Dr Ritesh Kumar is the Director of Wetlands International South Asia. He is a practitioner with extensive experience in integrated wetland management. Over the last 25 years, Dr Kumar has led integrated management planning for several wetlands in the South Asia region and coordinated multidisciplinary projects on wetlands assessment, ecosystem services evaluation, water management, sustainable livelihoods, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. He has worked closely with the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, the Government of India and several state governments on policy and management aspects of Indian wetlands. Dr Kumar is also a coordinating lead author at the UNEP – Global Peatlands Initiate, Inter-governmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) for the assessment of multiple values of nature, nexus and Asia Pacific Regional Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. To bring to the fore research South Asian wetlands, he has authored several peer-reviewed articles on wetlands conservation and management topics. He also serves on the Editorial Board of international journals Marine and Freshwater Research, Wetland Ecology and Management, and PLoS Water.
