Dr. Hari Ramalu Ragavan

Dr. Hari Ramalu Ragavan has 25 years of experience in environmental management and policy in Malaysia and Asia Pacific.

Dr Hari obtained The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education(STINT) scholarship to pursue his Master of Science (M.Sc) in Environmental Management at Lund University, Sweden and The Chevening Scholarship, Foreign Office, UK to pursue PhD in Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester, UK.

He worked at University Malaya, Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers, Centre For Environmental Technologies (CETEC) and served the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Malaysia Country Office as Programme Manager from 2004 till 2015. At UNDP he worked in the sustainable development cluster and had developed, managed and monitored/evaluated at least 15 projects worth USD40 million. At the country level, he was involved in the consultation and development of SDGs between 2010-2015.

Dr. Hari is currently the Principal Consultant at AKAR ASIA Consulting. He has advised UNDP, World Bank, USAID, UNIDO, UNEP and ADB in Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, Cambodia, Philippines, Nepal, Myanmar, Timor Leste and Vietnam as well as Malaysia in the areas of climate change and nature ecosystems management, and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) involving communities, private sector and local governments.

He also provides advisory services to the private sector on corporate sustainability, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) framework and focus areas. He is a Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) certified, Trainer and conducts various trainings on Sustainable Consumption and Production (SDG12) and ESG. He is a Certified Expert in Sustainable Finance (CESFi) (Frankfurt School).

He is a Board Member of Asia Pacific Roundtable for Sustainable Consumption and Production, and an Exco member of the Environmental Management and Research Association of Malaysia, and a Committee Member of the Malaysian Evaluation Society. He is a member of the Industry Expert Committee (IEC) - Sustainability under Human Resource Development Corp (HRD Corp).