Nareeka Ahir

Nareeka is a researcher of natural resource politics with a decade of experience in the energy and climate sector, most recently at the United Nations. 

Her work focuses on critical mineral development in Southeast Asia. She is a Bloomsbury Scholar based in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS University of London. The funded project is supervised by Dr Giuseppina Siciliano (Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Development, SOAS), Dr Izabela Delabre (Senior Lecturer in Environmental Geography, Birkbeck), and Professor Thomas Tanner (Director of CeDEP, the SOAS Centre for Development, Environment and Policy). Nareeka is a member of the SOAS Environment Cluster.

Nareeka’s project explores the sustainable development of rare earth and nickel markets in Malaysia and Indonesia, with a focus on mineral exploration and land acquisition processes in forested areas. She is developing a political ecology framework which draws on critical geopolitics and the politics of international climate change mitigation. She aims to conduct interviews with key stakeholders including mining companies, policymakers and community representatives, alongside geospatial analysis using GIS and document analysis. Her project situates Southeast Asia within the context of international critical mineral supply chain geopolitics involving the United States, China and Europe.

Nareeka’s research is supported by her professional experiences, most recently at the United Nations. At the UN, Nareeka worked on advancing just transition and economic diversification streams within the UN Climate Change Mitigation division (UNFCCC) in Bonn, Germany. She contributed to two UN publications and has attended three UN conferences, including COP29 in Baku, the SB 62 meetings in Bonn, and the Global Dialogue in Istanbul. Previously, Nareeka worked as a Senior Analyst at S&P Global Energy, where her research on oil geopolitics featured in articles by international news outlets including CNN and CNBC. She covered over twenty countries including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Libya and other OPEC+ producers.

Nareeka also writes for the Critical Minerals Association UK monthly newsletter, where she monitors global rare earth, nickel and cobalt markets. Nareeka’s project at SOAS has been shaped by her two years spent working in Singapore as a Commodities Consultant, where she developed technical expertise on Southeast Asian natural resources. She supported companies, banks and governments in the Asia Pacific region with strategic energy transition projects. She has experience in supply-demand modelling, commodity price forecasting and quantitative research.

Nareeka has a BSc in Geophysics from Imperial College London (Royal School of Mines, Department of Earth Science and Engineering). At Imperial, she gained technical expertise in mineral resource exploration, GIS mapping and quantitative modelling using Python. She has a MSc in Environment, Politics and Development from SOAS University of London (Department of Development Studies). During her MSc, Nareeka used conflict prevention literature to explore mineral regulations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with implications for cobalt markets.

• Critical minerals;
• Carbon markets;
• Natural resource politics;
• Resource governance; Land acquisitions;
• Land rights; just transitions;
• Green transitions;
• Political ecology;
• Climate change mitigation;
• Subsurface resource extraction;
• Environmental policy;
• Sustainable development