Ghazala Shahabuddin
Ghazala Shahabuddin’s research interests lie at the intersection of ecological science and conservation policy. Specifically, she works on the ecological impacts of land use change, forest exploitation and habitat fragmentation with a focus on forest bird taxa, particularly woodpeckers. She has a PhD in Ecology and Conservation Biology from Duke University, USA (1998) for which she studied the response of butterfly assemblages to fragmentation in Lago Guri, Venezuela.
Since her PhD, Ghazala’s work has expanded to the policy arena including pioneering work on conservation-induced displacement and community-based conservation in India which has been published extensively. Her book Conservation at the Crossroads (Permanent Black & New India Foundation, 2010), critically analyzes contemporary wildlife policy and implementation in India. She has also co-edited other books including Nature in the New Economy (with K. Sivaramakrishnan; Orient Blackswan, 2019) and Making Conservation Work (with Mahesh Rangarajan, Permanent Black, 2007). In addition, she has written over 80 popular articles, commentaries and book reviews on nature and environment.
Ghazala worked as an Associate Professor at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University in Delhi where she taught at the School of Human Ecology from 2009-2014. Her current research focuses on long-term ecological change in community-managed forests in the Western Himalayan region as seen in forest bird communities and tree diversity. Ghazala has been a Visiting Professor to the Department of Environmental Studies at Ashoka University since 2021.
NIF Books
India faces an ecological crisis of massive proportions. The overexploitation of the country’s forests and wetlands is eating away at vital ecological processes. Rapid and unplanned economic development threatens to fragment and devour the wildlife habitats that remain. Plant and animal species are joining the ranks of the critically endangered at faster rates than ever before. Using the Sariska Tiger Reserve as one of its major anchors, this book analyses the historical, socio-political and biological contexts of nature conservation in the country in an effort to identify the malaise underlying India’s dominant conservation paradigm, which is primarily one of top-down control and exclusion. It then surveys alternative approaches to conservation—emerging in India and elsewhere—which attempt to reconcile social equity with biodiversity goals.
The author argues that a broad-based participatory approach to conservation, accommodating both use-based and preservationist paradigms, is necessary if we are to see India’s extraordinary wildlife survive into the next century. Environmental justice and improved governance have to be as much a part of this agenda as sound ecological science and practice.
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