Joyeeta Gupta (born in Delhi, India) is a social scientist focusing on environment and development. She is Distinguished Professor of Climate Justice, Sustainability and Global Justice (University of Amsterdam), and is also Professor of Environment and Development in the Global South and holds a water professorship at IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education.
Recent achievements She is the co-chair (2024-2025) of the UN Secretary General Appointed Group of Ten High-level Representatives of Civil Society, Private Sector and Scientific Community to Promote Science, Technology and Innovation for the SDGs (10-Member-Group) – a component of the UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism. She is a Commissioner in the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, organized by OECD, financed by the Netherlands Government (2022-24). She was Co-chair of the first phase of the Earth Commission (2019-2024), convened by Future Earth and the Global Commons Alliance during which time 22 publications were achieved with a top publication in Nature and in Lancet Planetary Health. Along with Johan Rockström, she did a plenary presentation of the Earth Commission results at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2023. She also was co-chair of UNEP's Global Environment Outlook-6 assessing knowledge on the environment and the Sustainable Development Goals. The report and its Summary for Policy Makers were presented to the 4th United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) for endorsement by UN Member States at that assembly. The report received the Prose Prize. She was awarded the 2023 Spinoza Prize – the highest distinction in Dutch science and also called the 'Dutch Nobel Prize', the 2022 Piers Sellers prize for world leading contribution to solution-focused climate research, Priestley International Centre for Climate, the 2019 Prose Award for the GEO, the 2015 Atmospheric Science Librarians International Choice Award for her Cambridge University Press Book: History of Global Climate Governance, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as an IPCC author, and the 2005 2nd Zayed prize as a Millenium Ecosystem Assessment author. In 2024 she did a concert on Climate Injustice in Four Seasons at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Eindhoven. Her work has been made into a three dimensional art piece in the pop climate museum which the public can interact with. She is also featured in the 'Prize Cupboard' in the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave (museum of science) in Leiden.
Early life and education Gupta was born in Delhi and moved with her family as her father was regularly transferred to a different city. She studied at St. Mary Convent (Allahabad), Loreto Convent School (Delhi) and at the Air Force Central School (Delhi) where she was the second female school captain. She did her Bachelor's in Economics Honours at Delhi University (Lady Shree Ram College) followed by Law at Gujarat University (Sir. L.A. Shah Law College). She won an Inlaks Foundation fellowship to study at Harvard Law School at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA. Gupta completed her doctoral research in 1997 at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she studied climate change in the North South context focusing on the perspective of developing countries. Her doctoral research was the first to explore the negotiation challenges facing rich and poor countries in relation to climate change.
Research and career Gupta is a scholar in institutional aspects of global environmental change and was co-author of the science plan produced by the International Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Programme of the International Human Dimensions Programme. She focuses on Earth System Governance and co-authored the first science and implementation plan of the Earth System Governance Project in 2009. She has an h-index of 71 and more than 21.000 citations on Google Scholar. In 1993, she joined the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam where she rose to become Professor on Climate Policy and Law. She has worked since 1989 on climate change and its impacts on developing countries and increasingly on rich poor conflict. She has argued that the long-term objective of the climate convention needs to be based on avoiding harm to people, that the carbon budget needs to be equitably shared, and that emitters need to both reduce their emissions as well as compensate others who suffer as a consequence of the emissions. She has also been working at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education and has been publishing on key water related issues rising to become professor in water law and policy as well. In 2017, she also participated in the design and signature of the Rome Declaration on the Human Right to Water initiated by Pope Francis and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican City. In 2013, she joined the University of Amsterdam as Professor of Environment and Development in the Global South. She became head of the Governance and Inclusive Development Research Group and led a theoretical focus on inclusive development. She co-founded the University's Centre for Sustainable Development Studies. She has acquired more than 60 projects including the prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grant in 2021 which focuses on the challenges of leaving fossil fuels underground. In 2023 she won the Spinoza award (1.5 million euros), the highest scientific award in the Netherlands and is using the money to work on an open science justice lab to develop a draft global constitution- in 2024 she launched the Global Constitution Project and sought participants from across the world.
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