Ligia Noronha is an economist with over 30 years of international professional experience in promoting environmental sustainability.
She was appointed in April 2014 as Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Division of Technology, Industry and Economics - now known as the Economy Division. The Division works to shift economies from brown to green with a strategic focus on decarbonizing, decoupling, and detoxifying. Ms. Noronha leads the work on extractives and the environment at UNEP. 
Prior to joining UN Environment, she served in The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) as Executive Director (Research Coordination) and as Director of the Division on Resources, Regulation and Global Security. Her work focused on conducting policy research on sustainable development in India and the Global South, with a focus on minerals development, energy and resource security, climate change, and coastal policy management. She was a member of Shell International’s External Review Committee on Sustainability Reporting,  served as a member of the Global Assurance Group of the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development project, which examined how the mining and minerals sector could contribute to the global transition to sustainable development.  Ms. Noronha has served on the National Security Advisory Board of the Government of India focusing on the linkages between the environment, climate and security and on several expert committees of the Government of India and Goa, including the Expert Committee on Climate Change, the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, and the Task Force on Natural Resources of the Commission on Centre State Relations.

Ms. Noronha is an Indian national with a master’s in economics from the University of Bombay, a Masters in Sea Use Law, Economics, and Policy, and a PhD from the London School of Economics.