Dipak Gyawali
Guest Senior Research Scholar
Equity and Justice Research Group
Population and Just Societies
Biography
Dipak Gyawali is currently Pragya (Academician) of the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), where he is initiating the Colloquium on the Philosophy of Science and the Sociology of Technology. Currently he is on the technical advisory committee of UNESCO's World Water Assessment Program, advisory board of IDS Sussex STEPs Center, scientific program committee of Stockholm International Water Institute for its World Water Week, and a guest senior research scholar with the Risk and Resilience Program (RISK) at IIASA.A hydroelectric power engineer (Moscow Energy Institute, 1979) and a political economist (University of California at Berkeley under a Fulbright grant, 1986), he is a Cultural Theorist who worked with the late Mary Douglas using this neo-Durkheimian theory of plural rationalities or new institutionalism to explain resource conflicts. He conducts interdisciplinary research at the interface of technology and society, primarily on water, energy, natural resources as well as ethics and philosophy, from the perspectives of Cultural Theory.
He was Nepal's Minister of Water Resources in 2002/2003 during which period he chaired ex-officio the governing board of the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) as well as the Water and Energy Commission. As minister, he successfully completed the privatization of Butwal Power Company, introduced community electricity in Nepal giving control over local power distribution to the rural consumers, initiated a very indigenous review of the World Commission on Dams report in light of existing Nepali laws, and promulgated Irrigation Policy.
Professor Gyawali has been a visiting professor/senior research scholar as well as member of advisory boards, consultant and management specialist in various universities and international and civic organizations.He is Chair of the non-profit Nepal Water Conservation Foundation as well as Interdisciplinary Analysts. He chairs Nepal's first liberal arts college, the Nepal School of Social Sciences and Humanities, and was the founding chair of a grassroots voluntary NGO dedicated to the task of poverty alleviation, the Rural Self-Reliance Development Center (Swabalamban).
Last update: 13 MAR 2018
Publications
Russell, C., Gyawali, D., Linnerooth-Bayer, J., & Thompson, M. (2023). Disaster risk reduction reconsidered. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 96 e103895. 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2023.103895.
Beck, M.B., Thompson, M., Gyawali, D., Langan, S. , & Linnerooth-Bayer, J. (2018). Viewpoint – Pouring money down the drain: Can we break the habit by reconceiving wastes as resources? Water Alternatives 11 (2) 260-283.
Thompson, M., Beck, M.B., & Gyawali, D. (2018). Societal Drivers of Food and Water Systems 1: The Approach by Way of Material Flows, Household Consumption Styles, and Contending Schools of Engineering Thought. In: The Oxford Handbook of Food, Water and Society. Eds. Allan, T., Bromwich, B., Colman, A., & Keulertz, M., Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-066979-9 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190669799.013.48.
Beck, M.B., Gyawali, D., & Thompson, M. (2018). Societal Drivers of Food and Water Systems 2: Applying Plural Rationality to Some Wicked Problems. In: The Oxford Handbook of Food, Water and Society. Eds. Allan, T., Bromwich, B., Colman, A., & Keulertz, M., Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-066979-9 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190669799.013.62.