Nilanjan Ghosh

Dr Nilanjan Ghosh heads Development Studies at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and is the operational head of ORF’s Kolkata Centre. His career spans over two decades, including roles as Senior Fellow at ORF, Senior Vice President & Chief Economist at the Multi Commodity Exchange of India Limited (MCX), and faculty member at TERI School of Advanced Studies. He also played a pivotal role in advising WWF India in setting up their Ecological Economics practice.

He has held positions of Member, Global Future Council on the Future of Nature and Security at the World Economic Forum (2023–24); Co-Chair of Task Force 3 on International Financial Architecture for Think20 under Brazil’s G20 Presidency (2024); Member of the Board of Country Representatives, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE, 2024–25); and Member, Research Advisory Committee, WWF India (2023–25).

Nilanjan was the President of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE, 2022–24) and served as the Director of the Think20 India Secretariat during India’s G20 Presidency in 2023. He was also a Member of the Expert Committee constituted by the Supreme Court of India in 2021 to formulate the Net Present Value criteria for forest land diversion.

He has taught at Linnaeus University (Sweden), Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, and Jadavpur University, and has visited Uppsala University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Stanford University. A Ph.D. in Economics from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Nilanjan has authored/edited 15 books and monographs, published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, and written widely in popular media. He has advised several organisations including IUCN, FORMAS-Swedish Research Council, UNCTAD-India, WWF-UK, and IWMI-WLE.