Harini Nagendra

Harini Nagendra is a Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India, where she anchors a programme of research on climate change and urban sustainability. Over the past 20 years, she has been at the leading edge of research examining urban sustainability in India, one of the world’s fastest urbanizing countries. For her interdisciplinary work that combines research and practice, she has received a number of awards including the 2009 Cozzarelli Prize from the US National Academy of Sciences, the 2013 Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar award, and the 2017 Clarivate Web of Science award. She has published widely in leading journals, and also written two best-selling non-fiction books on Indian cities - “Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future” (Oxford University Press, 2016) and “Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities” (Penguin, 2019). She is a well-known public speaker, writer and columnist in India. Professor Nagendra engages with international science and policy through her current and past participation on the Future Earth Steering Committees of Global Land Project and Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society.