Sunita Narain

Sunita Narain is a world-renowned Indian environmentalist. She is also a famous editor and author. She was born on 23rd August 1961 in New Delhi to the freedom fighter Raj Narain and Usha Narain. She pursued graduation from the University of Delhi in Delhi and also has an Honorary Doctorate in Science from Cranfield University in the United Kingdom and the University of Calcutta in West Bengal, a Doctorate in Geosciences and Environment from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and a Doctorate in Law from the University of Alberta in Canada. One of her three younger sisters, Urvashi Narain is one of the lead economists working at the World Bank in Washington DC.

Sunita Narain works as the Directorate General of the Centre for Science and Environment and as treasurer of the Society for Environmental Communications treasurer. As an editor, she works for the fortnightly magazine Down to Earth, which focuses on the politics surrounding the environment. As a writer, some of her most well-known works are Towards Green Villages in 1989, Global Warming in an Unequal World in 1990, Towards a Green World in 1992, Green Politics, Dying Wisdom, The State of India's Environment, The Citizens' Fifth Report, Making Water Everybody's Business, and Conflicts of Interest. Sunita Narain made an appearance in Before the Flood, a documentary released in 2016 about climate change.

Narain was a member of the National Ganga River Basin Authority set up in 2009 by Manmohan Singh Manmohan Singh is a Punjabi film director and a re >> Read More... , the Prime Minister at the time and also a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Climate Change. She was chairman of the Tiger Task Force in 2005. In 2006, she was brought to the limelight for her involvement in the report establishing the use of pesticides by Coke and Pepsi. Sunita Narain was awarded the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Media person in 2004 and in 2005, Sunita was the recipient of the prestigious civilian Padma Shri Award by the Union Government of India.

The Centre for Science and Environment, led by Sunita, received the Stockholm Water Prize in 2005. In 2009, she also won the Raja-Lakshmi Award from the Raja-Lakshmi Foundation in Chennai. She was named one of the world's hundred most influential people by Time Magazine in 2016. In 2017, she received the Order of the Polar Star award given by the Swedish Government. In 2020, she was given the Edinburgh Medal.