Dipak Gyawali

Dipak Gyawali is a hydroelectric power engineer and a political economist who, during his time as Nepal’s Minister of Water Resources in 2002/2003, initiated reforms in the electricity and irrigation sectors focused on decentralization and promotion of rural participation in governance. He also initiated the first national review and comparison of Nepali laws with the guidelines of the World Commission on Dams.

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Mr. Gyawali has been a visiting professor at the UN University in Japan as well as a research scholar at the East-West Center in Hawaii, the Queen Elizabeth House in Oxford, the London School of Economics, and the International Environment Academy in Switzerland. His research focuses on the interface between technology and society as related to water and energy issues.

 

Mr. Gyawali has served on several government commissions related to Himalayan water and energy resources development; has served as a member of the panel of experts for the Mekong River Commission reviewing its basin development plan; has published extensively both academically and in the popular press on water resource, environment and development issues; was the founding chair of the poverty alleviation focused NGO, Rural Self Reliance Development Center; and is the founding chair of Nepal’s first liberal arts college, the Nepa School of Social Sciences and Humanities. In addition, he is a guest senior research scholar with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, and a member of the Global Forest Expert Panel on Forests and Water set up by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO). In addition, he serves as advisor to Nepali associations such as Biogas Support Program and to international organizations such as The STEPS Center/University of Sussex and UN World Water Assessment Program (Perugia, Italy).

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His most recent publication is Aid, Technology and Development: The Lessons from Nepal.