Zeenat Niazi

She guides public policy and action research focused on local and national strategies for sustainable development, climate change, and natural resource management. Trained as an architect with a specialization in rural housing and habitat in the global South, her core competence is in building resilience in human settlements through Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) strategies, especially green and inclusive circular economy models. She was previously Senior Vice President & Chief Knowledge Officer at Development Alternatives.

She is currently researching reciprocal relationships of learning systems and nature-based solutions for urban resilience and is registered as a PhD scholar for the same at the TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi India.

She teaches a module on Sustainability and the Built Environment at the Anant National University, Ahmedabad, India, and is also a guest lecturer at the School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi and the Nirma University, Ahmedabad. She is currently a member of the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Committee (MAC) of the Sustainable Buildings and Construction Programme of UN’s One Planet Network, member of the Steering Committee of the Green Economy Coalition (GEC) in India and of the Strategic Steering Committee of UNEP PAGE Programme in India.

She has supervised three post-Tsunami rehabilitation projects in south India. Through her involvement within several programs and knowledge platforms, she is devoted to the decision-making and selection of appropriate construction systems by stakeholders of habitat projects, especially for rural housing.

She is part of the Task Force on Green and Inclusive Circular Economy for Angul District in the State of Orissa, India, chair of the Committee on Rural Housing and member - CED 51- committee on prefabricated materials of the Bureau of Indian Standards. In the past, she has been a founding member and Co-Chair of the Board of the Climate Action Network South Asia, member of the Task force of the Rural Housing, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India and a member of the Sub-Committee on Construction and Demolition Waste Management in Urban Areas of the NITI Aayog, Government of India.

She is co-author of Participatory Rural Habitat Process: Emerging Trends (2004), Framework for a Rural Habitat Policy for India: Responding to Needs of the Rural Poor (2005) and The National Rural Housing and Habitat Policy for India (2007) – a proposal to the government of India.

Zeenat Niazi studied architecture at the School of Planning & Architecture (SPA), New Delhi, and McGill University, Montreal, Canada.