Sivan Kartha

Sivan Kartha is the Equitable Transitions Program Director at SEI US. He is on the Steering Group for SEI’s Gender Equality and Social Equity Programme. 

His research and publications for the past 25 years have dealt with policy strategies for addressing climate change, focusing on equity and effectiveness in the design of an international climate regime. He has also worked on mitigation scenarios, market mechanisms for climate actions, and the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of biomass energy. 

He is co-director of the Climate Equity Reference Project, a research and outreach effort in partnership with civil society organizations on the political and ethical dimensions of equitably sharing the effort of an ambitious global response to climate change.  

His work has enabled him to advise and collaborate with diverse organizations, including the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), various UN and World Bank programmes, numerous government policy-making bodies and agencies, foundations and civil society organizations throughout the developing and industrialized world. 

He served as a Coordinating Lead Author in the preparation of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in 2014, co-leading the chapter on Equity and Sustainable Development. 

He received his PhD in theoretical physics from Cornell University in 1993.