Dr. (Mrs.) Madhu Verma
India
Introduction: Dr. Madhu Verma is the Chief Economist at the World Resources Institute (WRI) at Delhi, the India office of one of the leading environmental research organisation of the World.
She specialises in the Economic Valuation of Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services, Green Accounting, Conservation & Environmental Finance & Incentive-Based Mechanisms. Before joining WRI in 2019, she worked as Professor of Environment and Developmental Economics at the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), a MoEFCC organisation for 25 years and prior to which at the Bhopal University as Senior Faculty & at the Department of Agriculture as an Economist, Govt pf MP. She mainly does action and policy research and has 37 years of professional experience o working with many national and international institutes, Ministries (MoEFCC, MoSPI, MoF, MoRD, MOHR), Forestry & Finance Commissions of India, United Nations bodies (UNEP, UNDP, UNSDA), World Bank, ADB, and several funding other agencies. She has been interacting and advising several Corporate firms, industries, and federations on ‘Economics of Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services’ and the creation of economic instruments.
Education & Fellowships: A Biological Sciences graduate and M.A., M. Phil in Economics with specialisation in Regional Planning & Economic Growth and Ph.D. in Industrial Economics from Bhopal University; she has done her post Doctoral research at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and University of California, Berkeley, USA with the EMCaB program Fellowship supported by the World Bank(2001). She is a Fulbright Fellow (2012); Leadership in Environment & Development (LEAD) Fellow (2007), Indian Society of Ecological Economics (INSEE) Fellow (2019) and currently on the Board of the International Society for Ecological Economics and Scientific & Technical Advisory Committees of Environment and Statistics Ministries.
Contribution to International and National Projects/Reports: She has been an expert/team member/contributing author/ lead author in several international reports like the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report (2004-06); The Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity (TEEB) Reports(2009-12); and the Global Biodiversity Assessment Report of IPBES (2013-2019); she has more than 40 publications and more than 45 project reports to her credit and led many influential projects for several Ministries, Commissions and State Governments like (i) Revision of NPV & Cost Benefit Analysis of Forest Diversion in India, (ii) Economic Valuation of Tiger Reserves in India (iii) Economic Valuation & Green Accounting of Forests of Himachal, Rajsathan, Uttrakhand and Jharkhand States and North Eastern States; contributed to the introduction of allocation of increased budget for Forestry Sector for 13th & Formula for 14th Finance Commission and for Forestry, Climate Change and Environment sectors for the 15th Finance Commissions etc. to name a few. She has developed several Guidance Manuals like (i) Developing a Toolkit for Valuing Regulating Services for UNEP; (ii) Valuation of Tiger & Snow Leopard landscapes for Global Tiger Forum and World Bank. Her work is widely quoted across the globe (3137 Google Scholar citations). At WRI, she is leading the Flagship study on on ‘Approaches for Doubling Farmers Income in India – Agroecological System based Considerations’ using TEEB for AgriFood Framework wherein I am looking at the entire value chain following the business biodiversity model and evolving work on the ‘Economics of Nature Based Solutions’’ and ‘Oceans Ecosystems’ for Biodiversity conservation through cost-effective measures. She has been part of the consultation process on business and biodiversity of TEEB & initiative of Indian government and business federations and have worked such processes for forestry and agro-ecological systems.
