Speakers (Day 1)

Sunita Narain

Sunita Narain is the director general of the Centre for Science and Environment, the director of the Society for Environmental Communications, and publisher of the fortnightly magazine Down to Earth. She was among the top 100 public intellectuals included by the Foreign Policy Journal in 2005, 2008 and 2009. A renowned writer and environmentalist, her work focuses on the relationship between environment and development and on creating public awareness of the need for sustainable development. Since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, hers has been a strong voice calling for justice for the South in international climate negotiations.

Ms Narain was awarded the Indian government’s highest honorary price, the Padma Shri, by the Indian government in 2005 and that year also received the World Water Prize by the Stockholm Environment Institute for her work on rainwater harvesting as a way to cope with India’s worsening water shortage and for its policy influence in building paradigms for community-based water management. In 2005, she also chaired the Tiger Task Force to evolve an action plan for conservation in the country after the loss of tigers in Sariska. She is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Climate Change, the National Security Advisory Board, and  the National Ganga River Basin Authority, set up to implement strategies for cleaning the river.

Chandra Bhushan

Chandra Bhushan is the Deputy Director General of Centre for Science and Environment where he heads the Industry and Environment programme, and the Pollution Monitoring Laboratory, Food Safety and Toxins, Renewable Energy, Climate Change Policy and Advocacy and Training teams. He is also Consulting Editor for the fortnightly Down To Earth.

He has a diverse and distinguished track record in research, writing, and policy advocacy. His five groundbreaking books on the lifecycle analysis of industries are used by Indian industry and policymakers as handbooks for improving environmental policy and practices.  He advises several institutions as part of advocacy for global environmental issues. He is also a member the working groups for reforming pollution regulations and regulatory institutions under the Twelfth Five-year Plan of the Government of India.

M. Rajeevan

Dr M. Rajeevan is currently working as adviser at the Ministry of Earth Sciences. He is responsible for two major programmes of the ministry, viz., Atmospheric Processes and Modelling and Climate Change Research including the Monsoon Mission. Dr Rajeevan specialized in research on monsoon prediction and climate change. He worked as a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation to prepare the Annual Statement on the Status of the Climate in 2004 and 2005. He is an adviser to the Commission for Climatology, a technological commission of the World Meteorological Organization and a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences.

V.D. Roy and N.N. Rai

V.D. Roy is the Director, Flood Forecasting and Warning, Central Water Commission (CWC), the main agency that watches our rivers and forewarns the nation of floods. He has been mainly dealing with the flood management aspect of water resources.

He graduated in civil engineering from Bhagalpur University (Bihar) in 1989 and joined CWC in May 1996 as Assistant Director, working in the Flood Management Planning Directorate. As Director, he joined Flood Forecasting Monitoring Directorate of CWC where he currently looks after flood forecasting activities in CWC.

Nitya Nand Rai is the director, Hydrology (North East) Directorate, Central Water Commission. He graduated in Civil Engineering from Kamala Nehru Institute of Technology, Sultanpur (UP) and did his post- graduation in Hydrology from IIT Roorkee. He joined CWC in 1995 as Assistant Director and has since then worked in the field of hydrological and hydrodynamic modelling. He has carried out the hydrological and hydrodynamic modelling for more than 70 river valley projects for water availability studies, design flood estimation, dam break studies, glacial lake outburst flood studies, back water studies, reservoir sedimentation profile studies, back water studies, surge analysis, reservoir and channel routing studies. He has also written and presented 14 technical papers in the field of hydro-dynamic and hydrological modelling for various national and international conferences.

Kamal Lochan Mishra

Ambuj Sagar

Ambuj Sagar is Professor of Policy Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. His interests broadly lie in science and technology policy, environmental policy, and development policy, with particular focus on the interactions between technology and society. His current research focuses on energy innovation and climate policy, but he also studies various facets of technology innovation, environmental politics and processes, and engineering education and research. His recent papers deal with energy innovation policy and strategies (in areas such as bio-fuels, clean cook-stoves, coal power, and automobiles and institutional mechanisms such as climate innovation centres), climate change policy, and capacity development for the environment. He currently is advising and interacting with various agencies of the Indian government and several multilateral and bilateral organizations. He has also worked with a range of private- and public-sector organisations in the US (including as a staff researcher for a major study on energy R&D for the White House). He is currently a member of the Indian government's Expert Committee on Low-Carbon Strategies for Inclusive Growth, the US-India Track-II Dialogue on Climate Change, as well as other advisory groups in the Indian government.

