Swathi Seshadri

Swathi Seshadri is Research Lead, Global Petrochemicals, at IEEFA. She examines the petrochemical industry’s financial dynamics, investment trends, and role in the fossil fuel value chain, with a focus on how public money flows into the sector and its implications for the energy transition. With over 25 years of professional experience, her career spans petrochemicals research, public finance accountability, and social justice advocacy.

She was the lead from IEEFA for the Global MDB Investments in Petrochemicals Tracker, an interactive public database mapping petrochemical financing by 16 multilateral development banks (MDB) across 93 projects worth over USD10 billion. Her research covers petrochemical market volatility and investment trends, the installed capacity of key petrochemical building blocks in India, the geopolitical implications of the Middle East crisis for India’s petrochemical and plastics sectors, and trade measures as a cornerstone of global regulation to curb plastic pollution. A long-time Observer to the UN Global Plastics Treaty negotiations, she has participated in multiple sessions of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), contributing economic analysis on plastic market trends, the case for production caps, and the role of trade provisions in a binding international instrument.

Previously, Swathi served as Director (Programs) and Team Lead, Oil and Gas, at the Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA), where she tracked the lifespan of plastics from extraction through production, consumption, and waste, mapped petrochemical infrastructure and investment across Asia-Pacific, and published on India’s petrochemical policy contradictions. Before her work in petrochemicals, she worked across a range of social justice issues, including mental health and disability rights, youth mobilisation, and assessing the impacts of tourism on affected communities, workers, and landscapes.

Swathi holds a Master’s degree in Commerce from Mumbai University and a Master’s degree in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.