We analyse issues at the frontier of addressing climate change, managing the energy transition, and limiting environmental threats in India and globally
We inform policymakers, stakeholders, and the public about key policy and governance levers, and their implications
We accelerate the transition to an environmentally and socially sustainable future by enabling strategic action for systemic change
Our approach
Identify frontier issues of long-term strategic importance
Establish foundational evidence
Shape policy ecosystem for transformative change
Collaborate with state and non-state actors to advance policy
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Meet our team
Aditya Valiathan Pillai
Visiting Fellow,
Adaptation and Resilience
Aman Srivastava
Fellow and Coordinator, Climate Policy
Ashwini K Swain
Fellow, Energy Transitions
Bhargav Krishna
Convenor, SFC
Coordinator, Environmental Governance and Policy
Easwaran J Narassimhan
Fellow and Coordinator, Climate Policy
Navroz K Dubash
Visiting Senior Fellow and Chair of Advisory Council
Shibani Ghosh
Visiting Fellow, Environmental Governance and Policy
Annanya Mahajan
Senior Research Associate, Environmental Governance and Policy
Arunesh Karkun
Senior Research Associate, Environmental Governance and Policy
Catherine Ayallore
Senior Research Associate, Energy Transitions
Chayanika Sarmah
Manager, Administration
Ishan Kukreti
Programme Lead, Adaptation and Resilience
Ishita Srivastava
Research Associate, Environmental Governance and Policy
Kashmeera Patel
Research Associate, Climate Policy
Nazneen
Senior Research Associate,
Environmental Governance and Policy
Nikita Shukla
Research Associate, Climate Policy
Sarada Prasanna Das
Associate Fellow, Energy Transitions
Simran Agarwal
Senior Research Associate, Climate Policy
Sonali Verma
Lead, Communications
Tamanna Dalal
Research Associate, Adaptation and Resilience
Board of directors
Gopal Sankaranarayanan
Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India
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Gopal Sankaranarayanan is a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India. He specialises in Constitutional law. He has also served as the secretary of the Lodha Committee, appointed by the Supreme Court in 2015 to bring about reforms in cricket administration in India. He has provided assistance to the Supreme Court as an amicus curiae in numerous cases and has also served as special counsel for the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate. He is the co-founder and an executive member of Care For Air, an independent volunteer organisation raising awareness about clean air in the National Capital Region.
Moutushi Sengupta
Chief of Capital Mobilisation, Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN)
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Moutushi Sengupta is the Chief of Capital Mobilisation at the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN). She has over 25 years of leadership experience in the South Asia region and a track record of working with top funding institutions like DFID, MacArthur Foundation, and Oxfam India. She brings extensive expertise in developing and executing institutional and programme strategies, building partnerships, and establishing frameworks for learning and evaluation.
Advisory council
Navroz K Dubash
Chair of Advisory Council and Visiting Senior Fellow
Professor, Princeton University
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Navroz K Dubash is Visiting Senior Fellow and Chair of the Advisory Council at the Sustainable Futures Collaborative (SFC), and Professor of Public and International Affairs and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University. Before this, he was a Professor at the Centre for Policy Research, an Associate Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute. Navroz has been actively engaged in global and national debates on climate change, air quality, energy and water as a researcher, policy advisor and activist for over 25 years. He helped establish the global Climate Action Network as its first international coordinator from 1990 to 1992. He has advised Indian government policymaking over the last decade as a member of advisory committees on climate change, energy, and air and water policy. He also coordinated a team that served as lead anchor institution for India’s Long-Term Low Emissions Development Strategy. Navroz was a Coordinating Lead Author for the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a Lead Author and Synthesis Report Author for the Fifth Assessment Report, serves on the steering committee for the UNEP Emissions Gap Report, and has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Group of the UN Climate Action Summit. He currently serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Climate Policy Journal. He is also a member of the editorial boards of Global Environmental Politics, Energy Research in Social Science, Environmental Policy and Governance, and the Journal of Environment and Development. He has written widely on climate change, energy and the environment in Indian and global media, and contributes a regular ‘Expert Voices’ column to Science. In 2015, he was conferred the T N Khoshoo Memorial Award for his work on Indian climate change policy and the international discourse on global climate governance, and in 2018, his co-authored paper on interpreting model scenarios was awarded the Emerging Nations Award by Environmental Research Letters.
