Environmental Resilience and Transformation in times of COVID-19: Climate Change Effects on Environmental Functionality

A.L. Ramanathan, Professor, School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, IndiaAL.Ramanathan has been working as a Professor and researcher in various capacities in national and international laboratories, universities, and institutions for over three decades in India and abroad and has traveled widely for research, teaching, and fieldwork activities to address pressing environmental issues due to natural and perturbed anthropogenic ecosystems. He is currently working as Professor, School of Environmental sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has had more than 200 papers published in high impact journals in the field of environment and water resources including the cryosphere. He has completed more than 25 major research projects in collaboration with Indian institutes and fifteen foreign universities of the world through national and international agencies.

Dr. S. Chidambaram is currently working as Research Scientist, Water Research Centre, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, Kuwait. He was a gold medalist in Undergraduate and Post graduate degrees. He served as professor and head for the department of Earth sciences. He has 19 years of teaching experience andproduced 16 M.Phils and 15 Ph.D thesis under his guidance. He has published more than 180 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 9 books in the field of hydrogeochemistry. He has developed a computer program in C++ (WATCLAST) for hydrogeochemical studies. His work on fluoride removal by natural material in community water supply scheme as an outcome of MoEn&F project has received the best paper award in the Applied Water Sciences journal for the year 2013. He has awarded for the best contribution in the field of Hydrogeology and Environmental Geochemistry during 2016 by Indian Society of Applied Geochemists. He has undertaken training in IAEA programs and served as an expert for two IAEA expert missions to KISR, Kuwait.

Dr. M.P. Jonathan has expertise in the fields of marine geochemistry and trace metal pollution of aquatic environments and earned a doctorate in the field of geology from University of Madras, Chennai, India. He is the author of more than 102 research articles in numerous multidisciplinary aspects of coastal pollution in various reputed journals. With a goal to generate a database of pollution status in tourist beaches all over the world, he has accomplished 10 countries to date and it is expanding year by year to other countries. He has also partaken in various bilateral and mega scientific research projects between India, Mexico, South Africa, Colombia and Ecuador which deals with coastal pollution and development/mitigation efforts through mangroves. His research interests include geochemical process in aquatic systems, environmental geology, tsunami (past and present), microplastic degradation, fish toxicology, GIS applications, and innovative approaches in pollution studies. Presently, he works as a research professor and is also a Member (SNI Level 2) of the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACyT) and also serves as the Coordinator of Doctorate program in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies on Environment and Development (CIIEMAD), National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), Mexico City, Mexico. He is also an editorial committee member for several journals.

M.V. Prasanna Associate Professor, Department of Applied Geology, Faculty of Engineering and Science, Curtin University, MalaysiaDr M.V. Prasanna currently works as an Associate Professor in Curtin University, Malaysia. He completed his Ph.D degree in 2008 at Annamalai University, India. He has published 86 Journal papers and 8 book chapters. Recently, he has co-edited the book GIS and Geostatistical Techniques for Groundwater Science, published by Elsevier in June 2019. Currently, he is editing two special issues. Currently, his research is primarily focused in the field of environmental geochemistry, focusing on monitoring and assessment of metal pollution in various environments.

Pankaj Kumar, Senior Policy Researcher, Natural Resources and Ecosystems Services, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, JapanDr. Pankaj Kumar is currently working in the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Japan as senior policy researcher in the field of water resources and climate change adaptation. Prior to this, he worked as a research fellow in United Nations University, Institute for Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), Tokyo for four years. Recently his research work focused on “Hydrological simulation and scenario modelling for clean urban water environment in South-East Asian developing cities a transdisciplinary work aimed to enhance community resilience to global change and provide policy relevant solution. He holds a doctoral degree in Geo-environmental Science from the University of Tsukuba, Japan. In parallel, he has worked as a Chapter Scientist for Working Group-II of Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of IPCC. Currently he is also working as scoping expert for Nexus assessment for IPBES. He has several peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters of international repute to his credit.

Francisco Mun ̃oz-Arriola is an associate professor in hydroinformatics and integrated hydroclimate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and adjunct faculty in the Department of Biosystems Engineering at Universidade do Sao Paulo. Francisco has been a volunteer for science at the US Geological Survey and national researcher at Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology. He is also a fellow of the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute and the Public Policy Center. He has been a member of the American Meteorological Society’s Water Resources Committee for 5 years. Francisco has worked on the diagnostics and predictability of natural and altered states of biogeochemical cycles and the water continuum from the atmosphere to the aquifer. His research focuses on the predictability of hydrometeorological and climate extremes and their impact on water and agricultural resources, the devel?opment of information technologies and models. His collaborative network encompasses more than 20 countries in Asia, Europe, and the United States