Urban Sustainability: Navigating Environmental Transition Challenges in Global South

Lalit Kumar Dashora is an Urban Risk and Resilience Specialist, currently based at the School of Global Studies, Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand. Prior to joining SGS at TU, he worked with Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) in Bangkok, Thailand, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. He holds a Master’s degree in Geo-Information Science for Earth Observation, Environmental Modelling & Management from the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (formerly known as ITC), University of Twente, The Netherlands, and in Urban & Regional Planning from the School of Planning, CEPT University, India. His research interests focus on risk-informed, climate-compatible urban planning and development in developing countries, Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and other climate-fragile regions in Asia and the Pacific. He is also Adviser for the Warning Research Center (WRC) of University College of London (UCL).

Dr. Mohammed Firoz currently serves as the head of the Department of Architecture and Planning as well as chair the Centre for Climate Resilience and Disaster Management, at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Calicut, India. Earlier, he served as a visiting faculty at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Bangkok, Thailand, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA), London. Dr. Firoz was awarded his Ph.D. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur.He has an academic experience of 20 years and has taught to undergraduate, postgraduate, and PhD students at the NIT Calicut along with his research and publication activities, consultancy and university services. He has published widely in journals and book chapters besides editing two books. He is an editorial member for 3 high impact journals namely the Area Development and Policy, Social Impacts, and Humanities and Social Science Communications.

Professor Rajib Shaw is a professor in the Graduate School of Media and Governance at Keio University, Japan. He is also a senior fellow of the Institute of Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) Japan, and the chairperson of the Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS) Asia and the Church World Service (CWS) Japan, two Japanese NGOs. He is a co-founder of a Delhi (India)-based social entrepreneur startup, the Resilience Innovation Knowledge Academy (RIKA). Earlier, he was the executive director of the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) and was a professor in Kyoto University. His expertise includes disaster governance, community-based disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, urban risk management, and disaster and environmental education. Professor Shaw was the chair of the United Nations Science Technology Advisory Group (STAG) for disaster risk reduction and currently is the co-chair of the Asia Pacific Science Technology Academic Advisory Group (APSTAAG).