Executive Committee (2024-2026)

Seema’s teaching, research, and practice revolve around the interface of society, political economy, and ecosystems. Currently, she is focusing on farmer-consumer and rural-urban interfaces as also tribal social-ecological systems. She has studied at Kerala Agricultural University, University College London and Forest Research Institute and worked with a state government, with NGOs, at Institute of Economic Growth and at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. Seema is also active in the Network of Rural and Agrarian Studies.

Manjula is faculty, at School of Development, Azim Premji University. She is an Agricultural Economist by training and comes with long years of experience of connecting research and practice in the field of sustainable rural livelihoods. Her specific research interests are in the field of sustainable production systems, community- based adaptation to climate change, agrobiodiversity and natural resource conservation, ecology, gender and political economy of resource access. She has published journal papers, book chapters and research reports in these areas. She has coordinated research projects supported by various multilateral organizations, government agencies, and international/national donor agencies. She has more than two decades of programme management, organization, and coordination skills in the development sector. Her practice is largely in the interface of gender and agriculture and farming systems, with specific focus on the ecology-economy trade-offs.

Dr. Shyamasree Dasgupta is an Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology Mandi. She has completed Ph.D. in Economics from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India with SYLFF Fellowship. Shyamasree’s area of research includes energy, environment and climate change. Currently her research focuses on climate related vulnerability and adaptation mechanisms in South Asia. She has published in journals such as Energy Policy, Energy Economics, Natural Hazards, Development Engineering, etc

Dr Arabinda Mishra is a trained economist with over 30 years of professional experience in inter-disciplinary research, capacity building, and policy engagement in areas of sustainable development, livelihoods, adaptation to climate change impacts, and community resilience building. He has served in leadership roles across multiple institutions of repute such as the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) at Kathmandu, Nepal, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and TERI University, both at New Delhi, and the Centre for Multi-disciplinary development Research (CMDR) in Karnataka, India. From May 2015 to May 2022 he was serving at ICIMOD in Nepal as the Livelihoods Theme Leader. Before joining ICIMOD in June 2015, he was Dean of the Faculty of Policy and Planning, TERI University (2005-2015) and had the concurrent responsibility of Director, Earth Science and Climate Change Division in The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) during 2008–2013 at New Delhi, India. Prior to joining TERI University, he was a Fellow at the Centre for Multi-disciplinary Development Research (CMDR) in Karnataka, India from 2001 to 2005. From 1991 to 2001, Dr Mishra was in the Odisha Education Service. Presently he is part-time affiliated to Population Council Consulting (PCC) as a Senior Advisor and is also a consultant on climate change to organizations like the Asian Development Bank, Manila, and the Institute of Economic Growth (IEG), New Delhi. Dr Arabinda is a Fellow of SANDEE (South Asia Network of Development and Environmental Economists) and was an Executive Committee Member of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE) in 2010.

Dr. Bahinipati is working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, India. Over the years, he has been working on research areas related to the economics of climate change, environmental economics, behavioural economics, natural resource management, and development economics. He has published several research papers in peer-reviewed journals like Environmental Development, World Water Policy, Nature Climate Change, Climate Risk Management, Scientific Reports, Ecology, Economy and Society, Food Security, Land Use Policy, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, International Journal of the Commons, Climate and Development, etc. These studies received financial support from various national and international agencies such as ICSSR, SANDEE, OECD, APN-GCR, IGES, JSPS, etc. I have been involved in two Indo-Dutch research projects related to water-related disasters supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Government of India, and the Dutch Research Council (NWO). I am also involved in the DST Center for Policy Research on Energy Transition and Tribal Education, NISER Bhubaneswar. I have already served as an EC member on INSEE during 2022-24.

Shreekant Gupta is Visiting Senior Fellow, Centre for Social and Economic Progress (formerly Brookings India) and Executive Education Senior Fellow, LKY School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore (NUS). Earlier he was Professor at Delhi School of Economics (DSE), University of Delhi. In addition to DSE, Professor Gupta has taught at NUS, Nazarbayev University, JNU and University of Maryland, and worked as an economist in the Environment Department at the World Bank in Washington DC. He served on the Economic Options Committee of the Montreal Protocol and was Coordinating Lead Author and Lead Author for 5th and 6th Assessment Reports, respectively, of IPCC. His research interest is in environmental economics with a focus on the economics of climate change. He has published in journals such as Climate Policy, Climate Change Economics and is an Associate Editor of Climatic Change (Springer). He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland and was Fulbright Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Shastri Fellow at Queens University, Canada.

Professor Gupta served as INSEE President (2020-2022) and Vice-President (2018-2020).

Website: https://csep.org/team/shreekant-gupta-2
Google Scholar here
ResearchGate here

Porf. Sanatan Nayak is teaching economics at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow at present. Previously, he has worked at National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR), Hyderabad and Giri Institute Development Studies (GIDS), Lucknow. He teaches advanced micro-economics, environmental economics and econometrics. The scholar has been working in various issues such as land, water, sanitation, and climate change along with the sponsorship of National and International agencies. He has received several institutional awards including Dr. N.A. Muzumdar Award by ISAE, Fellow award by IWRS, Best Academic and Research Excellence award by BBAU. In addition, he has wide range administrative experiences such as Head in the Department, Member and Chairman in various committees at University level, Finance Officer (I/C) of BBAU for two years, expert and member in various committees to the Government of Uttar Pradesh and other state governments.

Dr. M. Soubadra Devy started her career studying biodiversity and species interactions in the tall canopies of wet evergreen forests of the Southern Western Ghats. This pioneering effort won her the Lowell Thomas Award for outstanding exploration from the Rolex-Explorers’ Club in 2006. Later, recognizing that critical conservation issues lie outside protected areas, she, along with her students, initiated work on the sustenance of biodiversity and pollination services in `nature and agriculture’ coupled systems in human-dominated spaces ranging from tea-forestscapes, orange-forest fragments, Chayote squash-urban national park, to urban agriculture. Her approach to research is interdisciplinary, leading her to work in collaboration with economists, sociologists and community leaders. Currently, her research is focused on reimaging green spaces in cities to foster pollinators and biodiversity. Her recent interest is in the eco-restoration of lake shores and riparian vegetation of rivers, recognising that these are important zones that serve as biodiversity refugia. Restoring them is as important as improving water quality, particularly in a human-dominated matrix. She is currently involved in the restoration of Venkateshpura Lake in North Bangalore and the riparian area of River Tamiraparani in South Tamil Nadu.