Sharing our Earth: Focus on Climate

Joyeeta Gupta is Distinguished Professor of Climate Justice, Sustainability and Global Constitutionalism, and full professor of Environment and Development in the Global South at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of the University of Amsterdam and IHE Delft Institute for Water Education.
She has led the group on Governance and Inclusive Development and the Centre for Sustainable Development Studies. Previously, she was professor on Climate Change Policy and Law at the Institute for Environmental Studies at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

In 2023 she won the highest academic recognition in the Netherlands – the Spinoza prize.

As Distinguished Professor, she promotes environmental justice studies in the faculty and has an Open Science Justice Lab to work on a draft Global Constitution. As founding co-convenor of the University’s Centre for Sustainable Development Studies, she helps coordinate related activities.
She has participated in and/or acquired 60 projects since 1993 from funding agencies including the European Commission and the National Science Foundation in the Netherlands. She has also participated in the design and signature of The Rome Declaration of 2017 on the Human Right to Water, initiated by the Pope and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican City.

She was lead author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1998-2014) which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore and of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment which won the Zayed Second Prize.

Gupta was appointed by the U.N. Secretary General as Co-Chair (2024-25) of the Ten High-level Representatives of Civil Society, Private Sector and Scientific Community to Promote Science, Technology and Innovation for the SDGs (10-Member-Group) – a component of the UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism.

Photo © Kirsten Van Santen