Indian scientist Rasik Ravindra has been unanimously elected as member of the UN’s body focussed on oceans and law of the sea.
Ravindra, India’s candidate for member of the Commission on the Limits of Continental Shelf (CLCS), was elected during the 24th Meeting of States Parties of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on Thursday.
He secured support of all the 111 members present and voting. His term in the CLCS will be till June 15, 2017. The election, in which there were seven contenders, was to fill the vacancy in the CLCS following the resignation of Indian scientist Rajan Sivaramakrishnan in February this year.
Ravindra is one of India’s highly qualified scientists and has extensive experience in different spheres of geosciences. He has served as Director of National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR) from 2006-2012 and has been a professional geologist with the Geological Survey of India from 1971 to 2005.
He has extensive experience spanning over four decades in different spheres of geosciences including geological investigations in the terrains of Antarctica, Bhutan and India.
As NCAOR’s director, he had been responsible for conducting the marine geophysical surveys and analysing the results for establishing the outer limits of the continental shelf of India.
He also spearheaded the climate change research in the polar regions of Arctic and Antarctic. His expertise in geological exploration in high altitude and inaccessible terrain was utilised in Bhutan Himalayas and Polar regions of Arctic and Antartic where he led several scientific expeditions to elucidate geology and tectonic set-up of the inhospitable terrain.
