Dr Sheila Aggarwal-Khan – Quality Assurance Section, Office for Operations and Corporate Services, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Sheila Aggarwal-Khan has been working on environment and development issues over the past twenty years in the areas of strategic planning, programme and project development, implementation and monitoring. Dr. Aggarwal-Khan currently heads Strategic Planning in UNEP’s Quality Assurance Section at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), having served previously as a Senior Advisor in UNEP’s Strategic Implementation Team, instrumental in the reform of the organization. She also served as the Acting Deputy Director for UNEP’s Division of Global Environment Facility (GEF) Coordination. The GEF is a partnership between the Bretton Woods Institution and the United Nations. Prior to that, Dr. Aggarwal-Khan worked in programme and project management.

‘Unless we sufficiently appreciate the extent to which different people pursue diverse agendas and interests, and the interactions between them, we will see little hope for the planet’s environmental sustainability. The International Green Awards offers an opportunity to recognize how diverse agendas and interests among very different people can be harnessed to bring about real change that affects the planet’s sustainability’. 

Before joining UNEP, Sheila worked for the State of Florida, Department of Environmental Regulation (now known as the Department of Environmental Protection), and prior to that she worked for a number of different international and local environmental NGOs and research institutions. Dr. Aggarwal-Khan holds a PhD in development studies and recently authored the book The Policy Process in International Environmental Governance, a book published by Palgrave-Macmillan, which reviews the practices in international institutions that deal with environment and development issues and suggests possible reforms to institutional practices.