Ranjan Kishor Panda, a sociologist by education, has more than three decades of experience facilitating several initiatives – starting from grassroots to national as well as South Asia levels – to promote water, environmental conservation and climate change related initiatives and advocacy.  He convenes two active networks: Water Initiatives (WI) and Combat Climate Change Network, India. He is a well-known expert on water, sanitation, disasters and climate change issues; and also a senior columnist. He also mentors the #Youth4WaterIndia campaign and the “Commons Climate Connect” initiative. He has worked with grassroots communities in water and climate change projects, as well as has been carrying forward regular campaigns, advocacy efforts, research studies and journalistic pursuits on water, environment, disasters, sanitation and climate change.  In fact, he can claim to be among the first persons in India who flagged off climate change issues in the country way back in early 90s.

Popularly known as Water Man of Odisha and also as ‘Climate Crusader’ in India, was awarded by the President of India with the first “Green Hero” by NDTV-TOYOTA.  He has also been profiled as “Odisha’s Conservation Master” by Hindustan Times and “Aqua Guard” by New Indian Express.  He has been recognized as ‘Mahanadi River Waterkeeper’ by the New York based global ‘Waterkeeper Alliance.’  He has many more awards and recognitions to his credit.  The SPAN Magazine featured his experience of the International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP) (invited by US Govt.) in a 2015 edition that was devoted to celebrate 75 years of Indo-US relationships.

He has got long experience in research and policy analysis/advocacy on social-ecology, water, sanitation, hygiene, disasters and climate change issues.   A contributor of columns in many publications like Down To Earth, Urban Update, SixDegreesNews, Mongabay India, India Climate Dialogue, he has also been one of the founders of Climate Journalism Network based out of Oslomet University, Norway.  Until recently, he also held the honorary position of Country Manager for India, the Climate Scorecard Project based out of Boston, USA that monitors the progress of Paris Agreement commitments by highest GHG emitting nations.  He is a Steering Group member of the global “Climate Migration and Displacement Platform” that engages with the UN agencies and other stakeholders on human mobility due to climate change. He has been very recently inducted into the Global Advisory Committee of the Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD), a government-led process based at UNOPS, Geneva.  He is also Core Group Member with the global network “Bay of Bengal Climate Change Initiative” and has recently run orientation projects for journalists in the Bay on climate change with Internews-Earth Journalism Network. 

Ranjan is regularly invited to speak in national and international seminars/workshops and even Universities on water, sanitation, environment, disasters and climate change issues, covering both rural and urban areas.  Among others, he had the opportunity to visit Geneva University as a Guest Faculty; and has been invited to speak at the COPs; and has talked to Labour MPs in the UK on climate change. He has recently spoke at the very high profile UN-IOM’s International Dialogue on Migration at Geneva; the Global South Conference on Climate Displacement at Rabat, Morocco;  and many more.

Since March 2019, Ranjan is promoting a campaign among youths on water and climate change and has been putting a lot of efforts in linking youth from across the country to environmental issues.  This campaign, that he founded, is called the #Youth4WaterIndia and has been successfully running several initiatives such as the ‘Plastic-Free Picnic Challenge’, ‘Nature’s Classroom’, ‘Water & Climate Academy’, ‘Young Climate Journalists Support Programme on Climate Change’ and many more.  In these efforts he has been successfully garnering partnership of about 70 organisations from across the world including government agencies from India, UN University, NGOs and many others.  Ranjan is now committed to strengthen this campaign further and has been looking for more support and partnerships.

He is also the leader of organizing the Odisha River Conferences and has taken leadership in many more such initiatives.