Aparna Uppaluri
Senior Philanthropy Advisor
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Aparna Uppaluri is a global executive and a senior philanthropy advisor. She serves on the global advisory body of Equal Measures 2030 and is Special Advisor to the Grow for Climate Fund. Until recently, she was the Chief Operating Officer, leading philanthropic programs at the Tata Trusts with operational and strategic planning oversight over all thematic areas including livelihoods, health, nutrition, WaSH as well as Arts & Culture. In her previous role, she served as Senior Global Program Officer at the Ford Foundation and acting Program Director of the Foundation’s India, Nepal, Sri Lanka office. She is an interdisciplinary professional in the fields of philanthropy, women’s rights, public health, education, arts, and culture. Her work has focused on addressing issues of inequality and building gender justice across sectors. Her global work has included nurturing philanthropic collaboratives, intergovernmental partnerships, and strategic field building across thematic areas. She has managed large collaborative funds with global teams across the world. She trained as an epidemiologist and worked in public health and health systems research for over 14 years in Canada and India where she worked at the University Health Network (Toronto) and McMaster University. She led the Science and Society Program at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore, India from 2014 to 2017. She was also Founder-Director of the Antara Collective, Bangalore – a performing arts collective in Bangalore which she ran for 10 years. Through this engagement, she worked closely with artist and artisan communities across the country and worked to promote conservation, adaptation and livelihoods. She was educated in Canada at Queen’s University (in Life Sciences) and the University of Toronto (in Community Health and Epidemiology).
Arati Kumar-Rao
Writer, photographer and National Geographic Explorer
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Working across South Asia, independent photographer, writer, and National Geographic Explorer Arati Kumar-Rao documents environmental degradation that has reached cataclysmic levels. She chronicles how drastically depleting groundwater, habitat destruction, and land acquisition for industry devastates biodiversity and shrinks common lands, displacing millions and pushing species towards extinction. Arati was named in BBC’s list of 100 Influential & Inspiring Women of 2023 and her first book is ‘Marginlands: India’s Landscapes on the Brink’, published by PanMacmillan (Picador) in 2023, won the Publishing Next Book Of The Year Award, 2024. Arati’s work has also appeared in the National Geographic Magazine, Emergence Magazine, BBC World Service, and in leading Indian newspapers, among other outlets. When not on assignment, she splits her time between a biodiversity hotspot — the Western Ghats — and Bangalore in India, where she plays a happy mother to three rescued cats.
Harald Winkler
Professor, University of Cape Town
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Harald Winkler is a Professor in PRISM, School of Economics at the University of Cape Town (UCT). His research interests are at the intersection of development, climate, social justice and economics. Specific focus areas for future research include equity and inequality between and within countries; just (energy) transitions and just resilience; implications of the global stock-take; and low emission development strategies and nationally determined contributions. Academic publications can be accessed on Scopus. Harald is a member of the South African and African Academies of Science, and a member of the SA delegation to the negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. He has recently served as joint Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Climate Policy, a coordinating lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and one of two co-facilitators of the technical dialogue of the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement. Details: https://commerce.uct.ac.za/prism/people/researchers
Mukund Rajan
Chairperson, ECube Investment Advisors
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Dr Mukund Rajan is the Chairperson of ECube Investment Advisors, a platform that catalyses ESG changes in corporate India. Dr Rajan serves as Mentor of the Environment and Climate Change Committee of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and is a member of the ESG Advisory Committee constituted by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). He also serves as Vice President of the Council of Management of the Forum of Free Enterprise and is a member of the KPMG India ESG Council. He completed a Doctorate in International Relations on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University.
