Dr Pankaj Kumar is working as senior research manager in the field of biodiversity and ecosystem services at Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) at Hayama Headquarter in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. In addition, he is also working as head of IPBES-TSU on Scenarios and Models since March 2024. Prior to this, I worked as JSPS/UNU-IAS postdoctoral fellow in United Nations University, Institute for Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), Tokyo; for more than three years. His research work primarily focuses on Socio-hydrology, Water security, Hydrological simulation, Scenario analysis, Water-health-food-energy nexus. To address his research objectives, he uses integrated approach involving both qualitative and quantitative analysis. One of the important works that he is recently engaged in is ‘Water quality assessments and scenario modeling for clean water environment in both South and South-East Asian regions’ a transdisciplinary work; which aim to enhance community resilience to address growing water demands under climate change and rapid urbanization, with ultimate intention to give a solution for sustainable water resource management at policy level. Along with that, he is also engaged in teaching focuses on assessing the impact of global climate change on water resources and weighing on adaptation and mitigation options to offer scientific solutions both in Japan and India. Right after completing his doctoral research, he worked as assistant professor in department of Environmental Science and Technology at Institute of Science and Technology for Advance Studies and Research, Gujarat, India. He has earned his doctoral degree in July, 2012 from University of Tsukuba, Japan.
In parallel, he has work experience as Chapter Scientist for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He was associated with the IPCC’s Working Group-II report that focuses on “Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability” which was released in December 2014. Also, now he is working as lead author for Chapter-3 “Future interactions across the nexus” for the nexus assessment of the interlinkages among biodiversity, water, food and health in the context of climate change under Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) secretariat. Moreover, he is also working as lead author for Chapter-19 “Disaggregated solutions pathway scenarios” for the Global Environment Outlook 7 (GEO 7) assessment report from United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
His research understanding got places in authored book (n=1), edited book (n=4), journal special issue (n=3), peer reviewed journal articles (n=247), book chapter (n=42), UN-books/monographs (n=3), global assessment reports (n=3), and conference proceedings (n=41).