Sameer Akbar is a Senior Environmental Specialist with the World Bank. He joined the World Bank in 1998 in India, after having working in academia in the UK, and in environmental consulting with a leading international NGO in India. Since 2019, he has held the position of Senior Environmental Specialist in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Region of the World Bank and is based in Vienna. He coordinates the activities of the World Bank’s Environment, Natural Resources, and Blue Economy team in the Western Balkans.

During his career at the World Bank, Mr Akbar has worked on issues of corporate priority in headquarters, as well as in operations in the regions - namely in South Asia, Africa, Middle East, and ECA. For the first ten years of his career with the World Bank he worked out of India on environmental risk management in investment and reform projects across sectors – like energy, transport, agriculture, urban, and water. He moved to Washington DC in 2008 and was part of the team that put the climate change agenda at the World Bank on a firm foundation. He led the team that was responsible for creating the system for greenhouse gas accounting of World Bank operations. In 2018 he moved to the ECA region and has since worked on investment lending, policy reforms, and technical assistance projects in the areas of clean air, land remediation, circular economy, green growth, and climate mitigation and adaptation. Over the years he has contributed extensively to analytical work at the World Bank, and provided advisory services to client countries, particularly in EU member states and the Middle East.

Mr Akbar holds a BSc in mechanical engineering from Aligarh Muslim University in India, a MSc in aerospace and mechanical engineering from the University of Oklahoma in the USA, and a PhD in environmental health and public policy from Imperial College in the UK.