Janet Ranganathan is the Vice President for Science and Research at the World Resources Institute, an action-oriented global research organization that works in more than 50 countries, with offices in the United States, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Europe. She plays a lead role in ensuring that WRI’s research is robust and informs the Institute’s influence strategies. She works closely with the Managing Director to strengthen the impact of research across WRI’s six programs: Food, Forest, Water, Climate, Energy, and Cities. Janet leads WRI’s Information into Action strategy, which combines open data platforms, information and communication technologies, transparency, and human networks to drive more sustainable management of the planet’s resources. She is also an architect and co-author of the currentWorld Resources Report, Creating a Sustainable Food Future.
During her tenure, Janet has held diverse positions across WRI’s programs. She has rolled out numerous initiatives to address the root causes of poverty and environmental degradation. Janet founded and directed WRI’s People and Ecosystems Program, where she launched two major initiatives on Ecosystem Servicesand Forest Landscapes. 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 to develop 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 also served in WRI’s Business and Climate programs.
Janet has written extensively on a broad range of sustainable development topics, 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 include: Policies for Sustainable Governance of Global Ecosystem Services; The Corporate Ecosystem Services Review: Guidelines for Identifying Business Risks & Opportunities Arising from Ecosystem Change; Banking on Nature’s Assets: How Multilateral Development Banks Can Strengthen Development by Using Ecosystem Services; Restoring Nature’s Capital: An Action Agenda to Sustain Ecosystem Services; Ecosystem Services: A Guide for Decision Makers; Greenhouse Gas Protocol: a corporate accounting and reporting standard; Greenhouse Gas Protocol for Project Accounting; Tomorrows Markets: Global trends and their implications for business; Measuring Up: Toward a Common Framework for Tracking Corporate Environmental Performance; and Green Ledgers: Case Studies in Corporate Environmental Accounting.
Janet serves on the boards of Ceres and the University of Michigan Graham Institute. She is a member of Mars’s Science Advisory Committee and Sustainability Working Group. She serves as 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).
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 was also a senior manager in the British National Health Service, serving at the Royal Marsden and Royal Brompton Hospitals. Janet 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.