Areas of expertise: Environment and nature conservation; climate change; poverty alleviation; sustainable development

Atiq Rahman is a prominent environmentalist, scientist, development expert, and visionary thinker in South Asia. He is well-known worldwide for his pioneering role and contribution to environment and nature conservation, climate change, poverty alleviation and sustainable development. The executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, he has transformed the nongovernmental organization into a leading think tank on environment, resource management, and sustainable development issues. With his national and international experience in environment and resource management, Rahman’s expertise remains vital throughout the Asia Pacific region and beyond as he helps to raise awareness of the hazards of global warming.

In 2008, Rahman was honored with the highest UN environmental award, the Champion of the Earth award, in recognition of his outstanding and inspirational leadership and contribution to the protection and sustainable management of the earth’s environment and natural resources. That same year, the government of Bangladesh honored Rahman with the National Environment Award (Poribesh Padak) for innovative environmental research and technology development. Rahman is a long-standing lead author and convening lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As a lead author of the IPCC Fourth Assessment, he was a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, jointly awarded to the IPCC and Al Gore.

Rahman holds a PhD in industrial and applied chemistry from Brunel University in West London. An author and consultant, he has published widely and developed an innovative post-graduate course on sustainable development. He is also the convener of a regional network, Climate Action Network South Asia, and the coordinator of the Global Forum on the Environment and Poverty, an international network mandated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Rahman has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF, UNESCO, many national governments, and several national and international nongovernmental organizations.

Rahman is known for his wide range of national and international experiences in sustainable development, resource management, poverty and equity, disaster management, global governance, and capacity building. Since 1996, he has been a visiting professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He has designed, developed, and taught a multi-disciplinary post-graduate course on sustainable development challenges and North-South Dialogue in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also was a faculty member of the International Programme on the Management of Sustainability for the Sustainability Challenge Foundation in the Netherlands.