Dr. Smriti Das is an Associate Professor in the Department of Policy Studies at TERI-SAS. Her research and scholarship are focused on areas at the interface of environment and development at local and regional scale. She specifically engages with topics such as environmental policy, processes and politics, forest policy and governance, institutional analysis, sustainable livelihoods and communities, decentralized governance, gender and resource politics. Her research is mostly interdisciplinary but for exploring some pertinent community questions, she uses ethnographic, historical and sociological methods. She also uses participatory methods in her research with the tribal and other marginalized communities. Some of her recently completed studies look at the land-water-community nexus in the mid-Ganga basin using a landscape approach; implementation of SDGs in the context of Delhi with specific reference to health and water and sanitation issues. With her doctoral researchers, she is exploring a range of topics such as gender and forest governance; unpacking of the concept of community in forest governance; mainstreaming climate change in local governance and planning. She has been tracking the implementation of the Forest Rights Act (2006) in India, from resource and institutional sustainability perspective. Dr. Das has taught courses such as public policy processes and politics, governance of natural resources, social research methods.

Publications:

• Jain, A. and Das, S., 2018. Crisis of the Forest Community in Post-colonial Indian Forest Policies and Laws, Environmental Sociology, Taylor and Francis, Published online: 13 Jul 2018
• Tyagi, N. and Das, S., 2018. Assessing Gender Responsiveness of Forest Policies in India, Forest Policy and Economics, Vol. 92, July 2018, pp 160-168.
• Tyagi, N. and Das, S., 2017. Gender Mainstreaming in Forest Governance: Analyzing 25 years of research and policy in South Asia, International Forestry Review, Volume 19, Number 2, pp. 234-244
• Das, S., 2012. Pressure for Conversion of Forestland to Non-Forest Uses in India, Chapter 8 in Deeper Roots of Historical Injustice: Trends and Challenges in the Forests of India, in Rights and Resources Initiative, Washington DC
• Das, S., 2010. The Strange Valuation of Forests in India, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 45, Issue 9, February 2010.
• Das, S and Narayanan, N.C., 2008. Alloyed Projects, Metalled Resistance: A Case of Bauxite Mining in Orissa. Book Chapter in Narayanan, N.C. (Ed), State, Natural Resource Conflicts and Challenges to Governance: where do we go from here?, Academic Foundation, New Delhi.