Founder-member of the Indian environmental group Kalpavriksh in 1978-79 when he was in high school, Ashish studied Sociology and taught at the Indian Institute of Public Administration.

Ashish has been part of several movements including Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement). He has helped initiate several national and global forums, including the ICCA Consortium, Vikalp Sangam, Global Tapestry of Alternatives, Post-Development Academic-Activist Global Group, Radical Ecological Democracy, Rights of Rivers South Asia, and South Asia Bioregionalism Working Group. Currently, he helps coordinate several of these.

Ashish has served on the Boards of Greenpeace International and India, and the CBD Alliance. He was co-chair of the IUCN Inter-commission Theme on Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities and Protected Areas (TILCEPA), a member of the steering committees of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas as also the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy, and co-coordinator of the international project ‘Academic-Activist Co-generation of Knowledge on Environmental Justice (ACKnowl-EJ)’. He has taught as guest faculty at several universities around the world (including Mellon Fellow at Bowdoin College, USA), and is a Professor of Practice at the National Law University (Bengaluru). He serves on the International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature, and on the advisory team of the international project on ‘Producing Alternative Green Futures’.

Ashish has coordinated India’s National Biodiversity Strategy & Action Plan process and has been on Government of India committees to draft or review several laws and policies, including the Biological Diversity Act, the National Wildlife Action Plan, the Forest Rights Act. He has also served on the Government of India committee to evaluate river valley projects.

He has (co)authored or (co)edited over 35 books, including Churning the Earth: Making of Global India(with Aseem Shrivastava), Alternative Futures: India Unshackled (ed., with KJ Joy), and Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary (ed., with Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, Alberto Acosta). This includes two storybooks for children. He has also written over 600 articles in newspapers, magazines and journals.

Ashish is a keen photographer and doodler and has published outputs of these along with his articles in several media.

For more information, pl. see Ashish Kothari and the views expressed here are of the author and not necessarily of any organisation he is associated with.