Nilanjan Ghosh

Dr. Nilanjan Ghosh is a Director at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), India. In that capacity, he heads two centres at the Foundation, namely, the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy (CNED), and ORF’s Kolkata Centre. He is a Member, Global Future Council on the Future of Nature and Security, World Economic Forum for 2023; Co-Chair, Task Force 3 on International Financial Architecture of Think20 Brazil Presidency (engagement group of G20 Brazil Presidency); President of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE) for 2022-24; and Member, Research Advisory Committee, WWF India.

He served as the Director of the Think20 India Secretariat, the thinktank engagement group of G20 under the Indian Presidency. Dr Ghosh served as Member, Expert Committee constituted by the Supreme Court of India for formulating scientific and policy guidelines with respect to cutting trees for developmental projects in March 2021 and devised the Net Present Value criteria for forest land diversion.

His previous positions (in reverse chronology) entail Senior Fellow at ORF, and Senior Vice President & Chief Economist at Multi Commodity Exchange of India Limited, Mumbai, India, and faculty member, TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi, India. He advised WWF India to set up their Ecological Economics practice from 2015 to 2020.

Dr. Ghosh has taught at various places including the Linnaeus University, Sweden, as Visiting Fellow in 2008 and 2015, the Indian Insitute of Management Calcutta, and the School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University. He has visited Uppsala University (Sweden), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), and Stanford University (USA), at various points in time.

A natural resource economist by training with more than two decades of experience, Dr. Ghosh obtained his PhD from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta. One of the leading ecological economists and development analysts of South Asia, he has authored/edited 14 books and monographs, and written 95+ peer-reviewed papers and more than 185 popular articles/commentaries. He has conducted a large number of advisory assignments for organizations like IUCN, USAID, FORMAS-The Swedish Research Council, UNCTAD-India, WWF-UK, IWMI-WLE, World Bank, and many others.