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Neha Rai

Neha Rai was a senior researcher (climate finance), in IIED's Climate Change research group until January 2021.

Neha Rai has an extensive track record in the area of climate change, with more than 15 years of experience working on climate finance, climate policy and related monitoring and evaluation.
Full biography

Her interests are researching the quality, quantity and effectiveness of climate finance; supporting country governments to access and manage climate finance; and ensuring climate actions are well monitored and evaluated.

Her portfolio of work includes:

  • Providing technical support to governments on M&E as well as international, national and local climate finance
  • Capacity development and support for ministries and local governments in accessing climate finance through Green Climate Fund accreditation, training on climate finance to governments, and support project development and Enhanced Direct Access proposal writing, and
  • Evidence generation on climate finance and M&E.

As a public policy specialist and an urban planner by training, her journey in the career of international development and climate change began with a focus on environmental and social impact assessments, and energy and waste management issues in India, where she worked for Canadian consultancy SENES.

Neha then worked as a research fellow at UNU-MERIT in the Netherlands, where she focused on sanitation and health issues in India. She subsequently worked at the Sussex Energy Group to understand water energy inter-dependencies.

The author of “The Political Economy of Low Carbon Resilient Development” (2016), Neha has also written several publications on M&E and climate finance. She is also one among the team of originators involved in implementing the Tracking Adaptation and Measuring Development (TAMD) framework.

Expertise
  • International and national climate finance and policy
  • Monitoring, evaluation and learning
  • Political economy of low carbon resilient development
  • Decentralised energy.
Before IIED

Sussex energy group, UK; UNU-Merit, Netherlands, SENES (Specialist Energy, Nuclear and Environment Sciences) private limited, India

Education

  • MSc in public policy (sustainable development), Maastricht University, The Netherlands
  • Mtech in Urban Planning, Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT), India
  • Short course in Applied Econometrics, Maastricht
Neha Rai's picture
Twitter: @Rai10Neha
ResearchGate
Google Scholar
 
Languages: English, Hindi (fluent), Urdu (fluent), and Bangla (basic)

Neha Rai's projects

Solar panels on a floating school, Bangladesh

Understanding the political economy of the Climate Investment Funds

Project, Dec 2012

Latest publications

Climate finance for hydropower

How climate finance can help repurpose hydropower

Framing and tracking 21st century climate adaptation

LDC NDCs: adaptation priorities and gaps to address

LDC NDCs: adaptation priorities and gaps to address

Assessing adaptation results: aligning national M&E systems and global results frameworks

View more publications by this author

 

Neha Rai's blog posts

A man ploughing with an ox

Three things climate funds can learn from the COVID-19 response

Blog, Jun 2020
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) Board met in Songdo, South Korea – a new high tech city built on reclaimed tidal mudflats (Photo: pegl, Creative Commons via Flickr)

The Green Climate Fund is facing an opportunity – not a crisis

Blog, Jul 2018
A washed-out road near Lake Bisina in Uganda. Uganda is experiencing significant impacts of climate change such as increased frequency of extreme weather events like floods (Photo: James Anderson, Creative Commons via Flickr)

Assessing adaptation and development progress

Blog, Jul 2018
Chart showing decentralised energy access – finance needed and contribution of climate finance (Image: Sarah Best/IIED)

The Green Climate Fund: will the vulnerable be overlooked in a rush to spend?

Blog, Jun 2016
An image showing a group of women from Tongaradha village, Bangladesh, who saved more than 2,000 hectares of land and 500 households from flooding by rebuilding a 12km embankment and a 5km road. GCF money should be used for such innovative, community-driven projects in poor countries that will drive long-term change (Photo: WFP/Rein Skullerud, Creative Commons, via Flickr)

Expediting direct access to the GCF for least developed countries

Blog, May 2016
This sewage treatment plant in Delawas, Jaipur, was funded by the Asian Development Bank. There are concerns omitting local people from decision-making processes can lead to climate funds not sufficiently representing local priorities (Photo: Asian Development Bank, Creative Commons, via Flickr)

Getting Green Climate Funding to the local level

Blog, Oct 2015
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50 years linking local to global

Find out more about IIED’s plans in our 50th birthday year: our achievements and what comes next…

IIED's mission is to build a fairer, more sustainable world, using evidence, action and influence in partnership with others. We link local priorities and global challenges, and our 2019-2024 strategy details how we will Make Change Happen

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