Dr. Professor Bharat H. Desai received his Masters and Ph.D. in international environmental law from Jawaharlal Nehru University and his LLM in international law from Gujarat University. Since 1987 he has been an Associate Professor of International Law in the Centre for International Legal Studies of the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He holds the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Chair in International Environmental Law and is Professor of International Law as well as Chairman of the Centre. He has been a visiting fellow in a number of European universities and institutions. He has served as a resource person for training workshops organized by UNEP, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Asian Development Bank.
As a Humboldt Fellow, Prof. Desai worked at University of Bonn on the treatise Institutionalizing International Environmental Law (New York: Transnational, 2003). Main areas of his current research work include law-making and institution-building processes in centralized legalization on sectoral environmental issues, international environmental governance, legal status of the secretariats of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) as well as ‘synergy and inter-linkages’ concerning MEAs. His monograph on Multilateral Environmental Agreements and Human Security has been published by United Nations University-EHS (Bonn: 2006). Two of his important works on Legal Status of Secretariats of Multilateral Environmental Agreements as well as International Environmental Governance will be published in 2009 by Cambridge University Press and Routledge respectively.
Prof. Desai is engaged in ‘Regional Capacity Building in Environmental Law’ in the South Asian region. He is being consulted by the Indian Ministry of Environment & Forests as well as Ministry of External Affairs. He has also been inducted as a member of the official Indian Delegations to various intergovernmental meetings.