellow with the Earth System Governance project and member of Climate Strategies.  Sylvia is a member of the Task Force on Scenarios and Models for the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and serves on the Board of Trustees of the One World Trust and the governing board of the International Environment Forum.