Joyeeta Gupta Impact Award in Environment & Climate

Joyeeta Gupta focuses on climate justice, environmental management and sustainable development. Many problems surrounding climate and environment are due to the problematic relationship between North and South, rich and poor. Inequality is also a big problem here; poor people who cannot afford an electric car or solar panels are sometimes compensated for their fossil energy bill. But actually they should be subsidized to move away from fossil.’

Gupta’s mission is to make people who consume and produce too much aware of their emissions and their responsibility to others who suffer globally. Furthermore, the energy transition must be hastened, with the rich North helping the South. Gupta: “People there don’t use a lot of energy yet, and if they do, it shouldn’t be fossil fuels. That would only exacerbate climate change. Gupta made an impact with her co-chairs of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Earth Commission and the UN. UNEP integrated social justice into its environmental reporting for the first time in 2019; for example, UNEP also looks at issues such as land and water degradation and the broader health impacts of polluted water. At the Earth Commission, she helped integrate equity into the discussion of planetary boundaries and the distribution of environmental use space. At the UN, she has now been appointed as chair by the Secretary-General of the Ten-League Group that advises on science, technology and innovation.