Joyeeta Gupta

Joyeeta Gupta (born 12 June 1964) is a Dutch environmental scientist who is professor of Environment and Development in the Global South at the University of Amsterdam, professor of Law and Policy in Water Resources and Environment at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, and co-chair of the Earth Commission, set up by Future Earth and supported by the Global Challenges Foundation. She was co-chair of UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook-6 (2016-2019), published by Cambridge University Press, which was presented to governments participating in the United Nations Environment Assembly in 2019. She is a member of the Amsterdam Global Change Institute. She was awarded the Association of American Publishers PROSE award for Environmental Science and the 2023 Spinoza Prize.

Early life and education
Gupta was born in Delhi and studied at Loreto Convent School. She studied economics at Delhi University. She retrained in law at Gujarat University, then moved to the United States for her graduate studies, specializing in international law at Harvard Law School. Gupta completed her doctoral research at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she studied climate change in developing countries. Her doctoral research was the first to determine the consequences of climate change, including elevated risks of flooding, drought and lost harvests.

Research and career
In 2013, Gupta joined the faculty at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research has considered the impacts of climate change on society, demonstrating elevated tensions between the rich and poor. She has argued that to prevent conflict and climate change induced injustice it is critical to redistribute natural resources, and measure national growth based on global constitutionalism instead of gross domestic product.

In 2016, Gupta was appointed co-chair of the United Nations (UN) Environment's Global Environmental Outlook-6. In 2019, she became Faculty Professor on Sustainability, where she leads a program on Governance and Inclusive Development.

Awards and honors

 * 2015 Atmospheric Science Librarians International Choice Award
 * 2019 Association of American Publishers PROSE award for Environmental Science
 * 2021 ERC Advanced Grant
 * 2023 Spinoza Prize, the highest distinction in Dutch science and also called the 'Dutch Nobel Prize'.