Kishan Khoday

UNDP Resident Representative

Kishan Khoday is Resident Representative for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Multi-Country Office in Jamaica, from where he represents UNDP in the Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Jamaica and Turks and Caicos Islands.

For over two decades, Kishan has been a champion for inclusive and sustainable development, serving with UNDP for the past 25 years in China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. He has coordinated over USD $1 Billion in local programming to combat poverty and exclusion, enhance systems of governance, expand climate action and ecosystem conservation, women’s empowerment, disaster risk reduction, and other priorities. Prior to joining the UN, Kishan worked with government and local community organizations in his home countries of Canada and India on issues of poverty reduction, ecological resilience and community empowerment.

Kishan has been a thought leader on the development agenda, publishing extensively on the planetary crisis, governance reform and the future of development, and speaking regularly at strategic policy dialogues to these and other priorities. Kishan is a scientist and lawyer by background, with expertise in climate change and ecosystem sustainability, constitutionalism and access to justice, postcolonial and decolonial pathways in the Global South, and resilience-based approaches to development. He holds a Juris Doctorate (US) specializing in constitutional, international and environmental law; a Master of Science (US) in resource management specializing in water and land governance; and a Bachelor of Science (Canada) in agriculture and ecological change.