GCN Associate
JANET RANGANATHAN

Ecosystem Services/
Resource Management
Governance

Janet Ranganathan is the Director of WRI’s People and Ecosystems Program (PEP). The goal of the PEP program is to reverse the rapid degradation of ecosystems and assure their capacity to provide humans with needed goods and services. She works extensively with business, government and other stakeholders to catalyze changes in the way ecosystems are managed.

Prior to becoming program director Ms. Ranganathan founded and directed WRI’s Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative, an international multi-stakeholder partnership convened by WRI and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, for the purpose of developing international greenhouse gas accounting and reporting standards.  She has, as well, worked extensively with WRI’s Learning and Leading by Doing and SafeClimate.net projects, and on business environmental performance measurement and environmental accounting.

Prior to joining WRI she 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.  Ms. Ranganathan received a BSc. (Hons) from Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, London in 1983, and an MSc. with distinction in Environmental Technology from Imperial College in 1990. Janet was born and raised in Cornwall, England.

Other projects in which she has had a leading hand include:

• Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA). The MA was a four-year international effort to assess the conditions and trends of the world's ecosystems and the links to human well-being. This project will broadly disseminate the MA findings and seek to translate them into action.
• Global Forest Watch (GFW). Global Forest Watch seeks to catalyze changes in forest use to meet human needs and better protect forest ecosystems.

Janet is the author of numerous publications, of which the most recent are:
            
Restoring Nature's Capital: An Action Agenda to Sustain Ecosystem Services. An action agenda for business, governments, and civil society to reverse ecosystem degradation (2007).          

Business and Ecosystems Issue Brief: Ecosystem Challenges and Business Implications. Explores six challenges -- water scarcity, climate change, habitat change, biodiversity loss and invasive species, overexploitation of oceans, and nutrient overloading -- and discusses their implications for business and examples of corporate responses. IUCN, WRI, Earthwatch, and WBCSD (2006).        

Greenhouse Gas Protocol: The GHG Protocol for Project Accounting.  Provides specific principles, concepts, and methods for quantifying and reporting GHG reductions from climate change mitigation projects, WBCSD and WRI (2005).
           
Tomorrow's Markets: Global Trends and their Implications for Business. Identifies and outlines 19 powerful trends that are reshaping global markets and changing the role and strategies of corporations. Presents leading indicators of world economic, environmental and social conditions to international business audiences. A collaboration of WRI, UNEP, WBCSD (2002).

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