Madhavi Venkatesan | |
|---|---|
 Venkatesan at a UN Climate Change Conference (COP23) in 2017 | |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Vanderbilt University (BS, MA, PhD) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Economics |
| Institutions | Northeastern University Bridgewater State University |
| Main interests | Sustainability |
Madhavi Venkatesan is an American economist and environmental activist. She is an associate teaching professor of economics at Northeastern University.
Venkatesan received her B.A.,M.A.,and Ph.D. in Economics from Vanderbilt University;her dissertation focus was on the creation of the black middle class in America. [1] Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in St.Louis,she entered the financial services industry as an equity analyst,and then served as an investor relations officer for three Fortune 250 companies in the insurance sector. [1] In 2014,she re-entered academic employment as an assistant professor of Economics at Bridgewater State University [1] and in 2017,she joined the faculty of the Department of Economics at Northeastern University as an assistant teaching professor,where her research and writing continued to focus on equity,justice,and sustainability. [2]
Venkatesan traveled to the Philippines in 2018 as the Fulbright-SyCip Distinguished Lecturer;her invited lectures addressed the economics of climate change. [3] In 2019 she published her fourth text,SDG8 - Sustainable Economic Growth and Decent Work for All. [4]
As of April 2021,Venkatesan serves as the editor in chief of Sustainability and Climate Change. [5]
Venkatesan's academic interests include the integration of sustainability into the economics curriculum. [6] [7] [8] She has been active in promoting education and stakeholder engagement to incorporate ethics into the existing economic framework [9] [10] and her written work has largely focused on these topics as a catalyst to promoting sustainability. Venkatesan has also contributed to the literature on the relationship between culture,sustainability and economics,addressing the relationship between economic systems and cultural convergence. [11] [12] She is an advocate for changing the quantitative focus of present economic goals (e.g.,GDP,income) to qualitative attributes of well-being that acknowledge and incorporate the interconnectivity between humans and the ecosystems they inhabit. [13]
In 2016, Venkatesan established Sustainable Practices, [14] [15] a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a mission "to facilitate a culture of sustainability as defined by reducing the human-made impact to the planet and its ecosystems" within Barnstable County, Massachusetts, and serves as the organization's executive director. [16] In 2019, Sustainable Practices initiated the Municipal Plastic Bottle Ban campaign. The organization followed with the Commercial Single-use Plastic Water Bottle Ban in 2020. [17] In 2023, Sustainable Practices initiated an additional campaign, Plastic Reduction. The initiative specifically targets and eliminates the retail use of single-use takeout plastic. [18] [19] The Municipal Plastic Bottle Ban has been in effect in all 15 Cape Cod towns since 2021, the Commercial Single-use Plastic Water Bottle Ban and Plastic Reduction remain as ongoing campaigns. [20] [21]
USA Today named Madhavi Venkatesan as the woman of the year for the state of Massachusetts, one of their 60 "Women of the Year 2024," for her campaign to ban plastic beverage bottles in municipalities. [22] [23]
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Bottled water is drinking water packaged in plastic or glass water bottles. Bottled water may be carbonated or not, with packaging sizes ranging from small single serving bottles to large carboys for water coolers. The consumption of bottled water is influenced by factors such as convenience, taste, perceived safety, and concerns over the quality of municipal tap water. Concerns about the environmental impact of bottled water, including the production and disposal of plastic bottles, have led to calls for more sustainable practices in the industry.
Vanessa Bradford Kerry is an American physician, public health expert, and advocate. She is a founder of the non-profit Seed Global Health, director of the Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change at Harvard Medical School, and serves as the Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health for the World Health Organization (WHO).
Green liberalism, or liberal environmentalism, is liberalism that includes green politics in its ideology. Green liberals are usually liberal on social issues and "green" on economic issues. The term "green liberalism" was coined by political philosopher Marcel Wissenburg in his 1998 book Green Liberalism: The Free and The Green Society. He argues that liberalism must reject the idea of absolute property rights and accept restraints that limit the freedom to abuse nature and natural resources. However, he rejects the control of population growth and any control over the distribution of resources as incompatible with individual liberty, instead favoring supply-side control: more efficient production and curbs on overproduction and overexploitation. This view tends to dominate the movement, although critics say it actually puts individual liberties above sustainability.
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Mohan Munasinghe is a Sri Lankan physicist, engineer and economist with a focus on energy, water resources, sustainable development and climate change. He was the 2021 Blue Planet Prize Laureate, and Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice-President of the United States Al Gore. Munasinghe is the Founder Chairman of the Munasinghe Institute for Development. He has also served as an honorary senior advisor to the government of Sri Lanka since 1980.
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Sustainability studies is an academic discipline that focuses on the interdisciplinary perspective of the concept of sustainability. Programs include instruction in sustainable development, geography, environmental policies, ethics, ecology, landscape architecture, city and regional planning, economics, natural resources, sociology, and anthropology. Sustainability studies also focuses on the importance of climate change, poverty, social justice and environmental justice. Many universities across the world currently offer sustainability studies as a degree program. The main goal of sustainability studies is for students to find ways to develop novel solutions to environmental problems.
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