Until his appointment with IHDP, Dr Duraiappah served as the Chief of the Ecosystem Services and Economics Unit with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya. Within UNEP, Dr Duraiappah was responsible for establishing the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Knowledge to Action Global Strategy and for developing the field of the economics of ecosystem services. He was also the team leader for the establishment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
Dr Duraiappah has held senior positions in multiple development and academic organizations, such as the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) in Winnipeg, Canada, the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije University in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
During his time as the Economic Policy Director of IISD, Dr Duraiappah’s work focused on the analysis of the Human Well-being Ecosystem Services Nexus. He extended Amartya Sen’s Capability-Freedom framework to include the role of institutions in the provisioning of instrumental freedoms for the sustainable use of ecosystem services.
He was a Coordinating Lead Author for the chapter on Human Well-being and Response Actions for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA). Dr Duraiappah was also the co-chair of the Biodiversity Synthesis working group of the MA. Much of his work relates to the equitable dimension of the access and use of ecosystem services. He is the author of a book on climate change and international aid published in 1993. He has also written a second book on environment and development published in 2003, as well as numerous articles in internationally recognized journals.
Dr Duraiappah is a founding member of the Human Development and Capability Association and served as its first treasurer. The Association was formally founded in 2004 with Amartya Sen as its first president. He is also a Scientific Committee Member of DIVERSITAS, an international Programme of biodiversity science which, along with IHDP, is one of the four Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) partners.