Ostrom to meet with Ambassador of Nepal

The Ambassador of Nepal to the United States, Shankar Sharma, is scheduled to visit IU on Monday to meet with IU Professor and Nobel Prize laureate Elinor Ostrom.

IU Bloomington Provost and Executive Vice President Karen Hanson and Samrat Upadhyay, a Nepali fiction writer and director of IU's Creative Writing Program, and his wife, Babita, will also meet with the Ambassador.

Sharma will invite Ostrom to visit Nepal in 2010. He will be accompanied on his visit by George Varughese, the Nepal country representative for the Asia Foundation and a former doctoral student of Ostrom.

The Ambassador also has a  Ph.D. in economics from the University of Hawaii and experience in government, international institutions and economic research, including a career with the Nepal government.

He was also vice chairman of the National Planning Commission in Nepal from 2002 to 2006 and worked as a consultant on distribution of natural resources, economic rights and public revenue in helping draft a new constitution of Nepal.

Ostrom has conducted extensive research on the governance of common-pool resources in Nepal.

Her research on irrigation systems found user-managed dams in Nepal, despite construction from stone, mud and trees, were often more effective in allocating water resources than multi-million-dollar concrete dams built by the government.

Ostrom also co-founded the International Forestry Resources and Institutions program at IU in 1992. The program includes Nepal in its research to help policy makers and forest users design and implement evidence-based policies.

The program also partners with the Natural Resource Research and Development Center that has conducted research in more than 40 locations in Nepal.

Ostrom's visit to Nepal is expected to be in December 2010. Her trip will be facilitated by The Asia Foundation which is committed to developing a prosperous, just and open Asia-Pacific region.