Aarti Gupta is Professor of Global Environmental Governance with the Environmental Policy Group, Department of Social Sciences, Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on global environmental and climate governance, including questions of transparency and accountability, and anticipatory governance of novel technologies (biotechnology and climate engineering). She has published extensively on these topics, including the co-edited volume Transparency in Global Environmental Governance: Critical Perspectives (2014, MIT Press).
At Wageningen University’s Environmental Policy Group, Aarti coordinates the ‘Governing Climate Futures’ research theme. She is principal investigator of ‘The Transformative Potential of Climate Transparency’ (TRANSGOV) project, and co-leads the REIMAGINE consortium project on anticipatory climate governance in vulnerable regions of the global South. She is also co-founder of the university-wide interdisciplinary REDD@WUR network, consisting of over 80 researchers working on climate-forest interactions.
Internationally, she is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Earth System Governance (ESG) research alliance, the largest network of social scientists working on sustainability, and Coordinating Lead Author of the 2018 ESG Science Plan. She is Series Co-editor of the Cambridge Elements in Earth System Governance series (CUP), and Associate Editor of the journal Global Environmental Politics (MIT Press). She has also been member of the Academic Working Group on Climate Engineering Governance, and Vice-Chair of the EU COST Action on Transformations in Global Environmental Governance.
Aarti holds a PhD from Yale University, with a background in political science, international relations, and science and technology studies. Prior to moving to the Netherlands, she held research fellowships with the Center for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Columbia University, and the Global Environmental Assessment Project at Harvard University. Aarti has combined this research trajectory with working outside of academia as well, including with the United Nations Development Programme in New York, Oxfam-Novib in the Hague and Transparency International in Berlin.
