Moderator

Dipak Gyawali, a hydroelectric power engineer (Moscow Energy Institute) and a politicaleconomist (UC Berkeley), is Academician of the Nepal Academy of Science and Technologyand former Chair of Nepal Water Conservation Foundation. He was Nepal’s Minister of WaterResources in 2002/03 and has been an advisory board member of STEPs Center/IDS Sussex,Stockholm World Water Week, UN World Water Assessment Program, as well as US PacificNational Northwest Lab’s multi-country study Human Choice and Climate Change. In 2006, hechaired a multi-expert team that reviewed the EU’s global water research. He was also a memberof an independent external evaluation committee for UNESCO and the Dutch government (2007)which reviewed institutional arrangements of the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education atDelft, and has chaired the review of UNESCO’s Sixth Phase of its International HydrologicalProgram (2011). Till recently, he co-chaired Climate Action Network South Asia. His researchfocus is on the interface between society and resources, mostly water and energy, which heexamines from the perspectives of Cultural Theory.