Newcastle University under fire for naming oil heir Anant Ambani a sustainability professor

The university said the professorship recognised Ambani's "work in conservation, biodiversity protection, animal welfare, and environmental stewardship" and his "significant contributions to advancing a more sustainable future".

Ambani is the son of Mukesh Ambani, India's richest person, whose fortune was built primarily on oil and gas. Mukesh Ambani owns the world's largest oil refinery and has close ties to the ruling Bharatiya Janata party; he has publicly praised BJP policies, companies linked to his Reliance conglomerate have recently made significant donations, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended Anant Ambani's 2024 wedding in Mumbai.

Anant Ambani sits on the Reliance Group's executive board with responsibility for renewable energy and is estimated to be worth about £90bn. He also founded Vantara, a 1,400-hectare private zoo near the family's oil refining facilities in Gujarat. The zoo reportedly holds more than 150,000 animals, including 200 lions, 250 leopards and 900 crocodiles, and it hosted his pre-wedding celebrations, attended by celebrities and politicians.

Conservation groups have previously raised questions about how some of the animals were sourced, given that many are endangered species. Vantara has never been found guilty of any wrongdoing.

The appointment drew incredulity and derision from academic staff and from Indian and international conservationists and environmentalists.

Ramachandra Guha, the Indian public intellectual and author of "Speaking With Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism", called it "a rather mystifying choice". He said he could name at least 50, perhaps 100, individuals far better qualified for such an honour, including soil scientists, energy scientists, water conservation experts, community forest workers, ecologists and pollution abatement experts who had made tangible contributions to sustainability in India. "I wonder on whose advice Newcastle University has acted, and whether it did due diligence on what has and has not been done in these fields," he said, adding that the appointment was "puzzling in the extreme" and likely to affect the university's institutional credibility and intellectual standing.

Bhuvan Mangalore, an Indian illegal wildlife trade investigator completing a dissertation on Vantara at Anglia Ruskin University, responded: "Is this a joke?"

Matt Perry, chair of Newcastle University's University and College Union branch, said staff members had objected to the appointment on environmental grounds. Lyla Mehta, head of the climate, environment and sustainability department at the University of Sussex's Institute of Development Studies, said that as public funding for universities falls, "there is a real danger that billionaire and corporate money begins to shape academia". She added that universities are supposed to question power and hold corporations to account rather than give them academic legitimacy.

Lorne Stockman, a research co-director at Oil Change International, said that at a time when the climate crisis demands an urgent phaseout of oil and gas, publicly funded institutions must do better.

In April, Anant Ambani launched Vantara University, described as the world's first global university dedicated to wildlife conservation and veterinary science.

Questions about Vantara's animal imports have persisted. In 2025, an investigation by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung found that many animals delivered to the zoo arrived through countries with opaque wildlife trading networks, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the United Arab Emirates, raising concerns that endangered species may have been illegally trafficked. An investigation by India's supreme court that lasted less than three weeks in August last year cleared the zoo's operators of wrongdoing. A subsequent fact-finding mission by Cites, the UN body that regulates trade in endangered species, found that some permits used to bring animals to Vantara were likely forged. The report said there was "a need for caution to ensure that imports of large numbers of animals by these facilities are not inadvertently creating a demand for illegally sourced animals", and Cites recommended restrictions on India's imports of endangered wild animals. It later reversed that decision after objections from India, the US and Japan at a Cites meeting, where the three argued there was insufficient proof of illegal imports. In August, the zoo announced a "reset" of its operations and appointed a former Cites head to oversee them.