Shreya Nath

Shreya Nath is a senior fellow with the Chair on India and Emerging Asia Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where she leads the program’s India urbanization workstream, examining the policy and finance architecture Indian cities need to grow while remaining livable, water-secure, and climate-resilient. She was previously managing partner at Water, Environment, Land and Livelihoods (WELL) Labs in Bengaluru, where she built the Urban Water program from the ground up. Her team catalyzed a treated wastewater market in the city with the world’s largest concentration of decentralized sewage treatment plants. It anchored a water balance that guided the city’s reuse and conservation decisions during the 2024 drought and drafted a framework for lake rejuvenation, then signed agreements with the National Institute of Urban Affairs to explore embedding both in national schemes. She also helped shape the disbursement-linked indicators for the World Bank’s Karnataka Water Security and Resilience Program, with Bengaluru’s municipal corporation, water utility, and state disaster management authority. Earlier, she led work on greening cities at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment and assessed urban clean energy opportunities at WRI India. Her writing and commentary have appeared in The Hindu, Times of India, Deccan Herald, and Mongabay, and on Discovery Channel India, NDTV, and CNN News18. Her peer-reviewed research appears in Science of the Total Environment and the Journal of Environmental Psychology. An architect by training, Shreya earned her master’s degree in sustainable environmental design from the Architectural Association, London.