Arjuna Srinidhi

Arjuna Srinidhi is a programme manager with the Centre for Science. He has worked in South and South East Asia in the fields of climate change, natural resource management and sustainable development.  Arjuna spent four years, prior to joining CSE, working on climate change adaptation projects in rural Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.  He has also worked for as an energy consultant with a reputed multi-national firm in Singapore.

Arjuna holds a master’s degree in Environmental Science and engineering through a joint programme between Stanford University and Nanyang Technological University, and a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from NITK Surathkal, India.

Dr Ch. Srinivasa Rao

Dr Ch. Srinivasa Rao is the Director of Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), a national research institute with a mandate to carry out basic and applied research in rain-fed farming. CRIDA is the national nodal point for the National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA), which is being implemented at large number of research institutes of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), State Agricultural Universities and 100 Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs). Dr Rao has also worked at Indian Institute of Soil Science, Bhopal, for seven years; the Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur, for three years; and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics.

His research interests include farmer participatory soil health management, soil carbon sequestration, watershed management, contingency crop planning, climate change and rain-fed agriculture. He is the recipient of several awards and is a reviewer for the Australian Journal Soil Research, Canadian Journal of Soil Science, Applied Clay Research, Achieves of Agronomy, Geoderma, Soil Use and Management, Soil Science Society of America Journal, Field Crop Research, Agriculture Ecosystem and Environment, European J Agronomy, Land Degradation and Development as well as several Indian journals. He has also published 195 research paper (including 62 in international journals) and 22 books.

Dr Rao has been selected for the Recognition Award of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) for the Biennium 2013-14 for significant contributions in Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences to be presented in the 12th Agricultural Science Congress during February 2015.

Crispino Lobo

Crispino Lobo is managing trustee, Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR), Pune. He has co-founded four non-profit institutions – WOTR, microfinance and entrepreneurship development centre Sampada Trust (ST), Sanjeevani Institute of Empowerment and Development (SIED) and Sampada Entrepreneurship and Livelihood Foundation (SELF).

His areas of expertise include natural resource management, watershed development, integrated water resources management, sustainable agriculture, climate change adaptation, and institutional and policy development. He was program coordinator of the Indo-German Watershed Development Program (IGWDP) in Maharashtra. He initiated, together with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in 1999, the establishment of the Watershed Development Fund by the Government of India, which resulted in the implementation of watershed development activities across the country. He recently (in 2014) also initiated, with NABARD, the establishment of the National Adaptation Fund (NAF) by the Government of India. These institutions collectively have impacted the lives of over 1.8 million people in seven states in India, trained over 350,000 people from 27 states and 62 countries and supported development works in over 3,500 villages.

Manu Gupta

Manu Gupta is the co-founder and director of SEEDS, a non-profit working in disaster reduction and response in Asia. For over 15 years, he has worked towards strengthening the resilience of communities vulnerable to natural disasters and effects of climate change, primarily through shelter reconstruction and adopting locally based approaches. His work covers a wide spectrum of communities in South Asia, including direct work in various parts of India and Afghanistan.

He holds a doctorate in Community-based Disaster Management from Kyoto University and a bachelor's in Physical Planning from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. 

Ajaya Dixit

Ajaya Dixit is executive director of the Institute for Social and Environment Transition in Kathmandu, Nepal; editor of Water Nepal, a journal addressing Himalayan water and development; and chairman of the board of directors of the Nepali NGO, Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH). 

He has worked extensively as a consultant on water resources and environment for bilateral and multilateral organizations in Nepal. Mr Dixit served as a member of the National Preparatory Committee for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio Conference (1992) and represented the private sector in His Majesty's Government of Nepal Water and Energy Commission from 1994 to 1997. He has directed regional research that examined climate changes impacts on flood, drought and food system adaptation in South Asia. He coordinated and edited the Nepal’s first national disaster report, published in 2010. This approach attempts to integrate climate change adaptation with disaster risk reduction.

Ajaya Dixit’s current research explores the approaches to develop strategies for resilience building against climate change vulnerabilities at a sub-national scale. He has written extensively on water resources, trans-boundary cooperation, flood management, environment and developmental issues and is the author of a leading hydraulics textbook, Basic Water Science.