Kamal Bawa is a retired distinguished professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and founder-president of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), one of India’s top-ranked environmental think tanks based in Bangalore.

Bawa has done extensive work in the Himalayas for a number of years on a wide range of issues from biodiversity conservation to climate change. His latest coffee table book Himalaya: The Mountains of Life, a companion volume to Sahyadri: India’s Western Ghats, was published in 2013. He has authored or edited more than 10 books, and special issues of journals. Bawa has also published more than 200 papers. Among the many awards he has received are: Bullard Fellowship at Harvard University (1972, 2009) Guggenheim Fellowship (1987), Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment (1992), Giorgio Ruffolo Fellowship at Harvard University (2009), the Gunnerus Prize in Sustainability Science from the Royal Norwegian Society of Letters and Sciences (2012), the international MIDORI Prize in Biodiversity from the Aeon Foundation in Japan (2014), an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta (2014), Linnean Medal in Botany by the Linnean Society of London (2018). He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected fellow of the Royal Society, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (elected in 2022). Bawa is also the founding editor-in-chief of two interdisciplinary journals: Conservation and Society and Ecology, Economy and Society.