The powerful beauty of the Himalayas and their vulnerability to destructive human activity has never been far from Professor Bhaskar Vira’s thoughts during the four decades he’s worked as an economist, researcher and educator.

The Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education at the University of Cambridge since 2023 is keeping faith with a life-long love for the natural world and a determination to tackle the climate and nature crises, as he now adds responsibility for 'Environmental Sustainability' to his portfolio.

An economist who led the University’s Department of Geography from 2019-22, Bhaskar came to academia with a deep understanding of humanity’s impact on nature after a childhood in the panoramic foothills of the Himalayas and dense jungles of central India.

“I think some of my early influences showed that the natural world was important to us but also very fragile and that we had to do something to protect it.” 

As a boy, Bhaskar watched a mining operation strip bare the bucolic hillside above his school and awoke to climate change as the burning issue of his teens.

Then, as an undergraduate, he read the UN’s groundbreaking 1987 Brundtland report, which set out humanity’s plight in stark terms.

“I've spent a lot of my career thinking about how to convert that instinctive commitment to nature into something that is meaningful in terms of my own work.”

Bhaskar’s work has always ranged across academic disciplines in an effort to strive for impact, whether it’s on nature, in education curriculum, public policy or community outreach. He places a lot of stock in the collegiate structure, having been an undergraduate and doctorate at St John’s, and now a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College.

Bhaskar is a champion of academic freedom, Cambridge researchers, staff and students. And like many of his colleagues, he won’t be tied down to just one narrow focus.  

In 2019-20, he helped to create Pani Pahar - the Water Curriculum, a curriculum resource that was based on a UKRI-funded research project on water security in the Indian Himalayas. The resource is now being used to deliver a central education platform within a programme of tree plantation drives, waste management and recycling that engages students, communities, village councils and towns in the northeastern Indian state of Nagaland.

Currently, alongside his leadership and teaching roles at Cambridge, he continues to retain his commitment to using scholarship to inform policy and public debate. Having previously curated a photo exhibition as part of the Pani Pahar project, he has just started working on a Discovery Channel series on the environmental challenges facing India.

That knowledge, energy and drive makes Bhaskar characteristically hopeful about the task in hand as he becomes the first Cambridge Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Environmental Sustainability.

His brief is to develop an academic strategy that will integrate and enhance the University’s interdisciplinary research strengths, capabilities and ambitions and will encompass its educational offerings and outreach activities.

Is he daunted by the scale of the challenge?

“I increasingly think that most of the biggest challenges are no longer technical, but they're really political, social and economic.”

And he says that the centuries-old Cambridge structure with its 31 colleges, broad range of academic pursuits, enviable academic freedom and keen emphasis on encouraging researchers to collaborate with colleagues across multiple disciplines from physics to fine art history (known as interdisciplinarity) is one of its key strengths. 

“So, I think we've got all the ingredients in place to make a really meaningful contribution.”

Bhaskar is clear that tackling the climate and nature crises is at the top of the University’s strategic priorities alongside cancer, artificial intelligence and widening participation, reflecting the expectations of Cambridge researchers, staff, students, alumni, supporters, business partners and governments.

“We're doing this both because we genuinely care and feel that this is important, and also because society expects institutions like ours to make a difference.”

His strategic vision for the University is to lean into the engine that powers Cambridge, the fiercely independent people and institutions that have produced 125 Nobel laureates, developed the theory of evolution, split the atom, cracked the genetic code of DNA and helped to create better lives for millions.

“One of the greatest sources of energy in this place is the bottom-up vision of people who are doing amazing work, so part of what I think we need to do is to harness that energy and make that bigger than the sum of its constituent parts.”

His plan is to encourage every part of Cambridge to always push towards the frontiers in efforts to address climate change and biodiversity loss. Key to that strategy is encouraging interdisciplinarity, providing incentives and removing obstacles to progress.

“I don't want to be complacent, but I think there's hope. I'm really confident that with the right incentives in place, people can actually make a difference.”

Professor Bhaskar Vira is the University of Cambridge's Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Environmental Sustainability, and Professor of Political Economy at the Department of Geography. He is a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College and an alumnus of St John's College.

Published: 21 October 2024

Interview and words: Paul Casciato
Design: Alison Fair
Photography: Natalie Sloan-Glasberg
Editor: Louise Walsh

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