Dr. Srikumar Chattopadhyay, M.Sc and Ph.D in geography,  post doctoral Fulbright Fellow; former Scientist (Director Grade) and Head, Resources Analysis Division, National Centre for Earth Science Studies; ICSSR Senior Felow, Centre for Development Studes;  Fellow, Hanse-WissenschaftsKolleg Institute for Advanced Studies, Delmenhorst, Germany, has joined the Gulati Institute for Finance and Taxation as an ICSSR National Fellow.

His work area covers evaluation and management of environmental and natural resources, particularly land and water, regional analysis, terrain analysis, land use studies, river basin analysis, urbanization, sustainable development, decentralized planning, participatory panchayat resource mapping, and river bank mapping. During last couple of years, he is working in the areas of human dimension of environmental change, river restoration, urban water management and water governance. 

In GIFT, He will be working on a project titled ‘River restoration and water governance in urbanising landscape of India: A co-evolutionary framework for sustainable urban water management’.  This project proposes  (i) to review urban water governance in India and scope of river restoration, (ii) to identify key issues related to environmental, socio-economic and governance for protection and restoration of urban rivers based on existing selected cases studies in different parts of the country, (iii) to work out a co-evolutionary framework for urban  river restoration  and finally (iv) to develop a step by step methodology for participatory river restoration programme involving technical and non technical actors and local self government institutions as part of co-evolutionary framework using real time data from Thruvananthapuram city. This is a two year programme primarily based on archival work.

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