Jagdeesh Rao Puppala
Anchor and Curator, Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), India
Jagdeesh Rao Puppala has been the Chief Executive of Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) since its inception in 2001 till July 2020. As the ‘Anchor and Curator’ at FES, he has now taken on the responsibilities of influencing policy, advancing knowledge generation and exchange and constituency building for the Promise of Commons initiative that aims to improve the governance and management of 30 million acres of village commons (community forests and pastures) in India. A practitioner from the very beginning, Jagdeesh’s 34 year professional engagement has been on interrelated issues of poverty and environmental degradation and on ‘systems thinking’ at the interface of ecology, society and economy. Jagdeesh has been conferred the prestigious ‘Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship’, 2015, and the Rainer Arnhold (Mulago) Conservation Fellowship, 2017. His areas of interest include Commons, decentralized governance, biodiversity informatics, systems thinking and history of science and law.