Lama Elhatow

At Johns Hopkins, Lama Elhatow is a Program Coordinator and lecturer for the MS in Environmental Sciences and Policy and MS in Energy Policy and Climate programs.

Elhatow has more than 15 years of experience working in the environmental field, including more than 12 years with the World Bank Group, working as an environmental and social specialist at the International Finance Corporation. Elhatow’s specialization is in climate change and water resources, with a specific emphasis on transboundary water management. Tackling projects in manufacturing, infrastructure, services, and financial markets, Elhatow was responsible for ensuring compliance with the IFC’s Environmental and Social Performance Standards. She has worked on projects across the Middle East and North Africa, Pakistan, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. Elhatow’s projects often involved complex infrastructure, such as developing hydropower on a transboundary watershed in Pakistan or acting as project lead for the Benban solar park in Aswan, Egypt. Within IFC, she also focused on the Paris Alignment implementation for projects across all sectors. Elhatow was also a climate policy officer for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Conference of the Parties climate negotiations from 2009 to 2014, and again in 2022, working with governments to cut their greenhouse gas emissions while closely following both the mitigation and adaptation tracks.

Elhatow has a Bachelor of Science in construction engineering and a Master of Science in environmental engineering from the American University in Cairo, Egypt, as well as a PhD  in sustainability from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Elhatow is a passionate environmentalist and an avid learner of the complexities of our ecosystem and is often amazed at the interconnectedness of everything within it.

Featured Works

• “Climate Change as an Opportunity for Cooperation on the Blue Nile River Basin,” Lama Elhatow, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2023