Dr. Anu Kumari Lama works as Tourism Specialist at ICIMOD and leads the Sustainable Mountain Tourism Component (SMTC). She collaborates with multi-stakeholder partners in Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan to co-develop research and policy designs and pilot interventions that help prepare the mountain tourism sector for a sustainable and climate-resilient future. She also works on heritage preservation, nature-based solutions and community-based tourism in Bhutan, India, and Nepal to safeguard heritage and help marginal communities adapt to and prepare for future climate and socio-economic changes.

Anu brings wealth of experience to her current position having spent almost two decades working in the field of sustainable tourism development. Her achievements include leading the development of Bangladesh’s first community-based tourism model village, Munlai, in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, successfully launching an entrepreneur-led sustainable business incubation service centre in Nepal – the Tourovation Hub (Tourism + Innovation), and establishing a network of community-based homestays in Bhutan, India and Nepal. She also contributed to tourism strategy and management plans of Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, and supported the development of the digital aggregator platform GreenHKH to promote Bhutan as a niche travel destination and build a network of green tourism businesses.

Anu applies her knowledge and expertise widely. She is one of the lead experts of the Tourism Panel on Climate Change (TPCC) and contributed to its Tourism and Climate Change Stocktake 2023. This work aligns with the UNFCCC 2023 Global Stocktake (GST) exercise and also contributes to ICIMOD’s Climate Action campaign. Further, she serves as external assessor of the Mountain Protection Award of the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (UIAA), as reviewer of the journal Current Research in Environmental Sustainability and a faculty member of the Himalayan University Consortium’s Thematic Working Group on Mountain Heritage and Tourism.

She holds a PhD in Regional Geography from Germany and a masters’ degree in Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management from New Zealand. Anu gained social science and climate action research experience at various academic institutions including Lincoln University in New Zealand, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and the Julius Maximilian Universität Würzburg in Germany.