Nadia B. Ahmad

Nadia Ahmad is a doctoral student at the Yale School of the Environment, studying with Daniel Esty and Gerald Torres. Her research and scholarly expertise center on the intersections of energy siting, the environment, and sustainable development, drawing on international investment law and corporate social responsibility. She has spent her academic career focusing on frontline communities that are the most vulnerable to energy production.  She is currently an Associate Professor of Law at Barry University and affiliated faculty at Harvard Law School's Institute for Global Law and Policy and Rutgers University's Center for the Security, Race and Rights.

Her doctoral dissertation project explores the idea of "Evacuation Waves" to collect and analyze data on early warning and rescue systems in the Caribbean Basin to hypothesize ways to equilibrate these notifications, evacuations, and recovery efforts. The long-term goal of the project is to show how deficiencies in energy access, housing, transportation, preexisting environmental conditions, healthcare access, and other variables can be overcome despite extreme weather events and rising seas.

She has also developed the concept of "Climate Cages" to highlight how public policy responses to atmospheric dynamics limit mobility, worsen prison conditions, and increase carcerality. She has researched how solutions to the climate crisis have led to the incarceration of Black and Brown people to maximize available land, space, and resources for those who are either more affluent and/or of the more preferred race, religion, and national origin.

A prolific scholar, she has published over 45 scholarly articles and book chapters that have appeared in leading journals of Duke University, Boston College, University of Virginia, University of North Carolina,  University of Miami, University of Kansas, Howard University, and the College of William & Mary. She is a co-author of the casebook, Environmental Justice: Law, Policy & Regulation (Carolina Academic Press, third edition). Earlier, she was a Visiting Associate Professor at Yale Law School and the inaugural Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Law at Pace Haub School of Law.

A frequent media commentator, Nadia is a three-time recipient of the Barbara L. Frye Award for journalism from the Florida Capitol Press Corp. She has been interviewed by and written editorials in various media outlets including CBS, PBS, CNN, Washington Post, TIME, The Hill, Politico, The Nation, Common Dreams, and Axios.

She is an official expert for multilateral development organization, International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation (INBAR) Taskforce on Bamboo for Renewable Energy (TFB4RE), which promotes environmentally sustainable development using bamboo and rattan. In addition, she serves as a Kerry Fellow at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, Council Member of the American Bar Association’s Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, and a member of the Academic Advisory Group for the International Bar Association's Section of Energy, Environment, Natural Resources and Infrastructure Law.