Water and Development
A hydroelectric power engineer as well as a resource economist, Dipak Gyawali is a member of the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology as well as the research director of the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation and the editor of its interdisciplinary journal, Water Nepal. His research interests are around society-technology interface, primarily around water and energy issues. He was Nepal's Minister for Water Resources in 2002/2003 and is currently vice-chair of the technical committee of UN's Third World Water Assessment. He was one of the initiators of Duryog Nivaran, a South Asian initiative promoting an alternative perspective on disaster mitigation. Mr Dyawali is also founding chair of Swabalamban, a poverty alleviation program of "sustainable development of the poor by the poor" in Nepal. Mr. Gyawali has been a visiting scholar at the International Environment Academy in Geneva, the London School of Economics and was a member of the International Advisory Board of Battelle Pacific Northwest National Lab (USA), known for its state-of-the-art study on human choice and climate change as seen by the social sciences. His publications include Rivers, Technology and Society (Zed Books, London, 2003).