Jayanta Bandyopadhyay

Jayanta Bandyopadhyay is a Visiting Distinguished Fellow. He is a researcher and author on science and the natural environment. He received his Ph. D. in engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1975. He then joined the Centre for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA, as a visiting post-doctoral fellow. He joined the Faculty of IIM Bangalore in 1978 and started to work on public interest knowledge. In 1979 he got deeply involved in understanding the reasons behind the forest rights movement in the Uttarakhand Himalaya, widely known as theChipko Andolan.

In 1988 he left IIM Bangalore and joined the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu where he continued to work on environment and development in the Himalaya. In 1993 he joined the International Academy of Environment in Geneva as Director of Research. In 1997 he was invited by the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta to join the Centre for Development and Environment Policy. He retired as Professor from IIM Calcutta in 2012.

He has been a Coordinating Lead Author for the global document Millennium Ecosystems Assessment. He has been adviser to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) New Delhi, Water Diplomacy Program at Tufts University in USA. He has been a Fellow of the India China Institute at the New School in New York (2010-2013). His research has promoted several important public interest litigation in India. Prof. Bandyopadhyay has authored fourteen critically acclaimed books and monographs, in addition to 140 research papers and popular articles.