Maitreyi Koduganti Venkata

Originally from India, Maitreyi is a PlanAdpt Fellow based in Lansing, Michigan, US.

With over 8 years of experience, Maitreyi Koduganti specializes in climate and water policy, gender equity, urban water governance, sustainability, and nature-based solutions. Within these realms, Maitreyi particularly looks at what makes communities vulnerable, especially women and children; how are communities adapting to climate change impacts within the larger realm of nature-based solutions. On the policy scale, she looks at what policy instruments and governance mechanisms aid in effective climate and water governance in the global South.

She is engaged with NATURA as a Global Roadmap Fellow, contributing to developing regional profiles of the state of knowledge in research and practice. Additionally, she serves as the Program Manager for the Nature SBTs for Cities Project at the Urban Biodiversity Hub (UBHub), where she focuses on strategic planning, project management, and collaborative efforts to advance sustainable urban development through nature-based approaches.

Previously, Maitreyi served as an independent consultant with the Overseas Development Institute, where she co-authored a review that examines the UK’s urban development portfolio from an economic, social and environmental perspective, in accordance with the UK government’s stated objectives, and considers how well it contributes to the UK’s climate and sustainability goals.  At Indian Institute for Human Settlements, she contributed to various research projects, most importantly Urban Agriculture as Green Infrastructure in the Global South (UPAGrI) that examined the implications of urban agriculture on human well-being and urban sustainability. In addition to writing book chapters, and scientific articles, she has led several innovative outputs such as photostories, compendiums, and online exhibitions on urban agriculture. She was also an assistant of the core- technical team for Summary for Urban Policymakers (SUP), Volume -1 of the IPCC sixth assessment (released at COP 23) that distilled the findings from the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C. She has also contributed to other collaborative research projects, such as Adaptation to Scale in Semi-Arid Regions of Africa and Asia, where she worked with farming communities in over 70 villages across 12 Indian states, focusing on vulnerability assessments, stakeholder engagement, and Research-into-Use.

Driven by a passion for encouraging more youth into water-related decision-making paces, Maitreyi also serves as the President of the Water Youth Network, a Netherlands-based voluntary youth organisation that seeks to connect water professionals across the globe. Recognising her efforts in the youth space, the United Nations have invited her to make interventions at the 9th Roundtable on Financing Water, UN2023 Water Conference and the ECOSOC Youth Forum (2023) at UN Headquarters. She also serves as a Global Focal Point for SDG 6, under the Major Group for Children and Youth.

Maitreyi has earned a double Masters’s degree – One in Water Management and Governance for IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, NL, and another in Environmental Science from Osmania University, India. Her Master’s thesis at IHE Delft examined how groundwater salinity shaped the bodily experiences and emotional geographies of people, which in turn shaped their access and usage of the resource in the coastal region of Gujarat, in Lodhva.

For more information, see Maitreyi’s LinkedIn profile.