Avipsa Mahapatra

Avipsa Mahapatra is the Climate Campaign Director at Environmental Investigation Agency. She has been leading a global decarbonization of the cooling sector, with a particular focus on super pollutant HFCs, for more than a decade. She has been instrumental in the international strategy formulation, overseeing technical and policy work for the global adoption of the Kigali Amendment of the Montreal Protocol ensuring about a half a degree Celsius of warming avoided. She has led world-changing exposés of climate-crimes and has been featured in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, BBC and the Grist among others. She is regularly invited by the public and private sector to speak at events across the globe on climate and cooling issues including in China and India.

Avipsa has previously worked at the World Resources Institute in developing a framework for emerging economies to initiate emissions reporting programs, and at Development Alternatives, a leading Indian research and action NGO, managing a carbon-reduction and environmental monitoring program via a network of 100+ diverse civil society organizations. Avipsa was an official member of the Indian delegation to UNFCCC COP 14, and has also worked with the Earth Institute New York, WWF Norway, 350.org and PowerShift. She has two M.S. degrees, in Natural Resources Management and in Climate Science and Public Policy from Columbia University, and was a research fellow at Yale University for innovation in sustainable urban development.