Speaker details

Biography

I am an ecologist with more than 30 years of experience in ecological and policy-based research on forests, biodiversity, natural resources and climate change. I have worked for various nature-based research organizations and non-profits and have been the team leader of more than thirty assignments conducted in India, the US, Guyana and Fiji for clients such as UNDP, the World Bank, USAID, SIDA, JICA, GEF and MOEF&CC, amongst others. I am an alumnus of the Conservation Leadership Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society, USA, and the Chevening Programme UK. My research relates to the consequences of human activity on the ecology and management of forests and other ecosystems, and the dynamics of plant-animal interactions. I obtained my PhD in Ecology from the University of Illinois, Chicago where I studied the consequences of defaunation on forest dynamics in the foothill forests of the Eastern Himalaya and on resilience and redundancy in ecological systems. I have published over 30 papers in scientific journals and books on forest governance, ecology, shifting cultivation, community forestry, community-based conservation, and land management issues in India. I am currently a Senior Fellow at CEDAR, the Centre for Ecology Development and Research.