Achala Abeysinghe

Achala Abeysinghe is principal researcher and team leader of global climate law, policy and governance team at International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). At IIED, She also heads the training and support programme of the European Capacity Building Initiative (ecbi). A lawyer by training, she has also been working as the legal and strategy adviser to the chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group for the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for past six years. Her work currently focuses mainly on issues related to compliance, transparency and NDC under the UNFCCC and national legislative frameworks on climate change.

In 2015, Achala was nominated as one of top 15 female climate champions in the world in a list compiled by the University of Massachusetts. Earlier this year, she was recognised as one of the ‘good 100’ of 2015 by the good100 magazine that captured 100 individuals in the world who are improving the world through their work. She was a lead author of the chapter on Climate Resilient Pathways in the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Before IIED: Robert S. McNamara research fellow, The World Bank/Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands; attorney-at-law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka; lecturer in law, Legal Studies Department, The Open University of Sri Lanka.

Education: PhD in international environmental law on climate change, Kent Law School, University of Kent; LLM in International Environmental Law, University of Kent; LLB (Hons), University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Twitter: achalac

Email: Achala.abeysinghe@iied.org