Dr Ashok Khosla is one of the world’s leading experts on the environment and sustainable development. He chairs the Boards of the thirty-five-year-old Development Alternatives Group. Headquartered in New Delhi, the DA Group was among the first civil society organisations set up in 1983 to address the issues of sustainable development as a whole. It also pioneered the concept of social enterprise, creating business-like approaches for eradicating poverty and conserving the natural resource base.  

Concurrently, he was Co-Chair of the UN’s International Resource Panel from 2008 to 2016, and a member of the China Council for International Environment and Development from 2011 to 2016. He was President of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2008-2012, and President of the Club of Rome in 2005-2012. Before his present position, Ashok served as Director of Infoterra, the first global environmental information system, in UNEP, Nairobi (1976-1982), and as the founding Director of the Office of Environmental Planning and Coordination in the Government of India, New Delhi (1971-1976).  

He has been a Board Member of numerous global environmental organisations, including the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Stockholm Environment Institute, and served as an adviser to, among others, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme and the Indian government. Dr. Khosla was made an OBE by the UK Government, and awarded the 2002 Sasakawa Environment Prize and WWF’s Duke of Edinburgh Medal in 2011.  

He has a BA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University (1962) and a PhD in Experimental Physics from Harvard University (1970).

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