Dear friends,

Greetings from the SANDEE secretariat and welcome to the first edition of our new newsletter! As our well-wishers know, SANDEE was officially integrated into ICIMOD in July 2017, having been hosted on the ICIMOD premises since 2008. We were previously hosted – in fact from our inception in 1999 – by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Since integrating into ICIMOD, we have expanded our membership to Afghanistan, China, and Myanmar to reach more of the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region. We continue our fundamental mission to help researchers build their research capacity and academic leadership through research grants, mentoring, and rigorous training. We organized our first events in the extended working area, with workshops in Myanmar in August 2019 and in China in December 2019.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have attempted to keep our work going by conducting our activities online. At the moment, we have over 20 ongoing research projects throughout South Asia. We have also successfully completed the IDRC-funded research project on “Climate Change and Cities” (2017–2020). However, we were unable to organize our flagship programme – SANDEE Summer School – and the SANDEE@20 Conference has also been postponed.

In 2020, we lost one of our own: Prof. Karl-Goran Maler, a SANDEE co-founder. Prof. Maler co-founded SANDEE with Prof. Partha Dasgupta in 1999 and mentored many researchers working in environmental and development economics in South Asia. We organized an online memorial meet on 20 June 2020 in memory of Prof. Maler. SANDEE also lost two other prominent economists and dear friends, Dr Narpat S Jodha and Prof. A Vaidyanathan, who supported SANDEE in various capacities.

To better understand SANDEE’s impact on research, publications, and adopting environmental economics courses in universities across South Asia, we conducted a tracer survey of SANDEEites in 2019. The results are heartening and are highlighted in a separate section below.

Finally, we thank our funding partners, resource persons, reviewers, researchers, and well-wishers for helping us develop research capacity, academic leadership, and evidence base in South Asia and HKH, all towards addressing environmental and development challenges.

Best regards,
Mani Nepal

Priya Shyamsundar shares fond memories of Prof. Karl-Göran Mäler and his profound contributions to building and growing SANDEE. Read the whole article here.

Gopal Kadekodi recalls Prof. A Vaidyanathan’s life, career, and contributions in grooming SANDEE in its early days. Read the whole article here

Kanchan Chopra recalls Dr Narpat Jodha’s life, career, and contributions to SANDEE. Read the whole article here