Nyrika Holkar
Executive Director,
Godrej and Boyce
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Nyrika Holkar is Executive Director of Godrej & Boyce (‘G&B’), and drives key decisions related to talent management and corporate governance. Additionally, she leads the company’s digital and global legal strategies. As the Brand Custodian, she works closely with the Sustainability, Design, Marketing, Communications and Service functions across G&B. She is on the Board of Godrej Infotech, and drives key decisions relating to IT and technology platforms and is working to improve the digital ecosystem for G&B businesses. As Chairperson of the G&B CSR Committee and Sustainability Council, Nyrika is actively involved in G&B’s community development efforts, skilling and the protection of wetlands in India. She graduated with a BA in Philosophy and Economics from Colorado College, USA and obtained LL.B and LL.M degrees from University College London, UK. She is a qualified Solicitor in the United Kingdom and is a member of the Bar Association of India. Nyrika is on the Boards of the Centre for the Advancement of Philanthropy and the United World Colleges Committee (UWC) India. She is a Fellow of the Ananta Aspen Centre’s Fellowship and a member of Aspen Global Leadership Network.
Shantanu Dixit
Member, Prayas Energy Group
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Shantanu Dixit is one of the founding members of Prayas (Energy Group) and was the Coordinator of the Group from 2012 to 2021. He has worked on a range of power sector-related issues from techno-economic, legal, and broader public interest perspectives. His research covers resource planning, power purchase agreements, agricultural electricity consumption, tariff and financial aspects of distribution companies, electricity markets, restructuring, and regulation. He contributes to the development of the Indian energy sector and the protection of consumer interests through research, extensive policy, and regulatory engagement in many states and at the National level. He has been part of many official committees formed by Central and state governments and regulatory commissions. He is an Electrical Engineer and has an MBA from Pune University (PUMBA).
Sharachchandra Lele
Distinguished Fellow, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)
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Dr Sharachchandra Lele is a Distinguished Fellow in Environmental Policy & Governance at the Centre for Environment & Development, ATREE. He is also Adjunct Professor at Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, Pune. His research interests include conceptual issues in sustainable development and sustainability and the analysis of institutional, economic, ecological and technological issues in forest, energy and water resource management. He attempts to incorporate strong interdisciplinarity in his research and teaching, which straddles ecology, economics and political science. Dr Lele’s interests lie in understanding the interactions between the nature of environmental problems and the structures of governance used to address them and exploring the questions of law, science and bureaucratic accountability in the functioning of these structures. He holds a PhD in Energy & Resources from the University of California, Berkeley.
Shloka Nath
CEO, India Climate Collaborative
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Shloka Nath is the CEO of the India Climate Collaborative, a non-profit focused on mobilising philanthropic capital to accelerate climate action in India. The ICC connects funders to high-impact solutions that restore our planet and build a healthy and equitable future for all, while continuing to help India meet its development goals. Prior to this, she led the Sustainability and Policy & Advocacy portfolios at the Tata Trusts, one of India’s leading philanthropic foundations. She also co-founded and was the Managing Partner of Sankhya Women Impact Funds, a gender lens fund with a focus on sustainability. She started her career as a journalist, with a decade of experience at the BBC in London, as a news anchor with NDTV and a Principal Correspondent with Forbes in Mumbai. She is currently a Trustee at the CSMVS, formerly known as the Prince of Wales Museum of India, the Vice President of the Bombay Natural History Society, a board member of IIT Madras’ Energy Consortium, and Climate Catalyst, Alliance magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, and a member of the Advisory Board to IUCN’s Nature-based Recovery initiative, among numerous other positions. Shloka received an MPP from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a BSc in Government from The London School of Economics and Political Science. She is also the author of the book ‘Hidden India: Journey to Where the Wild Things Are’ (April 2018), a compendium of photographs and writing about Indian wildlife and landscapes.
Soumya Swaminathan
Chairperson, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation
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Soumya Swaminathan is the Chairperson of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF). She was most recently the Chief Scientist and before that, Deputy Director-General for Programmes at the World Health Organisation (WHO). A paediatrician from India and a globally recognised researcher on tuberculosis and HIV, she brings with her 40 years of experience in clinical care and research and has worked throughout her career to translate research into impactful programmes. She is a Fellow of the US National Academy of Medicine, the Academy of Medical Sciences of the UK and a Fellow of all the science academies in India. She has received several honorary doctorates, including from Karolinska Institute, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. She serves on several national and global advisory bodies and committees. She is an Adjunct Professor at Karolinska Institute, Sweden and Tufts University, Boston.
Our partners
Sustainable Futures Collaborative (SFC) is registered as SFC Research Foundation under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013.