Akshay Chettri

Akshay Chettri comes from Darjeeling, a small town in the Eastern Himalayan region of India. He is a post-graduate in Natural Resources and Governance from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, and is currently part of the Conservation and Livelihoods team at Kalpavriksh Environment Action Group, Maharashtra, India, working on de-colonial conservation. Akshay has been documenting the declaration and expansion of Protected Areas in India, conservation-induced displacement, and the implementation status of the Forest Rights Act 2006. He is also involved in a landscape-level action research study in collaboration with the Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sangathan, a youth group of the pastoralist Van Gujjars in Uttarakhand, towards the assertion of their rights, their traditional and cultural worldviews and governance systems, with specific focus on youth and gender inclusivity. His academic interests are political ecology, human-wildlife interactions, traditional governance systems, community-led conservation, and forest rights, environmental laws and policies. He is a Commission member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Commission on Protected Areas (IUCN-WCPA). His hobbies and other interests include hikes and treks, birdwatching, nature, wildlife and landscape photography, and football.