24 Facts About Pavan Sukhdev

Pavan Sukhdev is an Indian environmental economist whose field of studies include green economy and international finance.

Pavan Sukhdev was the Special Adviser and Head of UNEP's Green Economy Initiative, a major UN project suite to demonstrate that greening of economies is not a burden on growth but rather a new engine for growing wealth, increasing decent employment, and reducing persistent poverty.

Pavan Sukhdev is the Founder-CEO of GIST Impact, an impact data and analytics provider which helps companies and investors discover, measure, value, and manage their impacts on nature and society.

Pavan Sukhdev was selected as the "Personality of the Year" by, Environmental Finance in the year 2010.

Pavan Sukhdev was a visiting fellow at Yale University from 2011 to 2014, where he was awarded the McCluskey Fellowship.

Pavan Sukhdev has chaired the World Economic Forum's "Global Agenda Council" on Ecosystems and Biodiversity and was a speaker at Davos in 2010 and 2011.

Pavan Sukhdev currently serves on the boards of Conservation International, Global Reporting Initiative, TEEB for Business Coalition, Gulbenkian Oceans Initiative, and the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Pavan Sukhdev was the president of the World Wide Fund for Nature from 2017 to 2021.

Pavan Sukhdev has studied in private international school College du Leman.

Pavan Sukhdev graduated with a degree in physics from University College, Oxford.

An international banker, Pavan Sukhdev was deeply involved in the evolution of India's currency, interest rate and derivatives markets in the mid-nineties, working with India's regulators and market participants.

Pavan Sukhdev has been a member of several Reserve Bank of India committees for the development of India's financial markets, including the Sodhani Committee on Foreign Exchange Markets.

In 1997 Pavan Sukhdev co-founded FIMMDA, India's professional association for fixed income markets, money markets and derivatives.

Pavan Sukhdev championed the introduction of Overnight indexed swap into India, which is currently India's most liquid traded interest rate swap instrument.

Pavan Sukhdev worked with Deutsche Bank for 14 years and then took a sabbatical to lead two major environmental projects, TEEB and UNEP's Green Economy Initiative.

Alongside his financial markets career, Pavan Sukhdev pursues long-standing interests in environmental economics and nature conservation through his work with different environmental organizations and projects.

Pavan Sukhdev is the Founder-Director of the Green Accounting for Indian States Project, an initiative of the Green Indian States Trust to set up an economic valuation and national accounting framework to measure sustainability at the State level for India, including the hitherto ignored but significant economic externalities from sectors such as forestry, agriculture, fresh water, health, and education.

Pavan Sukhdev is the Co-founder and Chairperson for the first six years of Conservation Action Trust, an Indian NGO dedicated to achieving ecological sustainability for India by originating and proving model conservation projects, by educating and lobbying decision-makers and the public about the importance of forests for our water and food security, and when all else fails, through public interest litigation.

Pavan Sukhdev was appointed by Germany's Environment Minister Gabriel and EU Environment Commissioner Dimas as the Study Leader for their G8+5 study on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity.

Pavan Sukhdev continues to support this initiative as a UNEP Goodwill Ambassador.

Pavan Sukhdev speaks at the Forum's annual meetings at Davos.

Pavan Sukhdev launched a global campaign called "Corporation 2020" at the Rio+20 conference in 2012.

Pavan Sukhdev succeeded Yolanda Kakabadse in this position and was followed by Adil Najam as WWF President, after the brief interim presidency of Neville Isdell.

Pavan Sukhdev's articles include two opinion pieces for Nature, several blogs for The Guardian, and an opinion piece for The Economist Debate.