Arnico Panday

Arnico Panday is a Senior Advisor at National Planning Commission, Nepal. He is an atmospheric scientist and educator with an extensive experience in the interface between the science and policy of climate change, air pollution, and sustainable development. Since February 2020, he has been the CEO of Ullens Education Foundation, which is building Nepal’s first residential liberal arts college, designing a curriculum to train 21st-century leaders in a campus that will be a model of sustainable design. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Integrated Development Studies, Nepal.

 

He has served on the Steering Committee of the UN’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition, on the advisory on the advisory group of the Asia Pacific Clean Air Partnership, and on several taskforces of the Government of Nepal. Until January 2020 he was the Regional Programme Manager of the Atmosphere Programme at ICIMOD (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development), Nepal, where he built up and led a team working on research, mitigation, and policy of air pollution and climate change across Nepal and its neighboring countries. He initiated Bhutan’s and Nepal’s air pollution monitoring networks; set up high-altitude climate observatories; was a key author of assessment reports on the Hindukush-Himalaya and the Asia- Pacific, and led the team that reduced emissions from brick kilns in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Between 2011 and 2017, he advised Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Government of Rwanda in the planning and establishment of Rwanda Climate Observatory at Mt. Mugugo – Africa’s first observatory to comprehensively measure all climate-altering substances in the atmosphere.

 

He continues to serve on the Expert Working Group of the Government of Nepal’s Sagarmatha Sambaad high-level dialogue, the Governing Council of Future Earth South Asia, the Advisory Group of the Asia Co-Benefits Partnership at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies Japan, and the Advisory Board of Nepal Economic Forum.