Mr. Saroj Kumar Jha is the Global Director for the World Bank Group’s Water Global Practice (GP). In his current assignment, Mr. Jha leads the Global Practice senior management team, which drives the policy direction of the Practice, oversees a portfolio of $27 billion in water-related investments, analytical work, multi-donor trust funds and global partnerships. Mr. Jha believes that solving the water crisis is central to the future of humanity on a livable planet, and this needs global, collective action to establish water security as a key pillar in national climate and development plans. Under Mr. Jha’s leadership, Water Practice is accelerating global and county level water action agenda for green, resilient, and inclusive growth, creating good jobs, and to tackle the water-climate-conflict nexus in shared river basins around the world.
Before this appointment, Mr. Jha was World Bank’s Regional Director of the Middle East Department based in Beirut(Lebanon), Senior Director for the Fragility, Conflict and Violence Global Practice at the World Bank Group, the World Bank’s Regional Director for Central Asia based in Almaty. In addition, Mr. Jha served as the Bank’s Global Manager for the Disaster Risk Management Practice and as Head of the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), which he founded in 2006.
Mr. Jha, an Indian national, joined the World Bank in 2005 as a Senior Infrastructure Specialist in the Sustainable Development Network, after working for the Government of India (1990-2005) in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), and United Nations agencies (1999-2004) as a senior executive in the field of public sector management, infrastructure financing, natural resources management, natural disaster prevention, and environmental sustainability.