Community Natural Resource Management and Poverty in India

Shashidharan Enarth is Senior Advisor at the Institute of Livelihood Research and Training, Hyderabad. With over two decades of professional experience in development sector spread across three Indian NGOs-LOCOST, AKRSP and DSC-he has promoted programmes ranging from holistic health to natural resources development and good governance. He has also worked as a consultant to the World Bank on NRM programmes in Nigeria, Tanzania and India. After a PhD from University of British Columbia, he pursued research interests on decentralization, democratization and role of civil society in creating system changes. He was also closely involved in watershed and irrigation policy reforms and the introduction of Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) in various states of India. Jharna Pathak is Assistant Professor, Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad. Her research interests include dryland farming and institutions in managing natural resources. Dr Pathak is also a visiting professor at Gujarat University and various management institutes in Ahmedabad. Her research mainly concerns issues in policy and institutional development in the areas of managing natural resources, dryland agriculture, innovations in farms and agriculture and sustainable development. She has edited a volume of essays (jointly with Amita Shah) titled Tribal Development in Western India, (2014). Amita Shah is Professor of Economics and former Director of Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad. Her major areas of research are dryland agriculture and forestry, environmental impact assessment, gender and environment, agriculture-industry interface, employment and livelihood issues and chronic poverty. She has published several books and over 75 research papers in reputed journals. She has worked closely with a number of government, non-government and international organizations. She has also been a consultant to various donor agencies within and outside India. Madhu Verma is Professor, Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), Bhopal. She has 27 years of work experience with postdoctoral research work at University of California (Berkeley) and University of Massachusetts (Amherst), USA. She has more than 40 publications in international and national journals/books to her credit and has conducted projects on valuation, green accounting and payment for ecosystem services with the support of the World Bank, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), European Union (EU), Department for International Development (DFID), Asian Development Bank (ADB), International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Winrock International and various ministries of the Government of India, the National Forestry Commission and the 13th Finance Commission of India. She has also contributed to the world acclaimed projects on Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. John R. Wood is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver. He taught Comparative Politics with a special focus on India at UBC for 36 years and was Founder/Director of its Centre for India and South Asia Research. Throughout his career, he was involved with the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (SICI) which promotes academic exchange and research collaboration between India and Canada. He served as the Resident Director at SICI's India Office (New Delhi) between 1973-75, 1989-90 and 2004-06. He was the author of The Politics of Water Resources Development in India-The Narmada Dam Controversy (SAGE, 2007) and co-translator/editor of The Autobiography of Indulal Yagnik (2012).