Esha Zaveri is a Senior Economist in the World Bank’s Environment Department. Previously, she served in the Chief Economist’s Office of the Planet Vice Presidency. Her work centers on water resources, environmental health, and climate resilience, spanning global and country-level assessments across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. She uses econometric methods and data analytics to generate actionable insights that inform policy dialogue and decision-making.
She has authored numerous World Bank flagship reports, including on water scarcity (Uncharted Waters, 2017), water pollution (Quality Unknown, 2019), environmentally harmful subsidies (Detox Development, 2023), droughts (Droughts and Deficits, 2023), and most recently on the economics of a livable planet (Reboot Development, 2025). She also led flagship reports on water, migration, and development (Ebb & Flow, 2021), and on the economics of groundwater (The Hidden Wealth of Nations, 2023).
Her research has been published in leading scientific journals including Nature, Science, Nature Communications, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and her work has been covered in media outlets including Reuters, Bloomberg, The Economist, and The Guardian. Before joining the World Bank, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Center on Food Security and the Environment, where she remains an affiliated scholar.