Ashok Khosla is one of the world’s foremost experts on the environment and sustainable development. He is a former Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, and also listed in UN Environment’s prestigious Global 500 Roll of Honour. He is Founder and President of Development Alternatives, an NGO that promotes commercially viable, environmentally friendly technologies, and chairs the Centre for our Common Future in Geneva, Switzerland. A former Co-chair of the IRP with Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, he took part in discussions to develop the 2010 report Priority products and materials: assessing the environmental impacts of consumption and production.
Dr Khosla has served on the boards of numerous global environmental organizations, including the Club of Rome, the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the World Conservation Union. He was Chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Commission on Environmental Planning. He has advised the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, the World Resources Institute, the International Council of Scientific Unions, and India’s Ministries of the Environment, Science and Technology and Rural Development.
As well as being Founding Director of India’s Office of Environmental Planning and Coordination, Dr Khosla has authored more than 300 professional papers, articles and reports, including 30 official UNEP documents. He earned a PhD in experimental physics at Harvard University, USA. In 2002, he received the ‘Nobel Prize’ of the environment world, the Sasakawa Prize.
