Zeenat Niazi
Development Alternatives Group
"Zeenat Niazi, Sr. vice-president and chief knowledge officer of the Development Alternatives Group, where she guides public policy and action research focused on local and national strategies for sustainable development, climate change, and natural resource management. Trained as an architect with a specialization in rural housing and habitat in the global South, her core competence is in building resilience in human settlements through Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) strategies, especially green and inclusive circular economy models. She is currently researching reciprocal relationships of learning systems and nature-based solutions for urban resilience and is registered as a Ph.D. scholar for the same at the TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi India. She teaches a module on Sustainability and the Built Environment at the Anant National University, Ahmedabad, India, and is also a guest lecturer at th School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi and the Nirma University, Ahmedabad. She is currently a member of the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Committee (MAC) of the Sustainable Buildings and Construction Programme of UN’s One Planet Network, member of the Steering Committee of the Green Economy Coalition (GEC) in India and of the Strategic Steering Committee of UNEP PAGE Programme in India. She is part of the Task Force on Green and Inclusive Circular Economy for Angul District in the State of Orissa, India, chair of the Committee on Rural Housing and member - CED 51- committee on prefabricated materials of the Bureau of Indian Standards. In the past, she has been a founding member and Co-Chair of the Board of the Climate Action Network South Asia, member of the Task force of the Rural Housing, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India and a member of the Sub-Committee on Construction and Demolition Waste Management in Urban Areas of the NITI Aayog, Government of India."