Rospidah Ghazali collaborated with UNRISD on the project Social Dimensions of Green Economy and Sustainable Development (2011-2012). For the project she authored the occasional paper "A Fair Green Economy? Studies of Agriculture, Energy and Waste Initiatives in Malaysia" (2011, No. 2).
At the time of her collaboration with UNRISD, she was a research fellow at the Institute for Environment and Development (LESTARI), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. She led a research team on food security studies involving paddy cultivators in irrigated and non-irrigated areas, as well as a study on the prospects for multifunctionality of irrigated paddy cultivation in Malaysia.