Experts & Staff

Janet Ranganathan is the Vice President for Science and Research at the World Resources Institute. She plays a lead role in ensuring that WRI’s research is robust and its strategies evidence based and designed to create scalable results. This includes overseeing the planning, quality control, and evaluation of WRI’s research and publications. She works closely with the Managing Director to oversee the development of strategy within and across WRI’s four programs: Climate, Energy and Transport; Institutions and Governance; People and Ecosystems; and Markets and Enterprises. Janet is also a member of the World Resources Report project team focusing on Food Futures: Feeding 9 Billion while Sustaining Ecosystems in a Changing Climate.

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Janet has developed and rolled out numerous initiatives to address the root causes of poverty and environmental degradation. Before becoming Vice President, Janet founded and directed WRI’s People and Ecosystems Program to reverse ecosystem degradation and ensure ecosystems’ capacity to meet human needs. Within the People and Ecosystems Program, she launched two major initiatives on Ecosystem Services and Forest Landscapes.

Janet has also served in WRI’s Market and Enterprise and Climate and Energy programs. She developed and directed WRI’s US Climate Policy Initiative, which advanced policies and business actions that resulted in significant greenhouse gas emissions reductions. She founded and directed the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative, an international multi-stakeholder partnership convened by WRI and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development for the purpose of developing international greenhouse gas accounting and reporting standards. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol is now the international accounting and reporting standard for business and numerous national and state greenhouse gas programs.

Janet serves on the board of Ceres, the International Integrated Reporting Council and the Mars Science Advisory Committee. She is also a member of the International Programme Advisory Committee for the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation Programme supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). She has advised numerous companies on sustainability strategies.

Janet has written extensively on a broad range of sustainable development challenges, including business and markets, environmental performance measurement, environmental accounting, climate change, greenhouse gas measurement and reporting, ecosystem degradation, food security, forests and global environmental governance.

Publications

Publications published by WRI are listed here and in the sidebar to the right.

• Policies for Sustainable Governance of Global Ecosystem Services (Edward Elgar Publishing)
• The Theory & Practice of Ecosystem Service Valuation in Conservation. Oxford University Press.
• Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: A Manual for Assessment Practitioners (PDF), Island Press.
• Ecosystem Challenges and Business Implications (WBCSD)
• Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, First Edition (PDF)

Prior to joining WRI Janet worked on business and environmental issues in the U.K. both as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire and in a regulatory capacity with the Department of Environment and Hertfordshire Waste Regulatory Authority.

Janet Ranganathan received a BSc. (Hons) from Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, London in 1983, and a MSc. with distinction in Environmental Technology from Imperial College in 1990.

Janet was born and raised in Cornwall, England. She is married to Kumar and has two daughters Angela and Serena.