Mahesti Okitasari is a Research Associate at UNU Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability based in Tokyo, Japan. She joined the Institute in 2014 as a JSPS-UNU Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Prior to joining UNU, she has several years of research and consulting experience in disaster management, regional planning, and housing policies in Indonesia.
Mahesti holds a PhD in urban planning from the University of Tokyo with a dissertation on the institutional implication of the decentralized system on the construction and practice of collaborative metropolitan governance in providing better public infrastructure. She is interested in understanding institutional architecture in the age of transition and how development policies are being applied to bridge the gap between social, economic, and environmental sustainability in the global South. Her current work includes assessing multilevel governance arrangements, policy processes and the politics to implement the 2030 Agenda and Paris Agreement, exploring the ways in which global agendas are translated into national and local development plans, researching gaps and opportunities in the urban sustainable consumption and production, and building knowledge on the partnerships and financing for the SDGs.
