Monday, 3rd October 2011, Paris
Joëlle Smadja :
Justice pending, tensions mounting : a glimpse at an inextricable situation around Kaziranga National Park in Assam (a report on a recent mission).
Joëlle Smadja is a geographer and senior researcher at CNRS in France, and former director of the Centre for Himalayan Studies. She has conducted research in Nepal for many years, in geomorphology as well as on land use, resource management, the population’s perceptions and representations of the environment, the consequences of environment protection policies for farmers and herders in very densely populated areas, territorial restructurings, etc. Since 2006 she has been carrying out similar research in North-East India. This research covers both the Himalayan part in Arunachal Pradesh and the Brahmaputra plain in Assam. Joëlle Smadja coordinated the geographical part of the Brahmaputra programme (funded by the ANR) and the section on the environment in the Just-India programme (ANR), where her interests mainly lie in the mobility of the land and population around Kaziranga National Park in the small town of Bokakhat (Assam).
Sanjay Upadhyay :
The challenges of Access to justice for the marginalised in India. The law and the process : The case of Forest Rights Act
Justice and Environment in India, Advocate Supreme Court of India &Managing Partner, Enviro Legal Defence Firm, has been practicing environmental law since 1993. An India Visiting Fellow at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley (Fall 1996) and a legal intern to the Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund, San Francisco, he started his professional career at the World Wide Fund for Nature– India at the Centre for Environmental Law. Sanjay has served as an environmental and development law expert to most well known International, Multilateral, national and state Institutions. He advises and holds key policy positions in national as well as state governments within India. The recent appointments include being the drafting Committee Member for two key legislations of Government of India ; the Wildlife Protection Act and the much talked about Forest Rights Act as well the Rules. Sanjay has also been a Member, with a rank of Minister of State for the Commission on Environment and Social Policies and Programs appointed by the Government of Sikkim. He is currently the member of the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority of the state of Arunachal Pradesh in the North East India. Sanjay has also been instrumental in drafting the first Forest Sector Policy of the hill state of Himachal Pradesh.