Harini Nagendra is a Professor of Ecology at Azim Premji University, where she is also the Director of the Research Center, and leads the Center for Climate Change and Sustainability. Over the past 30 years, Prof. Nagendra has been at the leading edge of research examining conservation in forests and cities of South Asia from the perspective of both landscape ecology and social justice. For her interdisciplinary research and practice, she has received a number of awards including the 2009 US National Academy of Sciences Cozzarelli Prize, the 2013 Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar award, and the 2017 Clarivate Web of Science award. Her publications include the books “Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future” (Oxford University Press, 2016) and “Cities and Canopies: The Tree Book of Indian Cities” (Penguin, 2019) as well as over 150 research publications including recent papers in Nature, Nature Sustainability, and Science. She writes a monthly column ‘The Green Goblin’ in the Deccan Herald newspaper, and is a well known public speaker and writer on issues of urban sustainability in India. Professor Nagendra has been a Lead Author on the IPCC AR5 reports, and a past Science Committee member of DIVERSITAS and the Global Land Programme. She engages with international science and policy through her involvement as a Steering Committee member of the Future Earth Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society, and the Future Earth Urban Knowledge Advisory Network. She is on the Advisory Board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s Climate-KIC and the WRI Ross Centre for Sustainable Cities, as well as an Associate Editor of Global Environmental Change