America
Indian scientist Kamal Bawa elected fellow of Royal Society
By
By Arun Kumar
Washington, July 4
Noted Indian conservation
biologist Kamal Bawa will be formally admitted to the prestigious Royal
Society as a fellow on July 10 for his "pioneering contributions to
understanding the population biology of tropical forest trees".
India-born
Bawa, an internationally recognised evolutionary ecologist and a
distinguished professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts,
Boston, was elected a fellow of the London-based society in April,
according to a university media release.
Bawa joins former and
current fellows such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein,
Stephen Hawking, and about 80 Nobel laureates.
Established in
1660, each year the Royal Society's existing fellowship proposes about
700 candidates for election, and then elects up to 52 fellows from
England and the Commonwealth countries, and up to 10 foreign fellows.
Bawa's
"pioneering contributions to understanding the population biology of
tropical forest trees led to new strategies for their conservation, and
also for the sustainable use of non-timber forest products", read a
statement published on the society website.
"On this base he has
provided leadership in conservation science in India by establishing
ATREE, an influential NGO that generates interdisciplinary knowledge,
guides policy making, disseminates information, and builds human
capacity in biodiversity science.
"Through his work and popular
writing Kamal Bawa, has promoted international cooperation in science,
while also strengthening biodiversity awareness and public support for
conservation in Indian civil society," it said.
"I am interested
in developing new paradigms of conversation that take into account the
need to alleviate poverty in biodiversity-rich areas through sustainable
use of biodiversity," said Bawa.
Bawa noted that there was
considerable debate about the success of integrated conservation and
development projects in meeting the twin goals of conservation and
poverty reduction.
Work on sustainable livelihoods at several
sites in the Eastern Himalayas tests whether conservation and
biodiversity can be enhanced while alleviating poverty, he said.
His
approach is to quantify changes in economic and social parameters
resulting from economic and institutional interventions, Bawa said.
Data are analysed and findings integrated with results from other similar projects both within and outside South Asia.
"Kamal
Bawa's election as a fellow of the Royal Society further validates the
critical importance of his contributions to and legacy as one of the
chief founders of the field of sustainability," said Massachusetts
University Chancellor J. Keith Motley.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])