Mr.
Madhukar Upadhya:
President,
ISET-Nepal;
Research Director, Nepal Water Conservation Foundation. Mr. Upadhya is a natural
resource management analyst; he obtained his Masters from Utah State University
on watershed science. As a senior Nepali government official, Mr. Upadhya
executed and monitored several projects in forestry, watershed conservation and
capacity enhancement of hill communities. He is currently working on a book, Purkhauli
Pani Byawasthapan ko Marma ra Badhi Pairoko Artha Rajnit (Landslides and
Ponds: The Political Economy of Floods and Landslides and the Importance of
Local Water Management), to be published in 2003. He has provided extensive
consulting services on bioengineering and watershed development both nationally
as well as internationally.
Mr.
Kunda Dixit:
Vice
President, ISET-Nepal; Editor, Nepali
Times (a weekly, English language newspaper). After
obtaining his Masters in journalism from Columbia University, Mr. Dixit
worked for the BBC World Service as a news reporter at the United Nations
Headquarters in New York. He served as the regional editor for the Asia-Pacific
for the Inter Press Service. On his return to Nepal in 1996, Mr. Dixit
established the regional office for the Panos Institute South Asia in Kathmandu.
He is author of the book Dateline Earth: Journalism As If The Planet
Mattered, and
co-publisher at Himal Media.
Mr.
Ajaya Dixit:
Secretary,
ISET-Nepal; Member of the Board, ISET; Founder & Director, Nepal
Water Conservation Foundation; Editor, Water Nepal, a journal addressing
Himalayan water and development; Chairman of the board of directors, Nepal Water
for Health (NEWAH), a Nepali NGO that has built water supply schemes serving
over 350,000 people in Nepal. Mr. Dixit taught hydraulics at Tribhuvan
University's Institute of Engineering until 1989 and recently authored the
current leading textbook in hydraulics, published in 2002, Basic Water
Science. He has worked extensively as a consultant on water resources and
environment for bilateral and multilateral organisations in Nepal. Mr. Dixit
served as a member of the National Preparatory Committee for the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development, Rio Conference (1992). He also
represented the private sector in His Majesty's Government of Nepal Water and
Energy Commission from 1994 to 1997.
Dr.
Sudhindra Sharma:
Treasurer,
ISET-Nepal;
Operations Director, Interdisciplinary Analysts; Executive Member of the
Board of Directors, Nepal Water Conservation Foundation. Dr. Sharma has a PhD in
sociology from the University of Tampere, Finland, and specialises in natural
resource management and the role of religion and values in the social
organisation of resource use. Dr. Sharma is currently a visiting scholar at the
Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. He has conducted
extensive research on the impacts of foreign (Finnish) development aid in Nepal
and on the sociology and anthropology of religion. He is author of the book Procuring
Water: Foreign Aid and Rural Water Supply in Nepal. Dr. Sharma has published
numerous papers and articles that have appeared in several peer-reviewed
journals.
Ms.
Kabita Rai: Ms.
Rai is a PhD student of sociology at the University of Bonn, Germany. She
previously worked as a social scientist in community development is areas such
as micro-hydro and energy-efficient systems. She is currently researching the
impacts of hydrological projects on local communities of western Nepal.
Mr. Umesh Pandey: Director, Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH), an NGO that aims to empower communities to build and manage their own drinking water and sanitation projects. Mr. Pandey has been managing and implementing water supply and sanitation programmes in rural Nepal. He is known for his ability to mobilise community resources and implement low-cost water and sanitation schemes. He obtained his Masters in economics from Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu.
Mr.
Dipak Gyawali:
Nepal’s former Minister for Water Resources; Executive Member of the Board,
ISET; Member of the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology and the New
York Academy of Sciences. Mr. Gyawali is also member of the International
Advisory Board of the US-based Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which
produced the study on Human Choice and Climate Change and member of the
International Research Committee of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies in
Colombo. Mr. Gyawali has served on several government commissions related to
Himalayan water and energy resources development in Nepal. He has published
extensively both academically and in the popular press on water resource,
environment and development issues. He helped found Nepal Water Conservation
Foundation. Until 1996, he served as Chairman of Grameen Swabalamban Bikas
Kendra, a grass-roots NGO working for rural poverty alleviation with 800 income
generating groups in 14 districts of Nepal. He has served as Chairman of Duryog
Nivaran, a South Asian initiative promoting alternative perspectives on disaster
mitigation, particularly floods, droughts and conflict-related stress.
Dr.
Rajendra Pradhan:
Dr. Pradhan is an anthropologist with varied interests. He has studied religion
amongst the Newars of Kathmandu, care for the elderly in a village in the
Netherlands and food and health beliefs and practices in southern Nepal. Dr.
Pradhan has been conducting research and training on the legal aspects of water
rights in Nepal since 1994. He is currently directing a research project on
gender and irrigation water rights, the history and anthropology of the
traditional stone waterspouts of Nepal, and the history of land, forest and
water management in Nepal. He has edited a number of books, including Legal
Pluralism and Unofficial Law in Social, Economic and Political Development
and Water, Land and Law: Changing Rights
to Land and Water in Nepal.
Mr.
Hari Roka:
PhD student of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and former
political activist. He has published several papers and articles on contemporary
Nepali politics.