Kelly Levin is a senior associate with WRI’s major emerging economies objective. She leads WRI’s Measurement and Performance Tracking Project, which builds capacity in developing countries to create and enhance systems that track emissions reductions associated with low-carbon development goals. She closely follows the negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and analyzes related emissions reduction targets and actions. Kelly has conducted an annual review of climate change science for WRI since 2005. She was also the Research Director and lead author of the 2010-2011 World Resources Report, which was dedicated to climate change adaptation, and specifically to how governments can improve decision making in a changing climate.

Kelly pursued her doctoral work at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where her research focused on adaptation policies to contend with climate impacts to biodiversity. During her PhD studies, she was also a writer for the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) Reporting Services, covering biodiversity and climate change meetings, including the UN climate change negotiations. Kelly has also worked as a climate policy/technical analyst at NESCAUM (Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management), where she devoted her time to developing a regional greenhouse gas registry in the Northeast and assisting states in the development of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

Kelly holds a PhD and Master of Environmental Management from Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a B.A. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Yale College. She has been awarded the Google Climate Science Communication Fellowship and the Academic Council on the United Nations System Dissertation Award, and is a Switzer Fellow, Teresa Heinz Scholar, and Udall Scholar. Kelly’s publications can be found in Climate Policy, Global Environmental Politics, the Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research, International Forestry Review, Policy Sciences, among other journals.