Krishna K Shrestha - Architecture

Collaborative planning for environmental justice

Dr Shrestha’s research interests are in the politics of collaborative planning and management of natural resources and socio-environmental justice. He focuses on analysis of socio-ecological dynamics using a multi-scale perspective where a central theme is the role of unequal power relations in creating politicised environments.

His research – mostly in south Asia (Nepal and India) and Australia – is concerned with the problems of equity in collaborative environmental planning and management and employs a ‘critical realist’ approach to analyse environment and development problems.

Shrestha’s previous research on collective human behaviour and socio-environmental equity in community-based natural resource management has made a major contribution to sustainability debates and policy initiatives. His research into Nepalese community forestry pointed to the problem of forest decentralisation policies and bureaucracy, by showing the pitfalls of policies associated with egalitarianism, standardisation and formalism.

Shrestha’s research has identified a paradox between equity and equality. This concerns the fair distribution of environmental costs and benefits where powerful vested interests can lead to a disproportionate share of the costs. And even when the distribution of environment costs and benefits is equal, strong evidence exists that disadvantaged social groups bear greater costs because they start from a significant pre-existing socioeconomic inequality base in terms of access to environmental resources.

Shrestha’s current work examines the interplay between equity and climate change adaptation with a particular focus on formal and informal institutions at the local level and how they can help shape and enhance the adaptation policies to help poor and minority groups adjust to climate change.