Jagdish Krishnaswamy is the Dean – School of Environment and Sustainability (SES) at IIHS. He has a BTech in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, and an MS in Statistics and Decision Sciences and PhD in Environmental Science with a focus on soils and hydrologic science from Duke University, North Carolina, USA.
As the Dean of SES, Jagdish leads the build-out of the School, providing strategic direction and operational guidance to expand its academic footprint, research activities and network, practice portfolio, and capacity-building initiatives. Jagdish helps in the development of the IIHS Kengeri campus and its environs as India’s first Long-Term Urban Ecological Observatory (LTUEO) and strengthen IIHS’s profile in ecology and conservation science.
Jagdish’s research has spanned the entire continuum from the semi-wild to the urban covering USA, Costa Rica, Africa, and India in ecohydrology, landscape ecology and biodiversity. His work on conservation science and planning led to the nomination of the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot as a UNESCO World Heritage Site besides informing the investment of the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) civil society-led pilot projects. His work in ecohydrology, impact of invasive species and ecological flows in rivers has influenced policy and management at the state and centre. He is part of the team that released a report for policymakers on state of the art on ecological restoration in India as well the first ever mapping of priority sites for both biodiversity and ecosystem service both sponsored by the Government of India’s Mission on Biodiversity and Human wellbeing.
Jagdish’s work in climate science and impact of extreme rain and warming on ecosystems across India using both, densely gauged catchments and remote sensing time-series data as well as his policy relevant work in conservation planning led to his nomination for the scoping and design of the IPCC Special Report on Land and Climate. He was soon nominated as coordinating lead author for the synthesis chapter of this special IPCC report on land and climate, besides contributing as an author to several parts of the entire report and negotiating it acceptance at the plenary with governments. In 2022, he was part of the team of IPCC authors who crafted and wrote the three volume Summary for Urban Policymakers, a synthesis of the urban relevant parts of all the IPCC AR6 cycle reports. In Bengaluru, his work on the LTUEO, the first of its kind for a mega-city in the Global South includes research, practice and training that connects food, water, ecology and biodiversity in an urbanising context. Jagdish is one of the few scientists who has been involved with IPCC and IPBES as he is now one of the scoping experts for the IPBES Second assessment.
Jagdish has supervised five PhD and over 10 master’s students. Jagdish serves on the editorial board of three interdisciplinary journals Urbanisation, Ecology, Economy and Society and Water Security and on the Board of Trustees of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, India.
