Introducing Ankit Sikarwar: Satellite Insights and New Approaches to Environmental Inequality

Growing up in a village in India, I saw how environmental problems - like air pollution, water shortages, and extreme heat - weren’t just technical or scientific issues, but deeply social ones. While everyone is affected by these challenges, some are hit much harder - especially poorer households and those living in informal or hard-to-reach areas. These everyday realities stayed with me. Over time, and with my academic training in demography and geography, I became increasingly interested in understanding how environmental challenges overlap with such inequalities.

I was first trained in geography at the M.S. University of Baroda, and then specialized in population studies at the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) in Mumbai. Later, I did a postdoc at the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris. I have been fortunate to work across disciplines and collaborate with institutions in India, France, and the U.S., which has really shaped my interdisciplinary perspective.

I work extensively with geospatial and statistical tools. My focus is on integrating satellite data with conventional demographic datasets. This approach allows me to explore complex questions about environmental risks and social inequalities in innovative and data-rich ways.

I develop new indicators of environmental exposure and inequality using fine-resolution spatial data. I am particularly interested in methods that help us quantify multiple environmental burdens and how they interact with social vulnerabilities.

My research (together with my co-author/s) has produced key insights into complex environmental inequalities. For example:

• In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people living under at least three overlapping extreme environmental risks surged from 47 million to 292 million between 2000 and 2019,
• The positive impact of greenness exposure in reducing COVID-19 mortality risks was moderated by material deprivation, underscoring the need to consider socio-economic contexts in environmental health studies,
• Peri-urbanization in some villages of Gujarat, India, significantly devalues female labor participation, challenging conventional narratives around urban growth and gender equity.

How do multiple risks - environmental, social, and infrastructural - interact to affect health and well-being? And how can we design context-sensitive thresholds or indicators to better target action, especially in low-and middle-income countries where the challenges are more acute and solutions often limited?