Madhumitha (Madhu) is a climate and land justice advocate, having researched the socio-environmental impacts of Singapore’s use of sand for land reclamation. She has nine years of experience coaching businesses and organisations to awaken agency and systemic leadership in the face of climate breakdown and various other long-term realities.
She is a change designer, researcher and facilitator passionate about areas such as labour rights, biodiversity conservation and rethinking resource extractivism as part of achieving a just transition. She is currently a doctoral candidate for a joint PhD programme inquiring into circularity in critical minerals and sediment extraction with the Universities of Exeter and Queensland.
Previously, Madhu was a Principal Sustainability Strategist at Forum for the Future, where she led a programme on enabling food justice, called Protein Challenge Southeast Asia. Madhu also has extensive work experience in areas such as sustainable value chains and livelihoods, and radical decarbonisation. For two years prior to joining the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity as a Residential Fellow, she managed a first-of-its-kind pre-competitive collaboration with five palm oil manufacturers aimed at improving labour rights in the value chain. She has also designed, researched, and facilitated projects exploring just and sustainable futures for sectors including shipping, energy, agriculture, and textiles, in the Asia-Pacific region.
She is a Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Fellow, and received the Environment Special Award in the 2020 Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Awards for her work on sand extraction in Singapore and its impact on inequalities and the environment, and the cultural scripts in play around its use in her native country, which is the world’s largest importer of sand. She also supports and volunteers with local community groups such as Singapore Climate Rally (SGCR) and Ground-Up Initiative.
Madhu holds an honours degree in Political Science from the National University of Singapore, where she was part of the University Scholars Programme, and a MSc in Inequalities and Social Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Madhu’s dissertation on sand and Singapore for the MSc in Inequalities and Social Science was awarded the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre Postgraduate Dissertation Prize.
I believe lasting radical change comes from questioning why things are the way they are and envisioning how things can be done differently, and better. Inequality colours how we see the world, and questions can be powerful vehicles for change. I hold deep questions within me, from what my role in creating a more just society is, to what more ethical value distribution in agricultural supply chains could look like in the face of automation and an ageing workforce.Madhumitha Ardhanari