Prof. Amstel holds Doctoral Degree in Physical Geography and Planning from University of Amsterdam and PhD on Methane’s Role in Climate Change and Options for Control from Wageningen University. He is Professor at Wageningen University and Research since 1996. He is also a Fellow of the Graduate School of Wageningen Institute for Environment and Climate Research. He contributed to the development of the Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment at the Institute of Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands. He has a longstanding educational experience in integrated assessment and planning, and contributed to a course development at Wageningen University. He was thesis supervisor for more than a hundred graduate students. He is particularly interested in the global food situation. He studied the environment and the risk of a runaway greenhouse effect by methane from melting of the permafrost in the Arctic and the Alpine areas. Van Amstel was coordinating lead author to the IPCC 2006 Greenhouse Gas Inventory Guidelines on Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use and as such contributed the Nobel Peace Prize 2007 for Al Gore and the IPCC.
He published books in 2018 and 2020 with Springer about Bangladesh and India with respect to Climate Change, Impacts, Mitigation and Adaptation.
Since 2014 he is an advisor to the Arctic Council of Ministers and a member of the Nord Forsk Academic Advisory Board on Arctic Integrated Environmental Research. A book with Springer is published on Arctic research, dealing with Innovative Pathways for Action to improve the livelihoods of local and indigenous people in the Arctic and mountainous areas including their cattle and reindeer (Douglas Nord, editor, 2020).
Prof. Amstel is advising Madan Bhandari University of Science and Technology Development Board on development of Master’s by research and PhD programs in Organic Agriculture.