Radhika Lal

Radhika Lal joined UNDP’s Bangkok Regional Hub as SDG finance policy advisor and team lead in December 2019. Prior to this, she served as economic policy advisor with UNDP Ghana; strategic planning advisor for the UN country team in South Africa; senior policy advisor and team co-lead at the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) in Brazil and as a policy advisor in various capacities with UNDP’s policy bureau in New York. Prior to working with UNDP, she taught economics at graduate and undergraduate levels as well as economic literacy in more informal institutional settings; she also undertook applied research and worked with various NGOs on strategic advocacy issues.

 

By training she is a political economist, who is both passionate and practical about development, connecting the dots, institution strengthening and working collaboratively. Her experience and interests encompass a focus on macro and meso economic policies; integrated policy and programming to address the intersection of economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development and SDGs; promoting effective and innovative data production and use, including through support to national and sub-national planning entities and statistical authorities; and collaborative support on bringing SDGs and NDCs closer together, combined with a focus on impactful financing for development, SDG budgeting, fiscal space and fiscal incidence analysis; informed by development innovation and the use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs); and within the inclusive development space, with a strong focus on the jobs agenda and social protection. 

 

She is particularly interested in engaging in ways to strengthen macroeconomic, social and environmental resilience, and measures to support and finance a jobs-rich and equity enhancing development agenda, including through adaptive programming and collaborative endeavours. Previously, she engaged in the co-design process of an innovative multi-stakeholder Waste Recovery Platform in Ghana, initiated a programme on economic, social and eco-innovations whilst in Brazil. Radhika has a MA degree in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University in India.