Sharachchandra Lele
Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Environment & Development, ATREE & Adjunct Faculty, IISER Pune
Sharachchandra (Sharad) Lele is currently the Distinguished Fellow in Environmental Policy & Governance at the Centre for Environment and Development of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) in Bengaluru. He is also Honorary Professor at Shiv Nadar University Delhi, where he is helping set up a new programme in Sustainability and Public Policy. Sharad has degrees IIT Bombay, IISc Bangalore, and UC Berkeley. He co-founded the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment & Development in Bengaluru in 2001, and led it till 2009, when it merged with ATREE. Sharad is an inter- and trans-disciplinary environmental researcher, keenly interested in the concepts of sustainability and sustainable and equitable development and their practical translation in the forest, water and energy sectors. His main interests are forest governance, landuse change, urban water management, and the environmental regulation of large infrastructure projects. He is Founder-Member and past President of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics, and has served as a Board member of the International Society for Ecological Economics, and serves or has served on the editorial boards of many interdisciplinary environmental journals. He is currently a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Land Programme. He is also heavily engaged in policy-related work at local, provincial and national levels in India, and is currently leading a major action-research programme on forest rights in central India.