Rina Saeed Khan

Rina Saeed Khan is an award-winning environmental journalist/consultant based in Islamabad, Pakistan and currently a member of the Prime Minister’s National Climate Change Council. In November 2020 she was appointed Chair of the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) by the federal cabinet. IWMB is responsible for the management of the Margallah Hills National Park and the upcoming Margallah Wildlife Centre (to be built on the site of the old Marghazar Islamabad Zoo).

Rina began her career in journalism in 1992 when she joined The Friday Times, Pakistan’s first independent English weekly newspaper, where she served as Features Editor till 1998. From 1998 onwards she began working as a consultant in communications with the UNDP in Pakistan and WWF-Pakistan, travelling across Pakistan to visit project sites and writing reports and articles.

Rina completed her BA from Grinnell College, USA in 1991 and in 2000 got her MA degree in Environment and Development from the London School of Oriental and African Studies as a Chevening Scholar. She has received international awards like the Earth Journalism Award in Copenhagen during the UN Summit on climate change in 2009. Rina wrote a popular weekly column on the environment called Earthly Matters for DAWN, Pakistan’s largest circulation English-language national daily for over 10 years.

She currently writes blogs for Express Tribune and articles for Reuters Alertnet in addition to her duties as Chair of IWMB. She has also trained other journalists in climate change reporting for the Heinrich Boll Foundation from 2015 to 2019. Rina has attended the annual UN Climate Change Conference or COP21 in Paris, COP22 in Marrakesh, COP23 in Bonn, COP24 in Katowice and COP25 in Madrid in 2019 as a journalist and filed reports for DAWN, Reuters and Express Tribune on the international climate negotiations.

She has also co-authored a book on the environment in Pakistan, published in 2016 by Oxford University Press entitled: “Water in the Wilderness: Life in the Coast, Deserts and Mountains of Pakistan”. Her second book, “From Mountains to Mangroves: Protecting Pakistan’s Natural Heritage” was also published by OUP in 2017. She also toured the USA in July 2019 along with other selected journalists from water scarce countries on an invitation by the US Foreign Press Center on “Water: Creating a More Water Secure Future”.