Science, Environment and Development Group

Dr. Ashwini Chhatre
Center for International Development
Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
505 Rubenstein Building
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA
Tel: (1) 617-496-9330
Fax: (1) 617-496-8753
Email: ashwini_chhatre "at" ksg.harvard.edu
Group affiliation: Post-doctoral Research Fellow

Ashwini Chhatre is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Development and a doctoral candidate at the Department of Political Science, Duke University. His dissertation investigates the influence of democratic politics and electoral competition on the ability of rural communities to cooperate for natural resource management. With support from the National Science Foundation, he collected data on community-managed forestry, fisheries, and irrigation initiatives in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh in north India. Chhatre’s post-doctoral project conceptualizes the co-production of environment and development outcomes at local and higher scales as an interaction of demography, technology, and markets, and explores the role of democratic institutions in explaining variations in sustainable development. He will continue his work in India while developing comparisons with other countries. Chhatre has collaborated with Vasant Saberwal on the politics of biodiversity conservation and will Arun Agrawal on the role of property rights in explaining resource condition in the Western Himalayas. He worked as a trade union activist in central India, and a community organizer in Himachal Pradesh. He is a recipient of the F.K. Weyerhaeuser Forest History Fellowship (2004) and the NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (2004-06). Chhatre holds a degree in Economics from the University of Delhi. He enjoys cooking, walking, and tennis. CV.